I’ve long been a believer in H. L. Mencken’s famous adage, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” It’s amazing how gullible, short-sighted, and downright wrong we can be on any number of issues. And yet … and yet: it’s amazing to see the degree of common sense exhibited by the American people in polls about any of the key issues or crises of the day. Collectively, people seem to know when they’re being lied to by their leaders, and they seem to be able to sort out the really important issues from the trivial ones — though they’ll still spend their time watching American Idol rather than a serious documentary about global warming.

And it turns out that there’s some scientific evidence that groups of people are better than individuals in many areas of estimating and decision-making. A fascinating book called The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki, has example after example of carefully-run experiments demonstrating that groups of people did far better than the average individual, when given various problem-solving exercises. Surowiecki coins the phrase “wise crowds,” and suggests that in order to achieve such collective wisdom, groups (crowds) of people need four things: (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. And what better mechanism for achieving these criteria than the Internet?

And now there’s a mechanism on the Internet attempting do just that: tapping into the wisdom of crowds. The esteemed Financial Times has created a Web site called “Future Monitor,” whose mission is to “identify the trends that will matter most in two years, through a global sensing network.” Through a combination of polls, surveys, discussion forums, and other mechanisms, Future Monitor will address a number of timely, relevant questions. Here’s one that will interest many bloggers and Internet afficionados: “New business models based on Internet 2.0—global wireless internet that continuously connects people, objects and machines—will disrupt which industry most?”

Everyone has an opinion about such a question; and we often turn to well-known pundits and gurus for answers, for we assume that they know better than we. But as it turns out, Future Monitor has polled the collective intelligence of its members, and the results are as follows:

• Advertising: 27%
• Computers: 3%
• Home electronics: 20%
• Publishing: 23%
• Telecom: 20%
• Travel: 7%

You have to register to join in the Future Monitor discussions, but it’s free and relatively painless. It looks like an enormously useful resource to me, and I’ve now put the URL up on my bookmarks toolbar.