The Wisdom of Crowds, or Why Justin Bieber is Off to North Korea

By Chris Doten | September 01, 2010

Small Photo
Photo
Regional map of North Korea

Crowdsourcing is hot. Empowering everyday citizens to take small steps and have powerful impact through collective action is one of the most fascinating revolutions permitted by the Internet. The barrier to participation has dropped. Now anyone become an activist! Hooray!

But there's still one thing needed: motivation. Even when the bar is low, the vast majority of people will not participate in any given activity.

Take voting. It's free. It's your civic duty. You even get a sticker. And yet it's considered a good day when we hit 55% participation.

In party primaries important decisions are made by far fewer; most people just don't care enough to vote. Even if you could cast your ballot from your couch, there'd still people who would not participate.

So anything with crowdsourcing requires motivation. Making sure that a country has fair elections, or that earthquake victims are not buried in rubble are strong altruistic motivations.

So is playing jokes. That's why the next stop on Justin Bieber's international tour is going to be North Korea. Sadly export restrictions would probably prevent this sensible idea from happening, but you get the point.

This is also why Internet polls are only good as a metric of the enthusiasm of supporters, not their numbers. Or recall Obama administration’s attempts to crowdsource ideas for the most critical problems facing America. Number one? Marijuana legalization. A project with highly motivated supporters.

More nefarious goals can drive participation, too – for instance, burying opposing points of view or spamming communication channels with useless noise. Anytime you open the door to the whole world, be sure to think about who will take the time to walk in.

Share