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And by way of continuing the conversation from yesterday, Jeff Jarvis wonders if Google ran a restaurant, who would do the cooking?

Besides the silliness of open source restaurants as a concept — technique matters far more than recipe — the NY Times contrasted that notion with the need for efficiency in dining, noting that too many choices killed the Manhattan diner.

But art demands risk and taking a step forward into the unknown.   Asking your customers to make all the choices — which, one might argue, is an artistic choice in and of itself — is not the same thing as crowdsourcing.  For example, Threadless.com has plenty of folks vote on the best designs, but still maintains final creative control on which t-shirts to send into production. 

Even Wikipedia, famed for its “wisdom of crowds,” has become more bookish and patroling than in the past.  Giving an example at a client site, we created a page for their hospital… and then they got banned.   For copyright infringement. 

I think the point of the restaurant was “Can we imagine Google mashups working in a world outside of technology?” 

Sure, go to any jam band or jazz pickup group.  The improvisational talent is found plenty of places.   But if you don’t share a common level of expertise, you can’t play along.

Here’s a look at the view from the MedTouch Cambridge office.  (No reports of snow yet in Houston.)