Far be it from me to tell you what to do, but if you’re looking for a great read that will spark some thoughts about social media why not try ‘Out of control: the new biology of machines, social systems and the economic world’.
I’ve found recently that i’ve kept coming back to Chapter 2 ( ‘Hive Mind’) to explain crowdsourcing. There is a wonderful anecdote about an experiment in which a movie theatre of dissparate, random people were all given a joystick and asked to participate in a flight similulator to try and land a plane. Each time a group was set this task they landed the plane pretty much perfectly. The wisdom of the crowd was what kept the group on track and enabled them to land the plane safely – almost restires your faith in humanity, don’t it?!
Oh, and if my recommendation weren’t enough (let us not forget that recommendation, as well as crowdsourcing, is one of the tenets of social media), then the fact that ‘Out of control…’ inspired The Matrix should be more than enough reason for any fanboys to get themselves down to Waterstones post-haste!
