So brazen a title as The Wisdom of Crowds, a recent book by James Surowiecki, was bound to attract my attention, especially the presumptuous subtitle: “Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations.” The book is a miscellany of “fun” statistics, probabilities, and anecdotes. The author is a business writer and we soon see that his pen is guided by the supposed invisible hand of the market to offer a paean to commerce and consumption. No mention of psychology, values, individuality, alienation. Only the wonders of science, technology, and capital. The “wisdom” of crowds is merely that not too many people think for themselves beyond what they will consume today.
“People … can coordinate themselves to achieve complex, mutually beneficial ends even it they’re not really sure, at the start, what those ends are or what it will take to accomplish them. As individuals, they don’t know where they’re going. But as part of a market, they’re suddenly able to get there, and fast.”