Introduction: Ubiquitous Human Computing :: The Future of the Internet

Introduction: Ubiquitous Human Computing

November 10th, 2009 | by elisabeth | Published in Future of the Internet, ubicomp | 7 Comments

Those of you who follow Professor Zittrain’s work know that he’s been writing and thinking about ubiquitous human computing for the last several months. Another name for it might be distributed human computing: the phenomenon of disaggregating a task into component pieces and then parceling them out around the world. Perhaps the best-known example is Amazon Mechanical Turk, where simple tasks that cannot be done by a computer—for example, labeling images—are outsourced to anyone with an internet connection for 1 or 2 cents apiece. All the way at the other end of the scale, a company might pay $20,000 to anyone who can synthesize a certain kind of molecule. In between, a small company might offer hundreds of dollars for someone to design its website. (The US House of Representatives—not exactly a small company—recently paid $1500 for that service.)

If you’re interested in some preliminary musings on the subject, you can find Prof. Zittrain’s short paper here and a video here. This blog will start covering ubiquitous computing more in the next few months—collecting examples of the phenomenon, evaluating potential areas of concern, and pointing out times when ubicomp does well.

To start off on a good note, here’s a great example of a company taking advantage of ubicomp’s strengths: CrowdFlower.com is a site that uses Amazon Mechanical Turk’s technology to create work for refugees in Africa. AMT, as noted, allows companies to parcel out tasks that are simple but can’t be done by a computer. One problem with AMT is that it’s hard to check answers for quality; people may not understand the task, may not speak the language well, or may just blow through the task to rack up the payment. There are different strategies for dealing with the problem; this article, for instance, describes how to design certain types of tasks for maximum effectiveness. What Crowdflower does instead is charge a premium to have independent users double-check the work.

CrowdFlower has started a project called GiveWork. CrowdFlower employees train refugees in Africa to do AMT tasks. iPhone users who have downloaded a free app can then donate a minute or two to double-check the work. (In fact, AMT users frequently say that they’re doing tasks not solely for the money, but because the tasks are easy and amusing, like solitaire. CrowdFlower pushes that angle to iPhone users.) Once the iPhone user has approved the work, it’s sent off the the company that requested it, and the refugee is paid. You can check out more details on CrowdFlower’s website.

This is cool: it gets real work in the hands of people who can complete it and for whom the money is desperately important. There are plenty of things to worry about with ubicomp—labor standards, the disaffection that comes with assembly line work, doing a piece of a task without being able to evaluate the moral valence of the whole—but the potential should be nourished.

—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer

Responses

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Saqib Ali says:

November 10th, 2009 at 5:16 pm (#)

For reader who are new to the concept of Mechanical Turk, check out http://www.thesheepmarket.com/ .

TheSheepMarket.com is a collection of 10,000 sheep made by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Workers were paid $0.02 to “draw a sheep facing to the left.”
Ian Brown says:

November 10th, 2009 at 6:08 pm (#)

Calling it ubicomp is confusing – that term has been used as a synonym for pervasive computing for many years now.
Ubiquitous Human Computing « Sapientia et Doctrina says:

November 10th, 2009 at 9:45 pm (#)

[...] Read more .. .. [...]
Seth Finkelstein says:

November 10th, 2009 at 10:41 pm (#)

I like the focus on this topic, and the intellectual leadership that can come out of the work. It’s great to have someone of this stature talking about the issues and thus providing the validation for others to discuss them. I desperately hope it doesn’t turn into apologism for digital sharecropping and electronic sweatshops. But the initial material is encouraging.
Saqib Ali says:

November 11th, 2009 at 2:38 pm (#)

No wikipedia artikle on Ubiquitous Human Computing??? So I started one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_Human_Computing

I will add more content soon…….
InfoBore 88 « ubiwar | conflict in n dimensions says:

November 14th, 2009 at 5:46 pm (#)

[...] Introduction: Ubiquitous Human Computing – The Future of the Internet Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Homeland Security Names New Cybersecurity OfficialsSnowe, Rockefeller Eye Cybersecurity CzarInternational Health News 10/17/2008 This entry was written by Tim Stevens, posted on 14 November 2009 at 23:45, filed under ubiwar and tagged augmented reality, China, cybersecurity, cyberwar, hacking, Iran, radicalisation, social media, surveillance, terrorism, Twitter, virtual worlds, virtuality. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « Ubiwar Interview With Douglas Crescenzi [...]
Citizens of Farmville, petition your (real) representatives! :: The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It says:

December 28th, 2009 at 9:16 am (#)

[...] worries about ubiquitous human computing*—summarized in this earlier post—fall into two broad categories. First, there are potential bad effects on the workers, since [...]

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About Jonathan Zittrain

Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School

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