Group Think, Transactive Memory, and Surveillance

Group Think is an odd theory. It refers to when groups are overly cohesive, in the sense that they are hesitant to critique each others weak ideas. Because they are thinking too much about the group and not enough about the task at hand, the results produced are often lacking. The group inadequately analyzes the problem, causing them to limit their solutions. Whenever i think of issues like this one in relation to surveillance, it reminds me of technological dystopias and movies like Equilibrium and the Matrix. In Equilibrium, government groups come up with the solution to eliminate emotion in order to bring peace to the nations. Ideas that come from group think are often smart, but it is usually very easy to spot the problems.
I hope that most of our governmental decisions are produced using transactive memory. Groups that use transactive memory feed off of each other by triggering each others good ideas. They are able to call upon more information in order to form a solution. This makes their solutions better suited for the initial problem. These groups tend to be more dynamic. In terms of surveillance, our government has probably come up with many ways to watch us, without us feeling like were being watched. Though this point can be argued, they have to respect certain lines of privacy and have complied to doing so.