Why crowd sourcing is no magic bullet
A few years ago in an English newspaper, there was a story about a near-fatal stabbing. The victim was rushed to hospital, where during an X-ray to determine the extent of any damage, a small cancerous growth was found. It was removed and the man made a full recovery, remarking that were it not for the stabbing he might have died from the hidden cancer that was quietly causing more damage than the knife.
In 1906, British scientist Francis Galton went to the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition, where he witnessed a weight judging competition. A crowd of farmers and local people had gathered, and were paying sixpence to enter their guess of how much the ox would weigh ‘slaughtered and dressed’.
Galton had little faith in the intelligence of the average man, so decided to conduct an experiment to back up his argument. When the competition was over, he collected all 787 guesses written on discarded tickets and analyzed the data. What he found shocked him: the average guess was 1,197 pounds; the correct weight was 1,198. The ‘dumb’ crowd’s judgment was almost perfect.
Groups of farmers aren’t always right. Stabbing does not always cure cancer.
It seems absurd to point out that a solution doesn’t have to work either all the time or not at all. Penicillin is not a failed drug because it doesn’t cure cancer. Some things aren’t supposed to be universally applied and when we stretch an idea way beyond its effective plasticity, cracks begin to show.
Popularized by New Yorker staff writer James Surowiecki’s 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds ideas such as crowdsourcing and the hive mind began to seep into the mainstream thanks to fully-functioning embodiments of group-think theory like Wikipedia and Linux.
Seemingly blowing the economic model of the rational man –– one who only parts with his time for hard cash –– out of the water, the founders of such experiments became the pin-ups of a post-expert infosystem, a digital nirvana where the crowd was king yet the monarchy was mocked.
But what do we actually have to show for the crowd’s toil, years later? As recovering digital evangelist Jaron Lanier points out in his book You Are Not A Gadget, if 15 years ago he’d told people that all we’d have to show for this revolutionary approach to problem solving would be a new type of encyclopedia (Wikipedia) and an adapted operating system (Linux), people wouldn’t have been too impressed. As fascinating as the Wikipedia model is, we already had an encyclopedia model that worked. We already had Unix.
Web 2.0 experiments have achieved some amazing goals. But like the wisdom of crowds theory that inspired/intellectualized them, they are limited.
Wikipedia isn’t always wrong. But it also isn’t always right. The same is true of crowdsourcing as a tool.
Ask a crowd to calculate how many balls are in a jar, how much an ox weighs or the correct price for a company share, and the crowd will often out-perform its most-accurate member.
Where there is a right answer, the crowd will flourish. A good rule of thumb –– while not 100% accurate, of course -–– is if you can count it, you can crowd it. But when it comes to more qualitative issues, crowdsourcing isn’t supposed to work. Look at the gulf between the crowdsourced music charts and the opinion of experts or critics. One is no more accurate than the other in essence, but if I wanted to find the best new music, I’d ask the expert, not buy the number one single.
Likewise, crowds can find the weight of an ox, but not the prettiest ox. And, as author of Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, Jeff Howe, told me, ‘I find the crowd adept at weeding out the ugliest oxen, but they’ll often miss the strange beauty.’
Applying a tool as if it is a toolbox only leads to mistakes. As the old saying goes, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Galton learned the folly of assuming the crowd is always dumb. But we need to remember that it’s not always inherently intelligent, and even if it is it may not be the right way to solve your problem. Forgetting this creates perceived failures and damages the reputation of a good theory that wasn’t meant to be universally applied.
It’s about selecting the right tool for the job. Use a spanner as a hammer and all you’ll do is break the tool and the nut.
* Post written in 2010 and reported on new site
It’s unfair to ask people who don’t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design - Jonathan Ive
I cannot get enough of this incredible Josh Osho cover of Kanye West’s Jesus Walks. Massive thanks to @katycots for the introduction.
Source: soundcloud.com
The one object I’d save if my house was on fire, my signed Kurt Vonnegut print.
Morbid thought of the day, via Kurt Vonnegut
American satirist Kurt Vonnegut was petrified of dying a ridiculous death.
As a young man, he went to fight in World War II. He was almost immediately captured during the Battle of the Bulge, just days before Christmas 1944.
He was taken to Dresden, a journey which saw his transportation bombed by the Allies assuming his train carriages were full of German soldiers and ammunition. Many of his fellow PoWs never made it to their final destination.
Once in Dresden, Vonnegut was beaten and starved by German soldiers. One night in February 1945, the Allies fire bombed Dresden while Kurt and his fellow PoWs hid in a meat locker with their German guards.
