INFOTOPIA: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, by Cass R. Sunstein

[Note: Cass is your keynote speaker at the PM Summit - Chicago June 7,
2006 - http://www.pmcluster.com/CHI.htm Early bird registration open.
Non-commercial, open Web community-of-practice announcement.]

The rise of the "information society" offers not only considerable
peril but also great promise. Beset from all sides by a never-ending
barrage of media, how can we ensure that the most accurate information
emerges and is heeded? In this book, Cass R. Sunstein develops a deeply
optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information,
and to use that knowledge to improve our lives.

In an age of information overload, it is easy to fall back on our own
prejudices and insulate ourselves with comforting opinions that
reaffirm our core beliefs. Crowds quickly become mobs. The
justification for the Iraq war, the collapse of Enron, the explosion of
the space shuttle Columbia-all of these resulted from decisions made
by leaders and groups trapped in "information cocoons," shielded from
information at odds with their preconceptions. How can leaders and
ordinary people challenge insular decision-making and gain access to the
sum of human knowledge?

Stunning new ways to share and aggregate information, many
Internet-based, are helping companies, schools, governments, and
individuals not only to acquire, but also to create, ever-growing
bodies of accurate knowledge. Through a ceaseless flurry of
self-correcting exchanges, wikis, covering everything from politics and
business plans to sports and science fiction subcultures, amass-and
refine-information. Open-source software enables large numbers of
people to participate in technological development. Prediction markets
aggregate information in a way that allows companies, ranging from
computer manufacturers to Hollywood studios, to make better decisions
about product launches and office openings. Sunstein shows how people
can assimilate aggregated information without succumbing to the dangers
of the herd mentality--and explains when and why the new aggregation
techniques are so astoundingly accurate.

In a world where opinion and anecdote increasingly compete on equal
footing with hard evidence, the on-line effort of many minds coming
together might well provide the best path to infotopia.

About the Author

Cass R. Sunstein is Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor
of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School, a
contributing editor at the New Republic and the American Prospect, and
a frequent contributor as well to such publications as the New York
Times and the Washington Post. He is the recipient of the Henderson
Prize and the Goldsmith Book Prize; his many books include Radicals in
Robes, Republic.com, Why Societies Need Dissent, and Designing
Democracy: What Constitutions Do. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.


-j
http://kmblogs.com/