of crowds, stupidity and the expert opinion

Is the group better or worst off than the individual? That was the prevalent question in today's session. We examined the common notion that the group exhibits retarded behaviour, and also the alternative perspective that James Surowiecki asserts - that the group is smarter than even its smartest individual, under the right circumstances. The circumstances are as follows:

Diversity
The group must be composed of people with differring backgrounds, thus they bring different perspective and angles at resolving particular issues.

Decentralised
Everyone in the group must carry the same weight. If someone is more important than the other, then this would tilt the bias.

Collective Verdict
It is not enough to have many different opinions. One needs a method or system to aggregate all these opinions.

Independant
Each individual within the group must not be influenced by the other. Short selling was mentioned and one name immediately came to mind - George Soros. One of the theories on the causes of the East Asian Economic Crisis in '97 was that George Soros brought about the collapse of the thai baht. He saw that the administration was floating the currency and it was grossly inflated. So he bought a lot of thai baht, and others, seeing that the investment guru made a big move, followed suit. This caused the thai baht to sky rocket and at its peak, Soros decided to sell his entire lot. When this happened, many of the other big players followed suit and this caused the thai baht to crash, and led to the crashing of the economies in the surrounding regions. Of course, this is but a theory, and the actual collapse was due to a confluence of various factors and events. But this definitely illustrates how non-independant thinking could result in bad outcomes.

The reason for the success of Web 2.0 is the acceptance of the above notion and thus creating tools or services that allows the group to come up with better solutions. A very simple concept that is successfully implemented in Google.

Mobile Commerce Infrastructure

After the discussion on crowds, we moved on to the infrastructure of mobile or m-commerce. I believe most of us have a lot of differring views to voice out but there was no opportunity to do so and we moved from topic to topic really fast. Perhaps we could slow down the transition between topics so we have more time to 'interrupt' Prof Gilbert. =P We talked about a variety of possible m-commerce applications, and here are some of them:

Movie Booking
Currently, the moviehouses allow bookings via WAP or phone, but require you to pay immediately via debit/credit card. They also charge $1 more. I can clearly understand why this is so. Firstly, why only allow payment via credit card instead of allowing consumers to just tab it to their phone bill? Probably the mobile subscription operators were taking a huge cut of it, and the moviehouses like Shaw and Golden Village were not willing to share their revenue. And why the extra buck for advanced booking? Why do they discourage such online bookings? Shouldn't they be happy that they are getting a confirmed customer? No, in fact, they are possibly reducing they're revenue. Let me paint a scenario. I would like the catch the movie Babel. If I were to book it by WAP, it would probably mean I am not at the cinema, and am either at home or elsewhere. I place my booking, go to the theatre, enjoy the film, and go home. After all, I am guaranteed a seat at the cinema. However, since it caused more to book, I decide to head down to the cinema and buy my tickets at the booth. Now, there is the possibility that I am unable to get a ticket for Babel, and Blood Diamond is showing at the same time, and since I have already made the effort of going to the cinema, I might as well just catch Blood Diamond. But I really want to watch Babel, so I come back another day to view it. So instead of watching 1 movie, I end up watching 2, doubling their revenue. This is why moviehouses prefer the traditional way of purchasing movie tickets.

Carpark Tracking
Great idea! I've never thought of it but this just shows the endless possibilities for m-commerce applications. An important thing to note is that in implementing this application, we make use of existing infrastructure so the startup cost of this model is very low. All the information we require can be gathered by existing means. Keeping startup cost really low is an important issue to me as the lower the startup cost the lighter your fall will be should you fail. I do this this carpark idea will take off as I believe one will save money from using this service. I've experienced similar scenarios where I end up driving around to various carparks for half an hour just to find a lot. Paying a small nominal fee for such a service would save me a lot of money, that is, the fuel cost, the maintenance of the vehicle (wear and tear), depreciation due to usage etc.

After discussing a few applications of m-commerce, we were given our assignment, which is the solve the language problem in Jurong Bird Park for tourist via the implementation of a mobile network. We briefly examined the infrastructure of the former and current mobile networks and how the different components interact with each other.

Definitely yet another eye opening session. A lot of new ideas this week and fodder for loads of discussion! A pity time is a constraint and we couldn't delve deeper in some of the great ideas and perspectives mentioned in class. May next week's session be a better one!