■ 06 February 2012 | 12:00 AM
The genius of crowds
In a recent phenomenon, millions of idle personal computers were networked into grids to perform massively complex calculations as quickly and accurately as the world’s best supercomputers. The process goes virtually unnoticed by the PC users and has doomed the fate of many supercomputers.
What if, instead of networking PCs, we create a grid connecting millions of citizens to solve the complex problems facing society? In addition to raw power, we offer features no supercomputer will ever have — discernment, morals and intuition.
The genius of the Founding Fathers and Steve Jobs was having the courage to recognize that the most complex problems are best solved via a combination of transparent “open source” approaches and the conviction that all men are created equal.
Today’s politicians spend hundreds of millions of dollars to condition us that we are neither equal, nor capable nor deserving, of managing our own lives and “their” money. Let’s find the courage to prove them wrong. Let’s make 2012 the year of digital democracy.
Stephen Zarpas
Norfolk
Commenting on this article is open to verified users only | Learn how to become verified here
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
Back to the future
Of course, what the letter describes is the spontaneous order of free markets, first described in economic terms by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations in 1776, as an invisible hand guiding the overall economy through the millions of individual choices made by unconnected people acting on price signals and their intimate knowledge of their own circumstances, goals and abilities.
And exactly as the letter describes, the wisest central planner, acting on the best information which can be gathered, cannot match that dissociated network of self-interested actors in bringing order to the economy.
I wonder if the letter writer could tell us what would happen to that network of computers if false signals were injected into the datastream as we do in the economy with subsidies, tax credits and penalties and biases?