Stephen Downes

I agree that 'The Wisdom of Crowds' is a bad title. As Dave Snowden suggests, "crowds are herds; we see that with the blogosphere, response to opinion polls and many other examples." And that's why understanding Surowiecki's three conditions - independance of opinion, relevant diversity and decentralization - is important. The world doesn't neatly divide into the cynefin categories, though. You can't draw a nice neat line between complex and chaotic - there are degrees of independence between agents. That's why I describe semantic conditions (diversity, autonomy, openness, connectedness) rather than categories: I am describing parameters, not classifications. And that, too, is the problem with theory informing practice.