Left to its own devices, the mob will augment, accessorize, spam, degrade and noisify whatever they have access to, until it loses beauty and function and becomes something else.
And…
It seems democratic and non-elitist to set it and forget it and let the users take over. But the tools we use (Wikipedia) and the brands we covet (Nike or Ducati) resolutely refuse to become democracies.
I love Seth’s Blog and often find inspiration there, and I agree with his stance against design by committee. But I would contest that Wikipedia represents one of the best uses of “the mob” — not to design, but to crowdsource the aggregation and editing of content. It seems like the issues here need to be disentangled.
Or maybe I’m missing the point… what do you think?
