The Collective Mind

Gerry McGovern makes an interesting case in his post, Web facilitates wisdom of crowds.

He argues that the collective intelligence is perhaps more reliable than that of an expert.

An expert's advice could be skewed to the expert's own views and experiences, and therefore could be biased. Also, statistical research is only the analysis of the limited population surveyed. There is always a degree of error.

Mass collaboration, by definition will be free of any one person's particular biases. And all the skepticism of Wikipedia could be unwarranted. Most people want to take credit for putting in accurate information and not be blacklisted for putting up bad data.

And that's why The Borg was such a formidable enemy. :)