Oh Lord. Surely that title must cause offense.

Well, just like my "All e-learning must be entirely templated" posting, the title's ironic. Actually, the title should probably be "The dumbness of that small minority of the world's population - mainly confined to parts of northern Europe, North America and other anglo-saxon influenced cultures - that, according to research is untypically individualistic", but I couldn't see it as a good title. And it does have a question mark at the end. (That's a typically British obtuse apology ).

Anyway...reading Kathy Sierra on "The Dumbness of crowds" that I got to via Jay Cross, I was struck by the somewhat combative, almost macho language being used: we have "sharp edges" and "dumbness".

It’s the sharp edges, gaps, and differences in individual knowledge that make the wisdom of crowds work, yet the trendy (and misinterpreted) vision of Web 2.0 is just the opposite–get us all collborating and communicating and conversing all together as one big happy collborating, communicating, conversing thing until our individual differences become superficial.

Then from Jay we have that great compliment: "kick-ass".

Yes - of course creativity and innovation comes from diversity; from people and ideas that don't nestle up cosily together. My guru on this is the brilliant Susanne Justesen who coined the term "Innoversity" a few years back. But it seems to me (as a typically British white, anglo-saxon, middle-aged male) that this kind of language is most likely to be used by folks from a culture that's deeply individualistic and quite enjoys a fight for the sake of it.

The dynamics of collaboration - whether creative, educational or whatever - vary hugely in different cultures. I genuinely (as opposed to rhetorically) wonder whether less individualistic cultures like Indonesians or Brazilians use such "sharp edges" in the same way when they're in creative dialogue. And in how many cultures is kicking someone else's arse a compliment?