When The Internet Is The Boss
by
Randy Mears
In a previous blog article that I posted on this site, I discussed Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. At that time, there were a few examples that I used to explain the point of it, but I don’t think that they were particularly compelling. To me, it was more of a curious science project than a practical option.
Today, while surfing my usual sites, I encountered a much better example; the People-Powered Search. Although the search effort for Jim Gray and his 40 foot yacht was not ultimately successful, it is clear to me the real world potential for tools like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to succeed in brokering such initiatives is not far fetched. With the Internet’s ability to engage vast numbers of willing netizens in real-time, such massive efforts could be quickly undertaken and completed.
One of the lessons of this story is that the concept of using the Internet as a tool to bring the superior visual skills of human brains to bear on particularly thorny "needle in a haystack" visual problems (that are beyond the current capabilities of computers) may soon become a practical mater. It is an approach that places us, as willing participants, at the disposal of the Internet.
The People Powered Search article points out that, besides Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, other players are entering the people assisted Internet game. Some of their examples include ChaCha, Polar Rose and PreFound.
Visual skills are only the beginning; as computers approach human levels of visual skill, opportunities for other superior human skills will likely surface. This "Mechanical Turk" concept may be with us for a very long time.
