Description

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? In this book, Cass R. Sunstein develops a deeply optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information, and to use that knowledge to improve our lives. In an age of information overload, it is easy to fall back on our own prejudices and insulate ourselves with comforting opinions that reaffirm our core beliefs. Crowds quickly become mobs. The justification for the Iraq war, the collapse of Enron, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia-all of these resulted from decisions made by leaders and groups trapped in "information cocoons," shielded from information at odds with their preconceptions. How can leaders and ordinary people challenge insular decision making and gain access to the sum of human knowledge? Stunning new ways to share and aggregate information, many Internet-based, are helping companies, schools, governments, and individuals not only to acquire, but also to create, ever-growing bodies of accurate knowledge. Through a ceaseless flurry of self-correcting exchanges, wikis, covering everything from politics and business plans to sports and science fiction subcultures, amass-and refine-information. Open-source software enables large numbers of people to participate in technological development. Prediction markets aggregate information in a way that allows companies, ranging from computer manufacturers to Hollywood studios, to make better decisions about product launches and office openings. Sunstein shows how people can assimilate aggregated information without succumbing to the dangers of the herd mentality--and when and why the new aggregation techniques are so astoundingly accurate. In a world where opinion and anecdote increasingly compete on equal footing with hard evidence, the on-line effort of many minds coming together might well provide the best path to infotopia.

Praise for Infotopia

"Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and...each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests.... civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess. And one of the ways in which civilization helps us to overcome that limitation on the extent of individual knowledge is by conquering ignorance, not by the acquisition of more knowledge, but by the utilization of knowledge which is and which remains widely dispersed among individuals."
—Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. 1: Rules and Order

"The presumption that Iraq had active WMD programs was so strong that formalized [intelligence community] mechanisms established to challenge assumptions and "group think," such as "red teams," "devil's advocacy," and other types of alternative or competitive analysis, were not utilized."
—Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Report of the 108th Congress, U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq: Conclusions

"A very numerous assembly cannot be composed of very enlightened men. It is even probable than those comprising this assembly will on many matters combine great ignorance with many prejudices.... It follows that the more numerous the assembly, the more it will be exposed to the risk of making false decisions."
—Condorcet, Selected Writings

"Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
—Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia

Extended Copyright Information

Copyright 2006 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

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Previously published by Oxford University Press.

Jacket design by David Drummond.

About the Author

Cass R. Sunstein is Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School, a contributing editor at the New Republic and the American Prospect, and a frequent contributor as well to such publications as the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is the recipient of the Henderson Prize and the Goldsmith Book Prize; his many books include Rascals in Robes, Republic.com, Why Societies Need Dissent, and Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

It is some time in the future. Businesses, governments, and individual lives have been fundamentally transformed, above all because of the rise of new methods for obtaining information. Collaborative projects, often involving numerous strangers, are growing in both scale and quality, to the benefit ...

Copyright

Copyright 2006 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.