Tag Archives: outsourcing
From millions of tasks to thousands of jobs: Bringing digital work to the developing world
February 1, 2012… disintermediated, meaning that it is not necessary to find employment at a local business process outsourcing company to tap into the market – a web browser is enough. Low labor costs moreover give a competitive advantage to workers from developing countries.
Many microworkers are indeed located in the developing world. According to one survey, 34 percent of workers on AMT are from India. Two other microwork distributors, Samasource and MobileWorks, have workers in countries such as …
Lost in the Virtual Economy? Here’s a map
April 7, 2011… According to Lehdonvirta and Ernkvist, they are in fact distinct: Crowdsourcing entails outsourcing tasks traditionally performed by employees or contractors to a large group of people through the internet. Microwork on the other hand tends to involve breaking the work down to suitably sized microtasks, integrating quality assurance into the process, and recombining the completed microtasks into a final deliverable. This is a view that we certainly share, and a good reminder of how …
Amazon Mechanical Turk, crowd, crowdsourcing, gamesourcing, microtask, microwork, National Library of Finland, Optical character recognition, University of Tokyo, Ville Miettinen, virtual economies, virtual economy, virtual item, work | 3 CommentsFaces in the crowd
April 29, 2010… at least everything you consumed supported a friendly face.
In the modern world, trade and the outsourcing of jobs to other countries is an everyday part of life. Most of our goods are made by faceless millions in China, and the person on the other end of the helpline is more likely to be speaking from New Delhi than next-door. Not everyone likes it, but almost everyone understands it: companies tend to make more money if they move operations to countries where inputs like labor are …
A picture of the world
April 19, 2010… hundreds of Helsinki residents, all working separately to create a single artistic statement.
Outsourcing Art
The man ultimately responsible for this nightmare was artist Antony Gormley. In some of the most inspired artistic delegation since Milli Vanilli, rather than get his own hands dirty, Gormley put an enormous block of clay in a giant tent and invited Helsinki residents to do his work for him.
When I visited, there were about a hundred people busy working on the bizarre …
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 comment← Older posts
