The Life of Brian: Wisdom of the Crowds

Explains pretty succinctly the concept of the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ / ‘crowd sourcing’ / ‘collaborative projects’.

It’s been difficult trying to sum up the problems with this sharing dynamic, because on the surface it’s a great way of achieving solutions to problems that computers can’t solve. What is clear, without the scaffolding of professional services that support the needs of the community, the community becomes free labour.

Cambrian House and Google Image Labeler are good examples of massaging the talents of an audience in return for value lower than the goals the service provider acquires. With Cambrian House, the goal is to build libraries of code in exchange for shares in prototypes. Google Image Labeler, invented by Luis von Ahn, is a ‘game’ in exchange for adding (valuable) meta-data to the indexing services. Do check out his video presentation about the games.

Meanwhile, Amazons mechanical Turk is far more transparent, as the sheep market demonstrates…

Thanks Rob for provoking me to make the comparison between tLoB and WotC (and for not being an individual, but unique.)