Tag Archives: digital outsourcing
From millions of tasks to thousands of jobs: Bringing digital work to the developing world
February 1, 2012… benefited in some way from the unprecedented access to knowledge and services brought about by the digital revolution. But producing the knowledge banks and services has so far been a predominately rich-country business. The world’s poorest countries have generally not been able to participate in the production side of the digital economy and share in its rewards. This is changing, however, and an initiative lead by the World Bank’s info Dev program is helping to shape the change.
As …
Some work is born digital: from gold farmers to game masters
June 1, 2010… less attention than it perhaps deserves. This aspect is the emergence of work that is “born digital”. “Born digital” is a term originally used to denote products such as books and music that are created directly in digital form, as opposed to being digitized versions of analogue materials. It has also been applied to the generations of consumers who have grown up with digital technology around them. Both are now so ubiquitous that they are hardly worth mentioning. But what is less …
Tags: captcha crowdsourcing digital labor human computation Mechanical Turk richard heeks world of warcraft
captcha, crowdsourcing, digital labor, human computation, Mechanical Turk, richard heeks, world of warcraft | 3 CommentsCrowds against the Machine: will digital workers soon be digitized?
November 18, 2010… images be exactly the kind of microtask you’d expect outfits like ours to distribute to digital workers? If a bunch of robots will soon be able to complete such tasks faster and cheaper, will microtasks become just a footnote in the history of A.I.?
Before we all pack up and donate our office space to cybernetics, it’s worth considering the fundamental premise of distributed microtasks. As most people who read this blog know, microtasks generally fit into a category known as …
We, Robot: A Vision of What’s to Come
December 18, 2009 Share
When I was growing up and spending too much time watching cartoons, I met George Jetson, and Jane (his wife) . When I got to know Rosie, the Jetson’s robot maid (whom they loved and would never replace or upgrade) I became very hopeful for a future free of household chores.
Alas, at the time of writing, I am still without a robotic aide. Although the use of …
Tags: cloud labor collective intelligence computer vision digital outsourcing human computation mass collaboration Mechanical Turk research robotics
cloud labor, collective intelligence, computer vision, digital outsourcing, human computation, mass collaboration, Mechanical Turk, research, robotics | Leave a commentCompany
December 4, 2009… of potential applications growing each day. Distributed work will greatly expand the traditional outsourcing market, and also make it more efficient, flexible and productive. This is because the basic unit of traditional outsourcing is a single employee, while Microtask’s basic unit is only a few seconds of a person’s time.
Microtask concentrates on high volumes of menial, repetitive and boring work. Our service platform automatically splits work assignments into tiny pieces and …
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