Death 2.0: Crowdsourcing the rest of your (after)life
September 22nd, 2011 by Tommaso De Benetti
Years before Twitter and Farmville took over our lives, philosophers were worried that computers were changing the nature of human existence. (Yes, I watched The Matrix again on the weekend.) With the rise of social media, this idea has now gone a step further: can computers change what it means to be dead?
A few weeks ago, while watching TED videos to escape the scorching Italian sun (it’s a tough life, I know), I came across this off-beat and slightly creepy talk by Adam Ostrow, Mashable’s Editor in Chief.
Adam’s subject was our online (im)mortality. These days people are constantly uploading stuff: social networking profiles, tweets and even humble blogs. Long-term, this means we’re all creating virtual “life-journals” that will, eventually, outlive us. Unable to ignore this disturbing thought, Adam began to explore the weird and wonderful world of post-mortem posting.
Things to do in cyberspace when you’re dead
One of Adam’s first discoveries was if i die, with the site slogan: write it down, just in case. Basically, it’s an app which lets you compose your own final Facebook status. You give this “ultimate update” to three trusted (non-drinking) friends who post it after you’ve finally gone to the big app store in the sky.
For people who want more order in their afterlives there’s 1000memories, a free site that creates “an online shareable space” where people can publish and discuss photos of departed loved-ones. Or, for military enthusiasts there’s Fold3, which memorializes the lives of soldiers. It’s slogan: Their Lives, Our History (inexplicably Fold3 rejected TechCrunch’s way cooler tagline: a place for dead people).
Ways to tweet forever
Following the “virtual afterlife” meme to its logical conclusion, Adam Ostrow ends his talk by discussing the possibility of converting a person’s entire “online archive” into a kind of immortal social media avatar. This “entity” could continue updating for you even after your physical death. It’s a bizarre but compelling concept and, technologically speaking, could soon be possible. Recently, there have been endless projects combining human and artificial intelligence – could the same thing work here? Imagine the crowd checking machine-produced “beyond the grave” posts to make sure they sound human enough.
Meanwhile, over at MIT, scientists are now designing robots capable of displaying human emotions. How long before we can make them look, walk and talk like our loved ones? I’m personally torn over this idea. On the one hand I could have my own personal Louis C.K-bot doing hilarious routines while washing the dishes. On the other hand, the whole area is so ethically problematic it makes gay marriage in the Vatican look non-controversial. What if someone makes an army of hate-spreading virtual fascists? Or a modern day Romeo becomes obsessed with a simulacra of his dead girlfriend?
Should we go down this route at all? Sci-Fi writers from Isaac Asimov to William Gibson have all struggled with the same question. It’s terrible, freaky and fascinating: exactly the kind of idea that refuses to die. Thoughts anyone? (Remember to think your comments through first: they may just outlive you).
FixMyTransport: keep calm and carry on crowdsourcing
September 19th, 2011 by Ville Miettinen
Public transport. It’s like teenage dating or job interviews – everyone’s got their own personal horror story. The unheated train that broke down in a snowstorm; getting stuck next to “the crazy guy” on a 6 hour bus ride; any journey on the London tube. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for cleaner, greener travel but why is public transport always so square? Where’s the innovation and creativity (or the basic standards of comfort) that goes into private vehicle design? Of course, one day we’ll all plug into the matrix and cruise to work in virtual E-Types. But until then, the unsexy problem of “how to make the trains run on time” will continue to slow down humankind.
For UK citizens however, there may be a little crowdsourced light at the end of the tunnel. FixMyTransport is a site with an ambitious (some might say impossible) mission: to get Britain’s 200-year-old public transport system (ahem) back on track.
A well-trained crowd
FixMyTransport is the latest brainchild from crowdsourcing civic-engagement charity mySociety. Dedicated (or obsessive) readers may remember last year’s blog on FixMyStreet, a mySociety site where users “report, view and discuss local problems” (mostly involving potholes). Apparently, reports on FixMyStreet have led to over 65,000 street repairs (UK personal injury lawyers must be in real trouble).
FixMyTransport is very much FixMyStreet with added wheels. The site’s well-designed, calming interface is part problem-page, part social-network. You can register complaints, gather followers and campaign for new services. Every complaint is made public and automatically forwarded to the relevant transport operator.
Launched in August, “FMT” has already attracted thousands of frustrated and weary travelers. Users range from sensible, to passionate, to just plain bitter. FixMyTransport communications manager, Myfanwy Nixon, explains she always knew demand would be high: “You only have to dip into Twitter during rush hour and search for any of the major transport operators’ names to see a vast outpouring of discontent – we knew that could be channeled more constructively.
Can we fix it? Er, maybe we can
I love a good rant as much as anyone and FixMyTransport is clearly providing much-needed therapy to traumatized commuters. However, the real test will be whether the site actually gets stuff fixed? Will those “big bad” transport operators respond to crowd complaints, or will they dismiss FixMyTransport as online noise? Myfanwy admits there is a danger of creating “more heat than light,” but she also insists: “FixMyTransport isn’t about giving transport operators a bashing. Handled right, it should be a massive opportunity for companies to find out where genuine customer frustrations are”. Here’s hoping.
Other apps like Waze and the (bizarrely named) Tiramisu use crowdsourcing to provide real-time, instant transport information: where the bus is or which roads are busy. FixMyTransport is much more long-term focused. Problems can be reported long after they happen. Campaigns could go on for months or even years. I guess we’ll have to wait and see whether the crowd will stick with FixMyTransport for the long haul.
The FixMyTransport team is apparently eager to expand to other countries. Anyone fancy developing a Finnish version? Maybe we could finally get the Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel built. Now that really would be crowd power in action.
