Which Way to Infotopia?

Reviews the book, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge by Cass R. Sunstein (see record 2006-12263-000). Cass R. Sunstein, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, brings together in this book much of what is known about how human groups make collective judgments and decisions. His discussion focuses on the four methods of averaging, deliberation, prediction markets, and the use of various Internet tools. He illustrates each method with vivid examples drawn from the world of business and politics. Throughout the text, psychological forces emerge as important moderators of how well information integration succeeds and when it fails. Hence, the story turns on the tension between the promise of new techniques of information integration on the one hand and the psychological constraints of individual minds and the social psychological dynamics of group interaction on the other. All told, Sunstein succeeds in stimulating interest in a traditional topic of social psychology. The world of information aggregation is clearly in a state of flux, and readers are advised to stay tuned for new developments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)