This is the working title I have at the moment, it expresses
my conclusions, which I came to after these last two weeks. I think my
dissertation is going to be about the inescapable fact that more and more of
our information is available online. What I'm really interested in is the
possibility that with increasing social capabilities and tools online, basic
and fundamental qualities of human interaction are tapped into on an
unprecedented scale. The main facilitator of these phenomena is of course the
Internet. I'm sure there are many more potentials to our societies, but I would
like to focus on Social Capital and the wisdom of crowds.
Social capital is essentially that which attracts us to
groups. Apparently there are two kinds of social capital ‘bonding’ and
‘bridging’. The first kind brings us closer together to members of groups we
belong to, and the second expands the borders of existing groups. The Internet
makes such connections possible on an international scale, but more importantly
near instantaneously. Our race did not have this capability little over a
decade ago. So the potential and the implication of this is unmapped, uncharted
and impossible to predict.
The Wisdom of crowds is a social potential, which is
misunderstood; admittedly I am not sure if I understand it completely if at
all. However, I am aware of it and the more I look into it the more undeniable
it seems. It is odd because certain aspects of it sound too fantastic to be
real. The Wisdom of crowds is normally ‘shown’ in classroom and isolated
experiments, such as a group consistently guessing how many jellybeans are in a
jar or how much will livestock weigh after it's been slaughtered. It also seems
to me that those who are aware of it, strive to use it to make things better. I
am more interested in observing it 'in the wild '. The Internet is like the
Savannah, it is man-made and it enables its inhabitants to do almost whatever
they please, alone and in groups. Instead of collectively guessing the right
answer, the Wisdom of crowds’ most prolific use on the web (insofar as I could observe) is as a human
filter mechanism. It is what I like to think of as a bullshit meter. Like other
great things on the web, it is non-orchestrated and loosely if at all managed.
It is what happens when someone, most notably corporate bodies and governments
try to fold the public, or whoever their actions are aimed at.
The biggest problem I face when I go online and look at say,
in article, is establishing its credibility. And I think it is an understatement
to say that I'm not alone. Thus, a simple mechanism such as a comments area
turns into the feeding ground relating to the earlier metaphor of the Savannah. In the
comments, even though we are driven by self-interest, we can aggregate our
knowledge and together establish the validity of the said article. I want to
argue that what we are proving here is whether or not the original poster (OP)
is being genuine. And I don't think it's only limited to high visibility court
cases and government scandals. I feel that this public scrutiny coupled with
increasing visibility of our actions means that we would have to adapt our
behaviour to what others think. So when I use the word ‘nice’ it's not in the
‘have a nice day’ meaning, nice in that sense feels hypocritical. The kind of
nice I am talking about is the compromising kind, how you are when you know you
can't get away with taking the p***.
I'm still not sure how to connect all the dots but I think I
may have a ‘case’.
Wish me luck, hopefully I will be writing a lot more about this in the
near future
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