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
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.
