Can Bloggers Save The World?

[Cramulus]

When you think about the comments posted on youtube, it doesn't seem like these are the people who are going to save the world. However, new research hints at the potential power represented by crowdsourcing.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=problem-solved-tic-tac-toe-blog

In a blog post in January 2009, Gowers asked whether spontaneous online collaborations could crack hard mathematical problems—and if they could do so in the open, laying the creative process out for the world to see. Web-based scientific collaborations and even "crowdsourcing" are now common, but this one would be different. In typical online collaborations, scientists each perform a small amount of research that contributes to a larger project, Gowers pointed out. In some cases, citizen-scientists such as bird-watchers or amateur astronomers collectively can make significant contributions. "What about the solving of a problem that does not naturally split up into a vast number of subtasks?" he asked. Could such a problem be solved by the readers of his blog—simply by posting comments?...

The project took off a lot faster than Gowers expected. Within six weeks, he announced a solution. Turning the proof into a conventional paper took longer, especially because the argument was scattered across hundreds of comments (blogs may not be the ideal platform, and ad-hoc collaboration tools may turn out to be better suited for math). But last October the group posted a paper on the online repository arxiv.org under the name of D.H.J. Polymath, where the initials are a reference to the problem itself...

Rafael Núñez, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied the mental and social process of doing mathematics, points out that problem solving is just another human activity. When mathematicians work together in front of a blackboard, they communicate in subtle ways with their voice and body language, clues that will be lost in online collaborations. But mathematicians will adjust to the new medium, just like people have adjusted to doing all kinds of other things in a connected world, Núñez notes: "Anything we do online is different, not just mathematics."

In the end, the open nature of the project may have been its most important feature. As Gowers wrote on his blog, Polymath may be "the first fully documented account of how a serious [math] research problem was solved, complete with false starts, dead ends, etcetera." Or, as Tao puts it, the project was valuable because it showed "an example of how the sausage is made."

This is an innovative example of how to harness the power of crowdsourcing to solve complex problems.

A few people are thinking very creatively about how this resource could be deployed to solve more relevant problems. For example, there are a few Alternate Reality Games which use this same principle -- http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99240-ARG-Designer-Believes-Online-Gaming-Can-Save-the-World

For example, in Superstruct, players propose solutions to the problems which threaten the world in 2019.

Evoke is another game, run by the World Bank. PlayThisThing describes it as "a World Bank-funded game set in 2020, when ecocatastrophes of various kinds are in progress. Ostensibly, its purpose is to crowdsource solutions to global problems, with 'winners' appearing at a World Bank event later this year to pitch their 'solutions.' It's not much of a game qua game; unlike traditional ARGs, there's no prescripted solution to puzzles, so it's more a chatterblog about global issues, which is mildly interesting in its own right, of course."

The idea that an ARG might save the world is perhaps a bit far fetched. Katharine Neal's satirical response to this concept is her own game, called Invoke, which is basically just a comic which pokes fun at this concept.

[Hoser McRhizzy]

Apologies in advance.  It's crunch-time paper-wise and I'm just venting.  DHJ Polymath's sausage project is fascinating, and I'm honestly looking forward to checking out the links in your post later this week.  Thanks for putting them together.  That being said

[dystopia]
Paper topic:  Academians formerly obsessed with developing overly individualistic professional identities predicated on intellectual property and peer recognition to further their careers rediscover network collaboration and a hacker's ethic. Also, MIT offers all its syllabi online.  The ivory tower explodes. 

Result: Paper author becomes a recognized expert in the 'new and developing field of ICT media collaboration,' gets tenure, writes the new rules of method, standardizes a canon of literature and is proclaimed the Durkheim of Social Media.  50 years of commentary papers later, marketers are still the only people who ever read the original paper.
[/dystopia]

[Hoser McRhizzy]

When you think about the comments posted on youtube, it doesn't seem like these are the people who are going to save the world. However, new research hints at the potential power represented by crowdsourcing...

This is an innovative example of how to harness the power of crowdsourcing to solve complex problems...

Thanks again for linking to the Polymath project.  It was brilliant!  Excellent that they went ahead and wrote the paper together.

And I LOVE Neil's comic.  [Unimportant personal information:  I was in a class a few years back that sounds a little like the people in her strip (including the prof), and reading her stuff was a bit cathartic.  It wasn't polysci or world issues -- it was a pop culture class.]


'Crowd sourcing' sounds like brainstorming with a group of people and being transparent about the fuckups you made along the way.  Thinking there's a difference I'm not seeing...

Maybe I just dislike the term and that's getting in the way of me 'getting it.'  It feels like it's doing the same kind of work as words like 'pro-sumer.' 


(note to mesalf - any post that starts with 'apologies in advance' shouldn't be posted.)

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The answer is no. Bloggers cannot save the world. However, as is  true throughout history and especially after the invention of the "post office", collaboration will help to solve many important problems and make life better and more interesting for many people. The internet is a tool which assists collaboration, therefore it will be useful.

You're welcome.

[Cramulus]

crowd sourcing is like brainstorming on a larger scale.  Brainstorming is generally used to rapidly generate ideas - crowdsourcing is more flexible and can be more collaborative.

For example: who wrote wikipedia? A crowd of people did. Who makes sure it's accurate? the same crowd of people.


crowds can solve problems that individuals cannot.

like, guess how many jelly beans are in this jar.

All the individuals who guess will probably be wrong. But if you average everybody's answers, the result is surprisingly accurate.

[Triple Zero]

But that's not all of the result! Apart from a surprisingly accurate estimate of the amount of jellybeans, you will also get a surprisingly tasteless shoop of things that should not be done with jellybeans and/or jars, as well as (on average) 2.3 new memes.

[Cramulus]

also you will be called a fag 11,000 times

[Hoser McRhizzy]

crowd sourcing is like brainstorming on a larger scale.  Brainstorming is generally used to rapidly generate ideas - crowdsourcing is more flexible and can be more collaborative.

Figured it meant Collaboration... On the Internet!, but thought I must be missing something.  Thanks for taking the time to clear that up.    (lol @ "post office"...)

But that's not all of the result! Apart from a surprisingly accurate estimate of the amount of jellybeans, you will also get a surprisingly tasteless shoop of things that should not be done with jellybeans and/or jars, as well as (on average) 2.3 new memes.

  And at least one forum devoted to coordinating a jellybeanphilia convention.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

ReCaptcha actually helps restore mangled book text using crowdsourcing. Very cool shit that is not necessarily restricted to amateur scientists.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Maybe I just dislike the term and that's getting in the way of me 'getting it.'  It feels like it's doing the same kind of work as words like 'pro-sumer.' 

Any good idea that has been given a catchy moniker will be marketed as a panacea, derided as useless, oversimplified, overcomplicated, claimed as innovative, claimed as derivative, hyped, hated, and abused by people who don't know what it means in order to sell cat food. It's, unfortunately, how these things work. Making new terms probably won't help.