Games, Psychology and the Benevolent Mob or The Myth of the Cognitive Surplus

The appeal of crowdsourcing is obvious. The idea that almost any task can be entrusted to a self-organized community of volunteers or outsourced to engaged, enthusiastic individual workers is a revelation for the business community. The ramifications for the individuals, who will have the opportunity to translate what they love into something that is both marketable and beneficial to others, could be groundbreaking.

Clay Shirky articulates a vision of crowdsourcing that looks like a true information age revelation: social software (the applications that enable online collaboration) will extract the last bit of value from a combination of human passion and online interaction. Shirky recently discussed the idea that there is a "cognitive surplus." This is the idea that "top-down" media - media without an interactive component - does not allow people to exercise their natural impulse to create and contribute to the shared experience. It's too mediated.

Luis von Ahn's idea of "Games with a Purpose"(PDF warning) is not dissimilar. His idea is that we can utilize the idle moments of human leisure as if they were spare computing cycles (much in the way that Folding@Home uses idle Playstation 3s to further cancer research).

One related topic that is not discussed as part of this debate is the increasing ease of access to high-qualtiy educational resources. You can now find PDFs of coursework from MIT, lectures from Berkeley and tens of thousands of free books online - all for free. When combined with Games with a Purpose and crowdsourcing, widespread access to education raises the stakes - the games can become more complex and the crowd grows. It is quite possible these days for professors to teach most first year college courses solely with materials that are freely available to anyone online.

It isn't hard to imagine that crowdsourcing, tied with the ease of disseminating educational materials on the Internet will change the world as we know it. If there is a cognitive surplus, and there are millions (billions?) of would-be problem-solvers, virtual volunteers and altruistic academics out there, then the social web could offer a radical solution to many of the world's problems.

The Myth of the Cognitive Surplus

There's just one problem with this idea: the cognitive surplus isn't going away. In fact, it might be getting bigger. Shirky points out near the end of this video, the technologies underlying this revolution can be used for good or ill. The classic example is a group of young girls who acted as a pro-anorexia support group on a magazine's web forum.

But one thing he doesn't mention is time collectively sunk into watching YouTube videos (the non-educational ones, mostly), looking at LOLcats (although they're cute) or wading through the endless noise of most social networking sites (Twitter!).

It's easy to want self-organizing systems and games with a purpose to make the world a better place. But given a choice between mindless entertainment and something that takes effort (like thinking hard about a problem, learning a new skill, etc.), most people will stick with stupid.

Do I have any evidence of this beyond a few anecdotes? Sure I do.

Item 1: Here is a graph comparing the readership of ReadWriteWeb, a blog that explains exciting new developments in cutting edge online technologies, with that of Valleywag, a blog that explains exciting new developments in the personal lives of people who are somewhat connected to the technology industry.

Item 2: Here is a chart that's enough to make any optimistic humanist shed a tear. This shows visitors to The Hunger Site, a Web site that lets people contribute money to feed the hungry simply by clicking on some ads. But that site's demographics plae in comparison to Pornotube a Web site whose name leaves little the imagination. Notice a trend?

Item3: 4chan, the birthplace of Rickrolling. Need I say more?

Are people inclined to spend their time on activities that benefit us all? Judge for yourself.

So what's the solution? Is there a way to tap the surplus and unleash what many of us believe is the true power of inter-networked technologies?

There is hope much of the contemporary research on happiness has concluded that while we don't always do what makes us happy, effortful tasks are more rewarding in the long term that idle leisure. Also, more crowdsourcing/collaborative endeavors are popping up everyday, so what remains then is to find a way to get people motivated in the right direction.

That's what I hope to explore in my next few posts. These are big topic to handle, so they'll be split up into parts. This is Part 1: The Introduction

Part 1: YouTube and Utility - how the findings of positive, cognitive and behavioral psychology translate into the way we work and play in our daily lives... and how we can use these findings to make a change for the better. Also, an appearance by my cat.

Part 2: Games People Should Play - how integrating games into our everyday lives will make it easier for us to achieve our goals and make even the most menial tasks more enjoyable.

Full disclosure: I haven't had a chance to read "Here Comes Everybody." Instead of that, I've been brushing up on my positive psychology (so you don't have to). I have however, read several of Shirky's Internet Writings and viewed some of his lectures that are available online.

A change of focus or return to form

On this blog I've concentrated thus far on topics that are quite popular.

Web 2.0, social networking, and the like are so popular that they've become passé to blog about. The Semantic Web, virtual worlds and open standards are all getting there. So what is the value of one more voice in the crowd?

If you are blogging simply to contribute your two cents or to weigh in on the topic du jour, then blogging will still hold great value to you. The point of social media, after all, is that it takes our electronic conversations into the realm of mass media that was once occupied by newspapers, radio and television.