Once the bombing stopped, they climbed out of their hiding place to find a city levelled. German families sat in their houses, frozen in time from the oxygen being sucked from their rooms as they hid from the fire. Vonnegut and his fellow PoWs were tasked with clearing the dead bodies.
Despite a particularly sadistic young guard having it in for Vonnegut, despite being present for one of the most deadly bombings in history, Kurt Vonnegut made it back from the war in one piece.
On Mothers’ Day 1944, Vonnegut’s mother committed suicide with sleeping pills.
Struggling with depression, Kurt Vonnegut attempted suicide in 1984.
In March 2007, Kurt Vonnegut, aged 84, took his family’s dog out for a walk. Before reaching the bottom step, the dog turned to see where his master was. Vonnegut tripped over the lead and suffered a massive head trauma. He died in hospital a few weeks later on April 11 2007.
Given a long enough timeline, life humiliates us all.
Is this the new Pinterest?
Thought I’d get in there early. It’s only a matter of time, isn’t it.
OK, we get it, Apple is a big company…
What’s on my iPhone home screen?
Partly because interacting with my iPhone is such a big part of how I consume, communicate and share, partly as thinking through my rationale for what I have on my homescreen I realised that it is based on how I think I use the device rather than how I actually use it.
I originally wrote this ages ago, but have re-uploaded it from my old blog and updated it, as quite a lot has changed in that time.
Phone
Personally, I rarely use the phone app on my iPhone. I despise making phone calls, and would have iPod instead if it had 3G access. I should probably remove this from my home screen, actually.
Messages
Due to woeful phone reception where I live, I rarely used the Messages app until iMessage came along. I still find I’ll use Twitter or Facebook to get in touch with people rather than a text message, unless it’s a relative who doesn’t use social networks.
Calendar
Frankly, I rarely use this, as I don’t sync it with my work account and rarely go anywhere or do anything. May as well move it off the homescreen, actually.
Photos
As a dad, I use this a lot, as does my son (3), who loves looking through his baby pictures.
Camera
Likewise, this gets used a lot as it’s always there when the moment happens, unlike my much better Canon G10, which often sits gathering dust with the exception of holidays.
Contacts
Again probably not used loads, especially as I try to whittle my friends down to as few people as possible.
Agenda
Agenda is a far more beautiful app than Apple’s needlessly skeuomorphic Calendar. I am dreadful at remembering family events, so my wife adds me to stuff I need to remember. Would be lost without it.
iTunes
Mostly used for downloading nerdy 5by5 podcasts. And there are lots of good ones.
App store
Used a lot, mostly for obsessively checking for app updates.
Sky+
Despite being a Virgin Media employee, I annoyingly can’t get Virgin Media cable where I am. I use this app a lot. If I read about a TV show I know my wife will like, I can just open this up and record it for her.
Reminders
Still not sure why this is a standalone app from Calendar, to be honest. Probably should shift it to the second scree, as I rarely use it.
Notes
If this disappeared I would be screwed. I use it for every idea I have, noting every quote I like and even keeping track of my finances. I used to use Evernote, but had too many issues with notes reverting to older versions.
Remote
I’ve found that I use this less and less now I consume more content directly through the Apple TV rather than streamed from iTunes on my MacBook Pro.
Netflix
Netflix has turned my Apple TV into something I use once a week into something I use every day. The iPhone app probably hasn’t been used once though, now I think of it.
Sonos
Sonos is an amazing solution for streaming my music collection and Spotify to the two speakers I have around the house (bedroom and kitchen) that can be synced or separate. Love it.
I don’t use Facebook as much as I did pre-Twitter, but still check regularly as a way to keep in touch with old friends and family.
Spotify
I mostly paid the £10 a month to support a business I think is providing a great service*, but since joining a gym, I’ve found that it’s one of the apps I use most.
In the dock…
Safari
Although I check Twitter first, every morning I’ll use Safari to at least read the new posts that have popped up on MacRumours and Daring Fireball.
Music
Mostly used for podcasts like 5by5 on my walk to the train station each morning and background music while I read on the train.
Basically where email notifications for social networks get sent/the odd email from a relative not on Facebook.
If I could only have one app, it would be this one. Love it. Has changed my life.
Wallpaper
A picture of my son Elliot. He’s three and awesome.
Right, time to shift some apps around…
*Full disclamier: I work for Virgin Media who recently signed a deal with Spotify, but my love of it is years old.
