James Surowiecki gave a talk at TED.

Who is James Surowiecki? He is the author of “The Wisdom of the Crowds“. I think that anyone with an interest in blogging, collaborative writing with wikis, and social networking should read this book!

What is TED? Here is the description from the TED Website: TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

So here is Surowiecki’s talk.

He started with blog entries about the tsunami of 2004, posed three questions to the audience, touched on some concepts of the wisdom of the crowds, and ended with a cautionary note. I am paraphrasing his three questions:

1. Why do most bloggers blog?
2. Can blogs really harness “collective intelligence”?
3. What is the dark side of the phenomenon of social networking?

I’ll just say that he is a better author than he is a speaker, but his 18 minutes summed up some of his ideas very nicely. The Wikipedia summary provides a few more details.

In his book, Surowiecki illustrated of his ideas using social, economic, and sports examples. I think that his ideas work equally well in education when we talk about socially constructed knowledge. But while educators are often stumped when asked how exactly we can do this, Surowiecki offers an emergent framework (diversity of opinion, independence, decentralisation, and aggregation) based on his examples.