Infotopia : How Many Minds Produce Knowledge

How can we ensure that the accurate information emerges and is heeded? This book develops an optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information, combat groupthink, and to use that knowledge to improve our lives.

The rise of the "information society" offers not only considerable peril but also great promise Beset from all sides by a never-ending barrage of media, how can we ensure that the most accurate information emerges and is heeded? Cass R. Sunstein here develops a deeply optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information, combat groupthink, and to use that knowledge to improve our lives. New ways, many Internet-based, to share and aggregate information--including wikis, open-source software, and prediction markets--are helping companies, schools, governments, and individuals not only to acquire, but also to create, ever-growing bodies of accurate knowledge without succumbing to the dangers of a hive-mind mentality. In a world where opinion and anecdote increasingly compete on equal footing with hard evidence, the on-line effort of many minds coming together could provide the best path to infotopia.