klaus speidel, "crowdsourcing" in the johns hopkins guide to digital media, 2014

8/20/2019 Klaus Speidel, "Crowdsourcing" in the Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, 2014

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The

IohnsHopkin

Guideto

DigitalMedia

Edited

by

Marie-Laure

Ryon

ori

Emerso

and

Benjamin

J.

Robertson



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Cataloging-i -Publ icat ionData

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editedby Marie-LaureRyan,

Lori Ernerson, nd [ ]enjamin

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Robertson.

pagescm

Includesbibl iographical cfèrences nd rndex.

ISBN

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r . Digital nredia. 2. Mass rnedia-

Technological nnovat ions-Socialaspects. L

Ryan,

Marie-[-aure,

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I IL Robertson,Benjamin

J.,

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t di tor of con.rpi lat ion.

IV. Tit le:

Guide to

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i ,r'ading,

Marxist-influenced

critic of communications technologies n general

who has

i..o produced

several mportant works

critiquing informatic

culture, has recently offered

;

rolume

specifically

devoted

o

surveillance technologies,

The

Globalization

of Surveil-

;n;e

(zoro). Also of note is the thoughtful work

of

Jodi

Dean, who

draws on both the

^:onomic and

psychological

aspectsof

critical theory n her interrogation of informational

. rlture tout court and ts twin emphasison privacyand openness Publicity'sSecret, ooz\

i:d

on the culture

ofblogs and blogging

(BlogTheory,

zoto\.

r See

lso BLocs,

poLITIcs

AND NEw MEDIA

?.c-ferences

nd

Further Reading

-

-:

n.

Iodi.

zooz. Publicity's

ecret: ow Technocultureapitalizes

n

Democracy.

thaca,NY:

Cor-

nell

University ress.

-.

2oro.BlogTheory: eedbsck

nd Copturen theCircuits f Drive. ondon:

PolityPress.

.

'er-Whitford,

Nick.1999.

Cyber-Marx: ycles nd Circutts f Strugglen

High-Technologyopttol-

:sm.

Urbana:

University of lllinois Press.

I

.:r-Whitford,

Nick,

and Greig de Peuter. zoo9. Gatnesof

Empire: Global

Games.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

;

::cault,

Michel. zoo3.

SocietyMust Be Defended: ectures t the

College e

York:

Picador.

:

. . -hs.

Christ ian. zoo8.

Routledge.

,

.umbia, David.

zoo9.

Press.

':::dt.

Michael, and Antonio Negri.

zooo.

Empire.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

' : : :kheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. (1944\

ry69.

Dialect ic of Enl ightenment.New York:

Continuum.

- i ih .

Scott .zooz. Cr i t iqueof lnformation.

London:SAGE.

,

.

.,n.David.

2oo7. Surve;llanceStudies:An Overview.London:

Polity Press.

\

.: telart,

Armand. zoro. The Globolization of Surveillance. ondon: Polity

Press.

'.1

sco,

Vincent. zoo5. The Digrtal

Sublime: Myth, Power,and Cyberspoce. ambridge, MA:

MIT

Press.

;

ster,

Mark. l9go. The Mode of Information:

Poststructuralisrn nd SocialContext Chicago:

Univer-

s i ty ofChicago Press.

;

:5ins,

Kevin,

and Frank Webster. 1999. Timesof the Technoculture:

rom

the

nformation Society o

the Virtual Life. London: Routledge.

Caprtahsmand Video

France, g75-76. New

Internet and Society:

Socia l

Theory in the

lnformation Age.

London:

The Cultural Logic of Computotion.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Crowdsourcing

Kaus-Peter

Speid.el

The

term crowdsourcing

as

coined

by

|eff

Howe (zoo6)

in an article

:'rblished by

Wired. While Howe

chose the term

polemically,

associating

t with

"out-

.rurcing" and the idea of cheap labor, it rapidly became the standard designation for

..rtiatives

where large groups

of

people

execute asks that are traditionally performed

by

i:-l ndividual

or a small team, often

with

a high level of

expertise.

