Tag Archives: employment
Happily ever after: how bored workers and their bosses can benefit from crowdsourcing
February 23, 2012 With its mysterious, often invisible army of workers diligently completing tasks and solving problems, it is understandable that the media sometimes treat crowdsourcing almost like a fairytale industry.
Recently, however, our friends at CrowdControl have begun to tear down our carefully cultivated air of magic and mystery with new research on the demographics of digital …
Tags: business crowd crowdsourcing Digital employment microtask microwork Napster odesk work
business, crowd, crowdsourcing, Digital, employment, microtask, microwork, Napster, odesk, work | Leave a commentFrom millions of tasks to thousands of jobs: Bringing digital work to the developing world
February 1, 2012… world, and its infoDev program got interested in the potential of digital microwork to provide employment to poor people in developing countries. In 2010, I was commissioned by infoDev to co-author a report to assess this and related issues, titled Knowledge Map of the Virtual Economy.
According to the report, microwork has several features that make it particularly accessible to people in developing countries. Most tasks require few skills or qualifications, as they rely on the fact …
I Plead Not Guilty
January 3, 2011
After a holiday season rich in the joys of eating, drinking and general overindulgence, I sometimes feel a tad glum. The obvious cause is my body telling me to ease up on the rich food (I’m convinced the alcohol has nothing to do with it), but for a while now I have suspected another cause.
Rather than food or alcohol, I blame people. Not just any people, I’m talking …
Tags: Charitable organization Christmas Christmas and holiday season crowd crowdsourcing crowdsourcing platform distributed work employment Opportunities Organization Philanthropy Volunteering
Charitable organization, Christmas, Christmas and holiday season, crowd, crowdsourcing, crowdsourcing platform, distributed work, employment, Opportunities, Organization, Philanthropy, Volunteering | 2 CommentsSome work is born digital: from gold farmers to game masters
June 1, 2010… player’s character. Professor Richard Heeks estimates that at one point these tasks provided employment to as many as 400,000 individuals around the world. Every aspect of this work is born digital: it is conducted entirely through digital channels, its fruits are digital, and the demand for it arises from people’s fascination with digital environments and the goals and objectives they provide. In sci-fi author Cory Doctorow’s new novel, gold farmers even organize into labor unions …
captcha, crowdsourcing, digital labor, human computation, Mechanical Turk, richard heeks, world of warcraft | 3 CommentsTaking discrimination to task
May 26, 2010… be performance of the tasks. Even mothers in roles which still require traditional office-based employment will have significantly greater opportunities to pursue new opportunities while raising the kids, which may in turn forge an easier path back into the workforce. Discrimination is not going to disappear overnight, but with some luck the changing nature of work may level the playing field a good deal.
Of course, even if these changes do occur, they are unlikely to feature prominently …
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