Wisdom of the crowd or stupidity of the mob?

To paraphrase Kevin Kelly, editor at Wired Magazine (see http://www.kk.org), "Between the wisdom of the crowd and the stupidity of the mob lies a very fine line."

We are living in an age where certain things are happening that were previously thought to be totally impossible. For example, we are seeing an exponential increase in the power of the group while at the same time seeing increasing individualism. Think about about it. While expanding our own sense of self through wiki posting, social networks and personal blogs we are at the same time seeing an amazing transformation and expansion of group knowledge via these same tools.

It was once believed that by linking people together across the globe, we would see a homogenization occur resulting in the loss of uniqueness, culture and personal identity. This clearly has not panned out.

There is a big unknown that is yet to come from this and that is, what can be accomplished by adding up all these small bits of personal knowledge and understanding to create something bigger and greater that the sum of it's parts.

This collective intelligence/knowledge has yet to fully reveal it's true potential but one interesting use of it in the business world has been to take advantage of a lesser recognized facet and that is the transparency that comes with it.

In one business case, a company started by lifting all travel expense restrictions. The caveat was that all travel expenses by any employee were posted to a company wide site which was viewable by all the other employees. The essence then is that within this transparency, the travelers are trained by the group as to whats an OK expense and what is unacceptable!

I doubt my company (OHSU) is ready to allow the crowd to dictate acceptable standards, but I'm encouraged to see the introduction of blogs and a lot of participation in some social networks like Linkedin. Perhaps one day the mob will rule, but not today.