

Beware the Online Collective: Individual Creativity Is Being Replaced by Dangerous Groupthink - dpapathanasiou
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06.2_index.html

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pg
There seems to be at least as much variety of opinion now as before the web,
probably more.

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gills
I don't think he's claiming the variation in content has decreased, but warns
that dependence on collective rating systems could decrease the variance of an
individual's effective sample size.

I also don't think the author claims the web has introduced any social
problems, just that it isn't solving them yet. Are these even problems with
technical solutions?

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comatose_kid
I think I understand Jaron's premise - sites like facebook reduce the human
element by forcing its users to add information according to a predefined
structure. Presumably these same users may have created more free form web
sites (and he equates this to individual creativity), but I don't really agree
that it leads to group-think.

Facebook or any other site is just a medium - whether or not it leads to
group-think is more a function of the participants than any conformity in
their online 'meeting place'.

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_bq
i bet he could roll a phat doobie.

