Collective Intelligence is described here as a tool to be harnessed, since crowds can also have negative or difficult characteristics in most other contexts and are generally not preferred to deal with "directly".  The formed collective can almost be thought of as a almost a distinct individual or expert according to Watkins.  Prediction markets here are examined as "sophistocated aggregation tools" bringing together communities of self-selected individuals who already perhaps have an emotional investment in the issues.  Watkins is also concerned with issues of trust and how to cultivate public trust in collective intelligence as a reliable source of information.

    Watkins touches on the characteristics of particular communities and the individuals who are drawn to prediction markets, an area that I plan on focusing on more intesively through the study of forums and demographic data on each of the particular sites.  In additon, the notion of trusting this collective prediction over that of the experts interacts interestingly with Surowiecki's theory that they experts often partake in the predicting.