full transcript

From the Ted Talk by James Surowiecki: The power and the danger of online crowds

Unscramble the Blue Letters


But there is a dark side to this, and that's what I want to spend the last part of my talk on. One of the things that happens if you spend a lot of time on the Internet, and you spend a lot of time thninikg about the Internet, is that it is very easy to fall in love with the Internet. It is very easy to fall in love with the decreenztiald, bottom-up structure of the Internet. It is very easy to think that neowrkts are necessarily good things — that being linked from one place to another, that being tightly linked in a guorp, is a very good thing. And much of the time it is. But there's also a dnidsowe to this — a kind of dark side, in fact — and that is that the more tightly lnkied we've become to each other, the hdearr it is for each of us to remain independent.

Open Cloze


But there is a dark side to this, and that's what I want to spend the last part of my talk on. One of the things that happens if you spend a lot of time on the Internet, and you spend a lot of time ________ about the Internet, is that it is very easy to fall in love with the Internet. It is very easy to fall in love with the _____________, bottom-up structure of the Internet. It is very easy to think that ________ are necessarily good things — that being linked from one place to another, that being tightly linked in a _____, is a very good thing. And much of the time it is. But there's also a ________ to this — a kind of dark side, in fact — and that is that the more tightly ______ we've become to each other, the ______ it is for each of us to remain independent.

Solution


  1. linked
  2. harder
  3. decentralized
  4. downside
  5. thinking
  6. networks
  7. group

Original Text


But there is a dark side to this, and that's what I want to spend the last part of my talk on. One of the things that happens if you spend a lot of time on the Internet, and you spend a lot of time thinking about the Internet, is that it is very easy to fall in love with the Internet. It is very easy to fall in love with the decentralized, bottom-up structure of the Internet. It is very easy to think that networks are necessarily good things — that being linked from one place to another, that being tightly linked in a group, is a very good thing. And much of the time it is. But there's also a downside to this — a kind of dark side, in fact — and that is that the more tightly linked we've become to each other, the harder it is for each of us to remain independent.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
railroad tracks 3
challenging idea 3
rock pools 2
mainstream media 2
collective intelligence 2
dark side 2
enormous amounts 2
good job 2
positive side 2
tightly linked 2
circular mill 2
ant colony 2


Important Words


  1. dark
  2. decentralized
  3. downside
  4. easy
  5. fact
  6. fall
  7. good
  8. group
  9. harder
  10. independent
  11. internet
  12. kind
  13. linked
  14. lot
  15. love
  16. necessarily
  17. networks
  18. part
  19. place
  20. remain
  21. side
  22. spend
  23. structure
  24. talk
  25. thinking
  26. tightly
  27. time