Transfluent: tweeting in tongues
September 14th, 2011 by Ville Miettinen
Extreme stunt group The Dudesons are one of Finland’s biggest exports. These four death-defying maniacs have a long-running, widely-broadcast TV show specializing in stunts so stupidly dangerous they make Jackass look safety-conscious. The Dudesons have many talents (like still being able to move without wheelchairs), but even their biggest fans would admit the guys aren’t exactly “intellectuals”. So recently, followers were surprised and impressed when Dudeson member Jukka Hilden suddenly began to tweet in fluent Spanish. Were the Dudesons secretly sneaking off to night school? Did they accidentally slingshot themselves all the way to Barcelona? Not quite. In fact the group has been taking advantage of a unique new crowdsourced service: Transfluent.
French connections
Transfluent offers near real-time, professional translation of social media feeds and websites. Back in April, we featured a guest post by Transfluent (then called PremiumFanPage) founder Jani Penttinen. More recently, we decided to give Transfluent a try.
First, of course, we had to choose a language to translate to. Apparently, the Dudesons opted for Spanish because they have a large fan-base in Latin America (it’s amazing how eye-watering self-inflicted pain transcends cultural boundaries). In the end, we decided to go with French as it’s widely spoken and because the French often seem less willing to use English than some other Europeans.
The result? All our Twitter content @microtask gets immediately translated and reposted to the French account. Jani explains: “Before Transfluent it was almost impossible to translate Twitter messaging as it required too much work and traditional translation agencies are too slow. Our fast response times are due to crowdsourcing: all our translations are crowdsourced from networks of professional translators.”
Thanks to this linguistically gifted crowd, Microtask can now effortlessly tweet in two languages. C’est magnifique, non?
Breaking the language barrier
Over the last couple of years, the crowdsourced translation of social networking sites has been a major (very well-publicized) success story. Thanks to the efforts of thousands of users, Twitter and Facebook are now available in dozens of languages. However, in Europe at least, the vast majority of people still tweet exclusively in English. As Jani said, this means that “English Twitter is already quite saturated marketplace, but all the other languages have a lot of users but not so much interesting material to follow.”
In this “Twitter vacuum”, well-targeted translation can give companies (and TV stunt-groups) a real social networking boost. Our own experience certainly supports the theory. @microtask_fr has already gained thousands of users. French speakers now make up about 1/3 of our total Twitter following. (Of course, we like to think this is due to our witty, well-articulated tweets, rather than because there’s nothing else worth reading.)
Real-time tweet translation is more than just another crowdsourcing novelty. Potentially, it’s an easy, simple and relatively cheap way for companies to increase their “global web presence”. And as we (and the Dudesons) have discovered while working with Transfluent, everyone appreciates it when you’re tweeting in their language.
And the crowdsourcing award goes to…
September 8th, 2011 by Tommaso De Benetti
These days crowdsourcing is (more or less) an officially recognized industry. We’ve got books, conferences, and even a proper dictionary definition. But, until now, crowdsourcing has lacked one thing that every self-respecting industry needs: a glittering awards ceremony. Luckily, help is near.
This September, crowdsourcing news site The Daily Crowdsource has launched the International Crowdsourcing Excellence (ICE) Awards. As Daily Crowdsource CEO David Bratvold explains: “The crowdsourcing field has begun to attract top talent. The ICE Awards will uncover that talent and Daily Crowdsource is looking forward to honoring these leaders”. So basically it’s like the Oscars, only geekier and without the embarrassing outfits.
Standing out from the crowd
The first round of the ICE awards focuses on “creative crowdsourcing contests”. From now until September 23rd anyone can nominate crowdsourcing champions in the following categories:
- Best All Around Graphic Design
- Best Logo
- Best Ad Design
- Best Album Cover
- Best Project Idea
- Best Product Name
- Best Video
So, if you’ve seen a mind-blowing design or been awed by an ad then get over to the Daily Crowdsource and get nominating. Winners will be announced on September 30th.
Over the coming year, three other forms of crowdsourcing will get their own ICE awards: macrotasks, microtasks and crowdfunding. No prizes for guessing which category we’ll be fighting for…
HS Talkoot: Microtask to the rescue of Finnish media history
September 5th, 2011 by Tommaso De Benetti
Hi there, friends of Microtask! We are pleased to announce the debut of a new Microtask-powered service: HS Talkoot.
Created for Helsingin Sanomat in collaboration with the National Library of Finland, the goal of HS Talkoot is to engage readers and allow them to help with the digital editing of old issues of Päivälehti, the predecessor of Helsingin Sanomat. The material in need of revision includes the whole first month of the historical newspaper (December 1889 – January 1890). All pages have been digitized in advance through automatic text recognition. Unfortunately, OCR software makes lots of mistakes when reading text that has deteriorated or is typed in old fonts. This is where human intelligence (especially our innate ability to understand signs) is needed to set the record straight.
Gamifying media
If this sounds noble but boring, don’t panic. That’s not how we run things. HS Talkoot is structured as an online game. Once you’ve logged in using your Facebook account or email address, you can challenge friends and other players for the highest score in a game against time. Along with a fun game involving the construction of life-saving bridges, it’s your chance to achieve eternal glory, top placement in the charts and the satisfaction of preserving Finnish media history.
HS Talkoot will be open until the end of October. Each week the best player will get a free 6 month subscription to the digital edition of Helsingin Sanomat. Put yourself to the test, for something noble…and fun!
More information on the project is available directly on the HS Talkoot webpage.
Oops, we did it again!
HS Talkoot is our second project correcting digitized old newspapers. Digitalkoot, another gamified project run in collaboration with the National Library of Finland, involved more than 75,000 volunteers over eight months. Overall, 240,000 minutes of non-stop typing (or 5 million microtasks) have been donated for the digitization of old issues of Aamulehti, a popular Finnish newspaper.
