Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
I’m sure I’ll only be one of a few hundred thousand to point out Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, but here goes.
When we think of interfaces between human beings and computers, we usually assume that the human being is the one requesting that a task be completed, and the computer is completing the task and providing the results. What if this process were reversed and a computer program could ask a human being to perform a task and return the results? What if it could coordinate many human beings to perform a task?
There have been many times in the past where I’ve needed a service that could determine the difference between a couple of photographs, or some other type of problem better left in the hands of a person. Now Amazon has created a method anyone to outsource human labor through a completely computer based API. Creepy and fascinating all at the same time.