Our minds on media.

A recent Economist article quoted James Surowiecki of Wisdom of Crowds fame as saying, “With most things, the average is mediocrity. With collective intelligence, it’s excellence. You could say it’s as if we’ve been programmed to be collectively smart.” In the right context that statement may seem profound, but from a neurological point of view, isn’t this stating the obvious? I guess most of us are still a bit Cartesian in our outlook.