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Title:
"Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge"
Review:
"Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge" concerns how the limitations on our knowledge as individuals might be overcome by working with and learning from the efforts of others. As well as considering long-established means of deliberation (e.g., meetings and juries), author Cass R. Sunstein also examines the use of the Internet.
Sunstein, a faculty member of the University of Chicago Law School and a former attorney-advisor in the Office of the Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, examines how people in groups share -- or fail to share -- their knowledge. His reflections often derive from social science experiments.
Sunstein looks at the main ways of eliciting the knowledge of individuals and groups. He stresses that, in deliberation, people may not share all the unique information they have (giving groups a 'hidden profile'). Managers and political leaders can become so committed to a course of action based on insular decision-making that their attitude and organisational structures (termed 'information cocoons' and 'echo chambers') discount information that would contradict it.
Besides deliberation, other methods for obtaining pooled information are taking the statistical average of individual views, or looking at some sort of market. Sunstein enthuses about how the Internet can be used, both in these ways and those peculiar to it, e.g., wikis. He is especially concerned to scotch the idea that many minds deliberating together will necessarily be superior to that of a group of individuals. But certain conditions, such as group members should be more likely to be right than wrong, must be met to ensure this (although this begs the question of how they become right in the first place).
Following research laid by economist, neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek, Sunstein invests much hope in market mechanisms to aggregate knowledge. This tips into still greater enthusiasm for 'prediction markets.' These can be internal to organisations or open to a wider circle; rather than commodities, they concern possible events. The rewards tend to be in 'virtual money' or prizes. Astonishingly, he sees no moral difference between predicting Oscar winners and such questions as the possible number of AIDS infections by 2010. That people might profit from the latter sort of speculation seems not to trouble him; the accuracy of the predictions is his preoccupation in this book.
Of course the book's central issue (that people do not share all they know) is vital to its content. Sunstein also says the herd mentality of organisational hierarchies needs to be addressed if, say, healthcare workers are to open up about their thoughts.
The most absorbing chapter explores wikis, open-source software and blogs. It balances keenness for the co-operation of Wikipedia with the possibility of vandalism; the free speech of blogs with their tendency to become another form of information cocoon. While celebrating wikis, Sunstein's emphasis on economic incentives makes him a little mystified by the attractive power of being able to participate and be well-regarded that rewards their contributors.
Overall this is a clearly written book, but one that often labours to establish fairly simple conclusions. The proposals for reform to methods of deliberation do little to address the potential problems of being overlooked for promotion, fired or simply unpopular if putting forward information from an inferior or little-known position.
Although the Internet has certainly introduced unique channels for obtaining information, it is also shown to add to the misinformation in the world. So the Utopian world of Infotopia seems only a little nearer.
FreePint Reviewer:
Having begun his career in academic libraries, Adrian Janes is currently an Information Services librarian with the London Borough of Havering. Among his influences are Phil Bradley, Philip K. Dick and Chris Morris.
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