But simply because the barrier to entry is lower for blog entries doesn't mean they deserve less thought. Microblogging/lifestreaming is a prime example: such tools facilitate instant communication with friends you'll never meet about things you'd never really care to say in person. Facebook is a communication utility without any utility beyond playing Scrabble. Most social networking blogs end up containing all the news not fit for print. This is what happens when you forget yourself and try to fit in with the mavens of the world-formerly-known-as-Web 2.0.

My expertise with internet technology begins and ends with a Cisco Certified Networking Associate course taken immediately after I graduated from high school. I'm not a member of the blogerati, but like most of them I am a prosumer when it comes to technology on "teh internets."

So from now on i won't be using this blog to weigh in on the newest bright shiny thing that shows up in my own tiny corner of the web. I'll stop talking about FreindFeed and mention Twitter only when forced. I won't try to beat the blogerati to the story anymore, because that only matters if you have pageviews and advertisers. I have neither.

I will, however, be talking about what I love: using technology, research, and insight to point geeks towards goals that might improve all of our lives. This is because I sincerely believe that it will talk an awful lot of time, effort, and a few geeks to save the world. By sticking to what I know, I'll be able to write about what I love. That is something that might not save the world, but it certainly does this geek a world of good.

Things That I Already Thought Of: Update

Over the last year, I've talked about a couple of issues that I thought should be addressed. I've also brought up a few ideas that I was hoping someone would work on. Here's an update:

• Back in January, I said that laser pointers/dazzlers would become a security issue for the airline industry. Exhibits A and B.
• Back in March, I said that if I was a patent troll, I would patent "a system for purchasing goods in virtual worlds." Looks like someone got the memo.
• I also was going to write about the "return of the homepage" some time ago, but... well, I had some stuff to do. Google is trying to make your iGoogle page a one-stop social networking shop, but I think this is kind yawn-inducing news. Social networking features are already built into everything, so why not your personalized Google page? Gmail+Gchat are the most ubiquitous social networking tools that I use, but no one thinks of that stuff as social networking technology (well, almost no one). When you think about it, every site requires an e-mail account to report back to for registration purposes. That's essentially OpenID without the security. Chat is something that everyone uses all the time to communicate with each other. Every social networking site will probably have their own chat client soon, but if the IM clients maintain their trend towards interoperability, the site-based chat will fall out of favor. I'm just waiting for Android to integrate my cell contacts and make things more location-aware. Of course, since you can already add OpenID and OpenSocial to any website, there's essentially nothing keeping someone from giving all of these social networks "the bird" and taking their social graph of the network grid. Just imagine a return to 1997 where everyone had a Geocities page, but this time with their own social networking tie-ins. Try monetizing that.
  

Are Cell Phone Signals the New Lead Paint? (Answer: No)

The meme that cell phone signals cause cancer just doesn't want to die. Despite a lack of a ny consensus among the medical community, many people are convinced that cell phones are the most dangerous thing on the planet.

What's worse, some people are now singling out Wi-Fi signals. A short background: Wi-Fi uses much less energy than your cell phone. What's more, despite being bathed in cell phone signals 24 hours a day, the town of Sebastopol, Calif., decided that Wi-Fi was too dangerous for their city.

I understand that people are concerned about very concerned about their personal health and pollution. However, WI-Fi is really a non-issue when you talk about health problems on a large-scale. Below is a list of some real environmental issues that threaten everyone's health. Perhaps the good people of Sebastopol can look into the subjects below?

• Declining fertility rates caused by pollution, plastics and pesticides. In fact, hormone-mimic agents are disrupting human and animal reproductive systems worldwide. This may not seem like a huge deal, but hormones cause more problems at low levels of exposure than at high levels. When you consider that these agents can be found everywhere from Antarctica to thousands of feet up in the Himalayas, you realize that this is most likely a long-term problem.
• Normal, everyday "safe" plastics may actually cause cancer.
• Unsanitary conditions at factory farms turn out to be great breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant staph or MRSA.
• "Green" ethanol isn't.
  
• Artificial sweeteners such as Splenda don't break down in the environment. While this may not seem like a big deal, but this is another example of introducing persistent agents into the environment without knowing the long-term effects.
• Water pollution is a huge problem that is often glossed over when people talk about environmental problems. From the disappearing salmon in California, to dead zones in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, pollution in aquatic ecosystems worldwide are not only threatening our future food supply, but also our health.
  

There are a lot of good ideas about how to get individuals to reduce their environmental impact. But almost all of these efforts have been directed at reducing energy use, which ties in to global warming.

I suspect that this is because global warming has been an "umbrella issue" that can be used to help address deforestation, fossil fuel use and a large number of other environmental problems. But until people are educated about the long-term repercussions of real environmental problems - and are able to separate the science from the superstition - we won't be able to address environmental problems in a common sense manner.

