Comments on: The Dumbness of Crowds https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-dumbness-of-crowds/2007/01/09 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Thu, 11 Jan 2007 04:25:36 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Michel Bauwens https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-dumbness-of-crowds/2007/01/09/comment-page-1#comment-17071 Thu, 11 Jan 2007 04:25:36 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/2007/01/10/the-dumbness-of-crowds/#comment-17071 James,

I’ll add one factor that from experiences, creates dumb teams, and that is ‘representationality’. In large companies, though they often pay lipservice to teams and use them a lot, many times though, they are inoperative. The reason is that the people sitting in the team are not there as individuals seeking optimal solutions, but represent some group or hierarch that is there to defend its interest and turf. This is pretty much the same situation as in the political arena, where politics is not the search for the best solution, but a negotiation of interests. Both aspects are needed, and reconciling them is a big challenge. The advantage of peer governance is that there is no representationality and hence it can devote its energy to solving problems more readily.

]]> By: james https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-dumbness-of-crowds/2007/01/09/comment-page-1#comment-16818 Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:08:29 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/2007/01/10/the-dumbness-of-crowds/#comment-16818 i think this is a good discussion and perhaps you could dive into to specifying exceptions and finding a general rule for “the dumbness of crowds”. I think a lot of the dumbness in the case of working together comes from a lack of listening, and then splashing your own style over another’s work without trying to create a synthesis. Recently someone designed a logo for our open-source project and threw up the design on flickr. Another designer then came along and added a small but crucial touch to make the initial idea stronger, almost as if correcting a spelling mistake on a wiki or blog post to maintain the idea’s continuity. The further a person moves away from the original strand of creation, the nearer you get to a fork in the road.

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