It seems like lots of people that I read on a regular basis are talking about the problems with groupthink these days. The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Brain Pickings have all had posts about it in the last couple of weeks. I want to write a lengthier post about it soon. For now, here are some questions that this focus on groupthink raises for me:
Why is everyone talking about “group think” lately? Are there underlying motivations for discussing it? What do they mean by groupthink? How do you write it, groupthink or group think? What are the differences between group think and “crowd sourcing”–a la Cathy Davidson’s valuing of it in Now you see it? What is the role of the individual in the creative process? How does/should that individual relate to a group? What are all of these criticisms of groupthink saying about the individual and/vs. the group? What is my creative process? How does groupthink cause problems for group projects? What are some alternatives to group projects? (How) does my dialog assignment speak to and/or reinforce the problems of groupthink?
Okay, enough questions for now. I’m thinking of using the new “aside” format for wordpress to do some “asking question” exercises. This post was my first experiment with it.