Coming up next: More Things I Already Thought Of, A Sustainable Approach to Popularity, and Map Porn

Q: Why Do Real People Not Have Time For Social Media? A: Because it's F'ing Boring!

After tonight's episode of South Park, my girlfriend asked me how the internet worked. During my hour-long response to her question (sometime during my naunced description of the Data Transport layer of the OSI Model), I noticed that she had passed out.

This reminded me of a similar experience that occurred while reading a ReadWriteWeb post about how social media bloggers/early adopters were not "real people." They even included some pictures which proved that most people who use social media obsessively have been trapped in little boxes and can only communicate in 140 characters or less (look at the post if you don't understand what I'm saying). The point of the post was essentially this: there are only about 250 that care about the latest social media news (oh wait, that was Scoble). Okay, the point was that social media takes too much time for people to really get involved. Bollocks, I say. Here are the real reasons why real people don't get more deeply involved with social media:

• The technology doesn't have staying power. Despite some people's hopes that the internet will make them effectively immortal, there's a huge amount of turnover among social media companies, let alone technologies. People were talking about blogs going extinct, but what about Twitter? What, you thing that is going to be around in 10 years? I'll go even farther than that: lifestreaming apps are the bad 80's hair of Web 2.0 technology. Five years from now we'll all be like: "Remember when Twitter was cool?"
• Social media isn't new. Social media is a return to the good old days, when content and communication were one in the same. I don't have any more time to explain this, read it here.
• Most of us aren't interesting enough to warrant a 24/7 life stream. Back when cell phones initially became popular, everyone know that one guy who was always on the cell phone. The thing is, there was never anything interesting for them to say. They were just fascinated by the fact that they had a cell phone. This phenomenon accounts for 90% of the posts on Twitter (I refuse to say "tweets").
• Social media isn't about technology. It isn't about content. It's about socializing with your fellow human beings. If all of the above is true, then most people aren't getting it. Our primitive monkey brains make us feel good when we have positive interactions with other people. Great conversations and great experiences are things that technology should be enabling, not inhibiting. When you make it all about the Twitter stream, getting on Techmeme, or getting the latest invites you aren't just making yourself less social. When you focus on the mediated experience, you make your immediate experience less valuable.
  

Who really needs a new version of Firefox?

Nobody, unless you care about web standards. Compliance to standards, incidentally, is rapidly becoming a necessity for every business, even Microsoft.

However, people are becoming more dependent on web services, as well. The only problem is that in order to access applications stored in the cloud, we're currently forced to go through clunky, unsecured browsers. Check out this RWW post on the subject.

Mobile Update - CTIA Edition

One of the biggest eye-openers of this year's CTIA show was the number of smartphones that featured GPS built-in. These days, having a cell phone is a basic safety issue. After the death of James Kim, I saw why people might see GPS devices in a similar light. The Spot Messenger, for instance, was built with wilderness-survival scenarios in mind.

GPS tech seems to be moving from "preferred option" to "necessity" status rather rapidly, as indicated by reports that in the future, GPS will not only decrease aggregate fuel consumption (Treehugger coverage), but also save drivers money on insurance (GPS Obsessed coverage). Apparently, drivers who know where they are going are less anxious when driving - which may lead to fewer accidents.

Other CTIA Stuff

• For the definitive coverage of CTIA 2008, see CNET's microsite.
• For the short version, read this Wall Street Journal story.
• BuddyFinder calls themselves the only free geo-tracking service.
• BlackLine offers... more... geo-tracking. Eh.
  
• One new startup unveiled at CTIA was Wuawee (TechCrunch's coverage here), another social network for your phone. The startup is based in Europe, and allows you to post to other social networks from your phone. For this, you pay the company a monthly fee. This seems a bit redundant to me, because most people have figured out by now that the social network that most people rely on is already contained in their cell phone and e-mail contacts. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that with the greater flexibility of Google's Android OS, there will be several open-source options for social network interoperability over the phone.
• Garmin announced that their new GPS devices will be able to utilize Google Local Search to discover POIs, which is something that really should have been done at least a year ago. Everybody wins, with this. Users get the richness of constantly-updated POIs from a database that can draw on the entire web's resources, while Garmin can focus on keeping the most important real-time data (traffic, road closures, etc.) up to date.
• AT&T launched their "AT&T Navigator" system to help you with your new GPS-enabled phone. No word on how soon before they switch over to Google Maps (c'mon, it's only a matter of time...)

