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It’s been a while… and I’m back with a quick book review. My father suggested I read The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. Since I don’t have much time at all for “easy reading” (vs. research articles), it took me quite some time to finish.

I liked the book, although I think it falls into the category of non-fiction books that seem a bit stretched, as if the writer had more than a magazine article, but had to add more to get it to really fill out a hardcover.

Surowiekci seems to be addressing a business audience — not surprising, since he writes a business column for the New Yorker. His main point is that independent actions by “crowds” or large groups can generate extremely accurate information. In one sense, this is a defense of a free market, but from a science perspective, it’s simply arguing the accuracy of the mean of a distribution. (Remember statistics? The standard error of a normal distribution gets smaller as the number of entries increases.)

Here’s an excerpt I particularly enjoyed, on the use of collaboration and competition in science:

While scientists are fundamentally competing for recognition and attention, that … can only be afforded them by the very people they’re competing against. … The quest for recognition ensures a steady infusion of diverse thought, since no one becomes famous for restating what’s already known. What allows this strange blend of collaboration and competition to flourish is the scientific ethos that demands open access to information. This ethos dates back to the origins of the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. … The historian Joel Mokyr writes, the scientific revolution became the period “in which ‘open science’ emerged, when knowledge about the natural world became increasingly nonproprietary and scientific advances and discoveries were freely shared with the public at large. Thus scientific knowledge became a public good, communicated freely, rather than confined to a secretive exclusive few as had been the custom in medieval Europe.”

Surowiecki also quotes Robert K. Merton “In science, one’s private property is established by giving its substance away.”

I’m not sure if Surowiecki knows about the “open access” movement in science, but this is an interesting historical point to consider in the terms of that debate.

The book had some interesting points about managing groups, trying to provide for free debate (rather than “groupthink”). All in all, it was a good read — I’d give it 4 stars out of 5.