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Summary: 4 pages. 1 source. APA format.

Infotopia is a persuasive and sophisticated meditation on the ways in

which the web is not just living up to its early hype, but

transcending it. Cass Sunstein has given us a brilliant integrative

view of how the distributed users of the internet can band together to

produce extraordinary work; along with the circumstances that best

give rise to deliberation rather than groupthink.”—Jonathan Zittrain,

professor of internet. Governance and Regulation, Oxford University.

Impact of open source on society
Introduction

Over the past years and with the advent of internet, people around the world could easily share information, dispute facts that were untrue and by the same line empower themselves. While this new way of thinking may be beneficial, it could sometimes be deceptive.

Deliberation
Deliberation could be a good thing in a way that leads the group as a whole to know even more, and to do even better, than its best member does. It might elicit perspectives and information and thus allow the entire group to make an excellent judgment.
Suppose that many group members give answers that are worse than random. If so other group members can show them how they have erred. If a government has exaggerated a threat from another country, underestimated the risk of a hurricane, or misunderstood the will of the public, perhaps deliberation will correct their mistakes.
When the president of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe tried to hide the fact that cholera was killing his own people, deliberation exposed him.
Deliberation could also be deceptive in a way of distorting the truth. Some of the well known short sellers in the stock market used this approach to run false rumors on a specific company and profit from the decline of the company’s stock.
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