Information as a Social Entity

Session 3

LIS 880: Knowledge Management

Chris Kiess

Brown SB, Duguid P (2000). The Social Life of Information.

Introduction & Chapter 1

Gladwell M. The Tipping Point. The New Yorker. 1996.

Shiller RJ (2008). How a Bubble Stayed Under the Radar. The New York

Times.

Surowiecki J, (2005). Monkey See, Monkey Do: Imitation, Information

Cascades and Independence (pp. 40-65). The Wisdom of

Crowds.

Harpswell, ME: Anchor.

This Week in Readings

Surowiecki & Information Cascades

• Information Cascades (ICs) = Herding

Activity = Contagious

• Surowiecki discusses this herding

activity in relation to organizations

• NFL, Plank Road examples

Information Cascades

• They are aggregations of information

(ex: voting system, markets)

• Problems when decisions are made in

sequence and not in conjunction

• This leads to conformity rather than

diversity – collective intelligence

Four Elements for a “Wise Crowd”

• Opinion Diversity

• Independence

• Decentralization

• Aggregation

A Word on The Social Life of Information

• The Information Age and The Myth of

Information

• Managing Information solves all our

problems?

• The Net solves all our problems?

• The end of paper, books, newspapers?

Gladwell & Social Epidemics

• Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule

• Connectors, Mavens & Salesmen

• Six Degrees of Separation Study

• Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

In Summary

Understanding

• organizational behavior

• human information behavior

• dynamics of information

• How knowledge and information flow (or don’t)

Will help you in Knowledge Management and in

KM approaches