As

this definition im-

:.res,

crowdsourcing is not limited to specif ic fields,

and the openness of the definition

::av

be one reason or the tremendous

success fthe conceptand

practice

n recent years.

Another reason s

the

fact

that

it perfectly

connects o the contemporary myth of the

;.rç

in

a

garage,

he

lonely

nventor, the underdog

or

nerd, who

accomplishes

great

hings



l04

Crowdsourcing

through

genius

and hard work alone. As a matter of

fact,

one of crowdsourcing's n:àrt

promises

is its radical

egalitarianism:

you and I

can

take

part

in a crowdsourcing ir.:'r

tive, and our contributions will be

judged

without distinction of

person,

origin, train::g

and credentials. In crowdsourcing at

its

purest

single transactions of specific

solutr,:'r

replace eputation-based ecruitment and

partnerships.

Narrativesplay an important part in the fantasies hat surround crowdsourcing. r

Goldcorp Challenge,

nitiated

by

a Canadian mining

company

that

wanted

to find r,l

goid in

an old

mine

but didn't

know where

to

look, is

one of the cases hat made cror,3

sourcing famous. In zooo, Goldcorp's CEO Rob McEwen decided to take a very rad:.r

step: he company releaseda large amount of data about the Redlake mine on the In:e:

net and offered to distribute a total reward of

$575,ooo

among those who

would poin:

::

the right spots to dig for

gold.

This

openness

is

typical of companies that use crouc

sourcing. The methodology opposes raditional models of corporatemanagement, ba-:

on secrecyand in-house research. t therefore contributes to the

positive

image of

p::-

gressive

and open organizations,

and

many

competitions are

n

fact

paid for

by corpora:t

marketing. In other words, some companies are more interested in

the

"buzz"

of

ti t

event

than the

actual

results, which

are then never implemented. This was not Goic

corp's case.

The

company

had taken

a

risk

and

was rewarded:

driliing

in four

of the fir:

spots ndicated by the winners, Goldcorp was able to find more than

$r

billion worth c

gold.

Its cost

per

ounce went down from

$16o

in 1996 to

$59

n zoor (seeTischler zoo:.

Cases ike this, the Netflix

Challenge

with its

award of

$r

million,

or

NASA's

SpaceGlorr

Challenge, where two engineers solveda

probiem

a

large team of NASA researchers

ac

been stuck with for years,explainwhy crowdsourcing s strchafascinandum.lts advantas

for those who

launch an initiative is clear too: they

access

arious

original

ideas

or

poten

tial solutions, many ofwhich approach heir

question

from new perspectives. n the

end

they only

pay

or what they find most usefui.

Organizing

its

Centennial Challenges,NA SA

has been using the approach

since

zoo5,

offering about

$ro

million per year in

rewar

money.

But

while

the

great

stories make for great

press,

he fact is

that crowdsourcing nou

happens on

a daily basis, and the

micropayments

for simple tasks like those

performed

on Amazon Mechanical Turk probably

add up to more than those

paid

for the

big

ideas

Goldcorp's CEO McEwen had

been directly

inspired

by the

way

the Linux open-sourc

operating system had been built by a large community of

contributors

(see rnrr

aro

opEN-souRcEsorrwenr) . In fact, Wikipedia seewrxr wRrrrNc);

Threadless,

hich

sells T-shirts that have

been designed by its users; istockphoto, where

anyone can offer

royalty-free photographs

for sale; and

Quirky,

where new products

can be designed by

anybody,

are other

famous

examplesofconstant crowdsourcing. It

could even be argued

that

Google's ranking for websites s based on (implicit)

crowdsourcing:

people's

click

and link behavior see rNrrNc

srnrrrcrrs) showsGooglewhich websites re on tar

get for certain keywords.

One ofcrowdsourcing's recent

applicationshas been the funding ofprojects

such ar

movie,

album, or website

production.

