Beware the Online Collective: Individual Creativity Is Being Replaced by Dangerous Groupthink

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06.2_index.html

by dpapathanasiou • 19 years ago

16 5 19 years ago

edge.org

_bq• 19 years ago

i bet he could roll a phat doobie.

pg• 19 years ago

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

davidw• 19 years ago

He seems to be ignoring the "long tail" argument that the internet, with its vast reaches, enables many people in weird niches to find one another.

gills• 19 years ago

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?

comatose_kid• 19 years ago

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'.

Beware the Online Collective: Individual Creativity Is Being Replaced by Dangerous Groupthink

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