Spring 2007

In his book Infotopia, Cass R. Sunstein explores (as the subtitle suggests) how many minds make knowledge. Sunstein presents three major methods of group information gathering: deliberation, prediction markets, and current trends in online information aggregates such as wikis, open source software, and blogs. It is fair to say that of these three methods the author is most optimistic about the last, with particular emphasis placed on wikis and open source software as hopeful pioneers in the information revolution.
Deliberation, though it has served for many years as a way to come to group consensus, is seen, by the author, as flawed. Sunstein points out four major flaws which cause deliberation to sometimes fail, these are: the amplification of errors, the inability to elicit all the information that a group holds (hidden profiles), producing a situation in which the blind lead the blind (cascade effect), and a groups' tendency towards polarization-becoming more entrenched in your original bias after deliberation. Indeed it is the later three issues that cause the first, and it is these three defects-hidden profiles, cascades, and polarization-that the author focuses on throughout the book. The only hope for deliberation expressed by the author is if contrary ideas to the group norm are encouraged, even rewarded, or if greater anonymity is withheld in deliberating processes, as in the case of wikis and other online information aggregates.
Sunstein shows slightly greater hope for the accuracy of predication markets for obvious reasons of rewards-when you have more at stake you are more likely to make sure you get your information correct.
Sunstein sites success stories such as the Iowa Electronic Market which claims a 75 percent accuracy rate on US presidential election polls since the 1988 elections. Through out his discussions of prediction markets Sunstein frequently references twentieth-century thinker Friedrich Hayek. It is Hayek’s belief that pricing serves to aggregate “both the information and the tastes of numerous people, incorporating far more material than could possibly be assembled by any planner or board.” (p.119) Although the market seems to more accurately incorporate the information of a group than deliberation can, Sunstein points out flaws in the market as well; taking into account the possibility of biases, bubbles, and intentional manipulation.
Wikis and the open source mentality are the obvious champions of the informational aggregates presented by the author. Because wikis can be edited by anyone within a company (or, in some cases, anyone with internet access) many of the inaccuracies held by deliberating groups are eliminated. People are less likely to feel pressured to conform to others’ ideas since it is a largely anonymous aggregate and issues of rank can also be alleviated because of this. Open source software, which can be used freely and improved upon freely only if you, in turn, allow your improvements to be improved upon, is likened to science and other disciplines which constantly build upon previous knowledge. These aggregates are successful, also, because they carry with them as many checks and balances as there are readers. New trends such as these portray human knowledge as the living, breathing, changing organism that it is and turn away from the idea of knowledge as a static thing entombed in books. As our ideas of what knowledge is change, our ideas of aggregating and organizing that knowledge are changing too.
“Is human knowledge a wiki?” asks the author, only as much as the human brain is a computer.