Through

crowdfunding a start-up can now do with

out an

investment

firm, and a band doesn't need

a

record abel

any more. With less com

mercial

pressure,

his method has

been

hailed

as truly liberating. Anyone

can submit ;

project

and find the funds. Crowdfunding

democratizes

unding where

crowdsourcin6



There are now multiple

models and intermediaries that

act

as agents

between solution

seekersand

problem

solvers n a

variety

offields.

They replace

he trust that was needed n

:nditional partnerships

and help to solve the

predicament

that is linked to selling ideas: as

bng

as

you

don't

precisely

know what I have to offer,

you

can't

pay

me, because

you

don't

inow

if it really is a solution. But once I reveal my solution,

you

don't

have

any

incentive

to

F)' me anymore. Where the traditional model was based on trust and reputation and

:irus

only very few people had

access

o the most pressing

problems

of large organiza-

:rons,

a

gifted

student can

now

see

many

of them, submit solutions, and earn tens

rithousands

ofdollars. In innovation studies, crowdsourcing has been recognized as a

rav

to increase serendipity, the chance to find a solution where

you

wouldn't have looked

:or

it, and lateral thinking, approaching a

problem

from a new

perspective.

Open access

:o

challenges

requently leads to very

creative solution approaches. n the Netflix Chal-

.rnge,

an

unemployed

psychologist

from London

was

first able to

get

to results that most

tams from

the world's top universities hadn't been able o achieve Ellenberg zoo8).

While

copywriting,

proofreading,

marketing, and R &

D

are

now

crowdsourced, not

crcrything is really as golden as the famous success stories make it

seem.

In many cases,

'-heonly

reward

for a contribution

is the

pleasure

of

participating

in

something

valuable.

Some companies offer

recognition

or a

visit

to the factory. When

participants

earn money

:or

their winning proposals, fees

usually

remain

much lower than the ones agreed on

in

-ditional

contracts. With services

like Amazon Mechanical Turk

or Crowdcloud.

where

Fople,

often in low-income countries,

get paid

in

pennies

to accomplish small simple

zsks,

the

link

to outsourcing

is

clear again.

The fact that high-level crowdsourcing is

crongly linked to competition makes it precarious. After all, you never know if you will

rrn.

The

relatively low

rewards

common,

for

example,

in

design

are

possible

because of

:æ

intrinsic

motivation of any contestant trying

to win

a competition, the truly

global

=.:rket

achieved through the Internet, and the fact that many experts don't rely on the

:ornpetitions

to earn

a living. Fractal Graphics and Taylor Wall & Associates say that win-

::ng

the

Goldcorp

Challenge only covered the cost of their

submission.

The major value

qs

the

boost

in

their

reputations. While there are sometimes high monetary rewards

b(

R & D

challenges, the

winner

usually

takes it

all and other

participants

have

worked

ær

free. When Netflix offered to

pay

$r

million to anyone

who would achieve

an

increase

i

over ro

percent

in the reliability of Netflix's movie suggestions ("You Iiked Avatar? You

ùould

watch eXistenZ too"l, Netflix

got

to see the solution approaches of so many

high-

ael

researchers that the

price paid per

PhD who worked on the

precious

algorithm

çcmed

insignificant (see

rcon rrn u).

r See lso

coLLEcrIvE

INTELLIGENcE, MERGENcE

Tjcrences

ond Further Reading

ilnberg,

fordan.

zoo8.

"This

Psychologist ight Outsmart he

Math Brains

Competing

or the

\etflixPrize." Wired16.o3. ww.wired.com/techbiz/medialmagazinel16-o3/mf-netflix.

-:re.

Jeff

zoo6.

"The

Riseof Crowdsourcing."

Wired

4.o6.

www.wired.com/wired/archive/r4

c6/crowds.html.

-.

2oo8. Crowdsourcing:

hy the

Powerof

the

Crowd

s Driving the

Futureof Businass. ew

York:

ThreeRiversPress.

Ilrrns.

pxuf

,

ed.

zorr. A

Guide

o Open nnovationand Crowdsourcing:

dvicefromLeodingExperts.

London: oganPage.

lo5

Crowdsourcing

klaus speidel, "crowdsourcing" in the johns hopkins guide to digital media, 2014

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