Full Circle Associates

Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki are doing a joint online book club of their two books, Blink and The Wisdom of Crowds . They are interested in how to improve the decision making environment. First, there is lots of interesting reading in their posts. Second, it is a very human voiced interchange.

Surowieki hooked me in his first entry with

"You and I are friends, you blurbed my book, and I think Blink is a terrific book. Now let's argue about it."

Gladwell riffs off of him with his opener

"You are quite right to find this format a little strange. Authors don't usually get to discuss their own books, since that (quite rightly) raises the possibility that the discussion will be less than objective. The difference between a book discussion involving outsiders and a book discussion involving the writers themselves is a bit like the difference between Olympic wrestling and pro wrestling. (Then again, pro wrestling is an awful lot more entertaining than Olympic wrestling, so clearly there is something to be said for contests where the outcome is preordained.)"

Yeah, they appear to have carefully crafted their posts (wouldn't you if you were writing on Slate?), but there is this delicious thread of dialog. Very cool.

[via Stephen Downes]