The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Another clever dick from Wall Street?

Rating 4 out of 10.

This book has some intersting points. For example then it recounts an example which tells that a crowd of laymens collective assesments of the weight of an ox at a county fair is actually more accurate than the experts assesment. And thus Surowiecki means to tell that a crowd of independent people are actually more smart than an expert. The text of the book is around 270 pages, but in my opinion Surowiecki stops being interesting already around page 60. The rest of the book seems to be material he has just amassed because he had to fill out the pages of the book. Yeah actually he could have made a much thiner pamphlet to get his message across! And also the message that crowds can be intelligent, is that something new? After all a substantial part of the evolution of human culture and knowhow is a result of the wisdom of crowds - isn't it? So one get this sneaking feeling that James Surowiecki is yet another of these clever dicks from Wall Street, trying to give foolish people the impression that he has found the key to how they really can start to make money in big scale.