Location-aware and mobile app updates

• Check out Mashable's coverage of Loopt and Sniff, two similar yet different attempts to make phones more social. "Loopt" also describes how I feel after a night of heavy drinking. Sniff uses SMS messages to give you real-time feedback about another person's location, which would save me time when I'm trying to figure out which bar to go to on a Friday night. Loopt seems to have a better interface, integration with AIM, and backing from Verizon.
• Use TwitterLocal to find out who in your area tweets [Mashable]... use Wikinear to find wiki articles about nearby places... use fullscreensearch to find anything anywhere [via GPS Obsessed]. Want to find out why Fire Eagle is so cool, when paired with third-party apps? Read this insightful commentary from the O'Reilly Radar.
  

Finally, read this story in Wired about the dangers of using freely available mobile apps to exercise your democratic rights.

Later today

Later today I'll have a post about what I think is happening with open standards, social networks and mobile/location-aware technology. Also: the return of the homepage.

In the mean time, check out what I'm doing via FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/stephenandrewlynch

Designers Will Save the World - Bikes

Here's an instance of "people power" technologies that have a use outside of hotel lobbies.

Underdeveloped countries have different troubles than you and I. While independent truckers are threatening to strike over high gas problems, one billion people live on less than a dollar a day.

While we're worrying about wealth, others are worrying about food and clean water.

In many places without an abundance of fuel or material goods, biking is the best way to travel. Much of this travel is dedicated towards procuring water or food from sources that could be miles away. So how do you make limited resources go the distance?

Check out these stories:

• One that you may of heard of through a post on my old blog: the tricycle that purifies water as you ride (which still isn't as cool as the Dean Kamen distiller).
  
• One that you probably haven't heard of: engineers from Rowan University attempting to make a pedal-powered grain crusher that will work with a large variety of bikes.

Also, don't forget to check out my previous bike-centric posts.

FF + Twitter: Recent Developments

So, to continue a post from yesterday, how does FriendFeed avoid falling into the same trap as other "walled garden" social networking sites? Also, is Twitter really a mature communication tool (this is for my coworkers, who feel that tweets are part of the "tyrrany of the bored")?

I'll tackle the second question first. Everyone probably knows by now that there are a million ways to follow a conversation on Twitter. For those of you who are out of the loop, you have Quotably (above, coverage) for conversation tracking, hashtags for tagging twitter posts (see Brian Solis' coverage here), twemes for searching said tags and sleek front-end apps like Twirhl to wrap everything in one whole user-friendly package.

But what about FriendFeed, which was essentially a walled garden where you could go to look at (and comment on) social media activity, were limited in your ability to actually free yourself from another more-or-less static social networking website.

Last week, FriendFeed announced that users could send a Twitter reply whenever they used the built-in FF commenting system. This was important because 90% of the activity on FF came from Twitter, as ReadWriteWeb notes.

The maturation of Twitter is not without its potential pitfalls. The service still has lingering questions about its security and ability to handle large amounts of traffic. Also, there are already rumblings that the spam problem that have affected other sites will simply migrate to Twitter.

Not to mention the fact that Twitter itself is becoming a noisier channel as its use becomes more widespread. I was having a recent conversation about Twitter with my dad, and he turned the "If the news is important, it will find me" saying into "If what Robert Scoble says is important, it will find you." I haven't stopped following Robert Scoble, though.

But what about that walled-garden?

Well, now FF is offering an API that has already been introduced to an early version of social rss reader Favor.it. Over time this will lead to more applications that offer greater flexibility

But for now, everyone is predicting that blogs are rapidly becoming a thing of the past (even Bruce Sterling is getting in on the act). However there already seems to be some backlash against this meme.

In the mean time, there will be more and more complaints about having you social graph hosted on sites that you don't control. But API or no, the idea of having all of your social media tied to one place won't happen right away, and besides - the OpenID people have known for years that your identity is more than your social graph.

Until the semantic web community can make FOAF mature (or get anyone to use it on a large scale), we'll all be susceptible to Next Big Thing syndrome whenever someone releases an app that purports to make it easier to manage the distributed you. For instance, Ping.Fm is an app that lets you update your "status" messages across multiple platofrms. Despite the early excitement over Ping.fm, people are rapidly understanding that they want to do more than simply send update. They want to be able to see a global via of social networking activity via an aggregator, while still interacting with the web services that the aggregators are measuring.

Personally, I feel that a big part of the problem with the usability aspect of social networking technology is that we're more-or-less stuck in the browser for everything except chat. That's why I'm excited about the upcoming desktop FF app that TechCrunch and some others have reported. If social networks are really so important, why aren't they integrated into all of my applications?

Once this design issue is sorted out, I predict that more people will follow Scoble's lead and disappear from the blogosphere. Or maybe, just maybe, social networking will lose the geek mystique and become a normal part of everyone's life.

More on OpenSocial vs. Dataportability, why a distributed you (and a distributed Twitter!) is useful, and some stories that actually talk about how geeks could save the world.