Crowd computing: Difference between revisions

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==History==

AnotherAn early example includesis when, at the end of the 18th century, the British Royal Astronomers distributed spreadsheets by mail, asking the crowd to help them create maps of the stars and the seas. It reached its height in the United States during the 1930s, when the government employed hundreds of “human computers” to work on the WPA and the Manhattan Project. The word “computer,” as it applies to our modern-day devices, came directly from these mathematically minded men and women.<ref>Popper, Ben (17 April 2012). "Crowd computing taps artificial intelligence to revolutionize the power of our collective brains". Venture Beat. Retrieved 8 June 2012</ref>

In the late 1800s, a team of British archeologists in Egypt stumbled upon a half million pieces of 2000-year-old papyrus, each with remarkably well-preserved text requiring translation. The pieces were shipped from the desert to Oxford University, where generations of scholars have been working to decipher their writings ever since. After over a hundred years, only about 15 percent of the collection had been completed. These manuscripts contain remarkably significant pieces of history, including the controversial Gospel of Thomas and the lost comedies of Athenian playwright Menander. In 2011, however, the scholars decided to speed up the process by leveraging the cloud. They launched a website, Ancient Lives, with a game that tasks members to translate small bits of the text from home. As of November 2011, users had already provided 4 million transcriptions, helping to identify Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plutarch’s “On the Cleverness of Animals” and much more.<ref>Crowdcomputing.com; http://www.crowdcomputing.com/uses-and-examples-of-crowd-computing</ref>

In 2011, crowd-computing was used to speed up translation of ancient documents first discovered in the late 1800s, by a team of British archeologists in Egypt stumbled-- upon asome half million pieces of 2000-year-old papyrus, each with remarkably well-preserved text requiring translation. The pieces were shipped from the desert to Oxford University, where generations of scholars have been working to decipher their writings ever since. After over a hundred years, only about 15 percent of the collection had been completed. These manuscripts contain remarkably significant pieces of history, including the controversial Gospel of Thomas and the lost comedies of Athenian playwright Menander. In 2011, however, the scholars decided to speed up the process by leveraging the cloud. They launched a website, Ancient Lives, with a game that tasks members to translate small bits of the text from home. As of November 2011, users had already provided 4 million transcriptions, helping to identify Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plutarch’s “On the Cleverness of Animals” and much more.<ref>Crowdcomputing.com; http://www.crowdcomputing.com/uses-and-examples-of-crowd-computing</ref>

Another early example includes when, at the end of the 18th century, the British Royal Astronomers distributed spreadsheets by mail, asking the crowd to help them create maps of the stars and the seas. It reached its height in the United States during the 1930s, when the government employed hundreds of “human computers” to work on the WPA and the Manhattan Project. The word “computer,” as it applies to our modern-day devices, came directly from these mathematically minded men and women.<ref>Popper, Ben (17 April 2012). "Crowd computing taps artificial intelligence to revolutionize the power of our collective brains". Venture Beat. Retrieved 8 June 2012</ref>

An additional early example of crowd computing was the discovery of a gold deposit ___location at the Moribund Red Lake Mine in [[Northern Ontario]]. Using all available data, the company, Goldcorp, Inc. had been unable to identify the ___location of new deposits on their land. In desperation, the CEO put all relevant geological data on the web and created a contest, open to anyone in the world. An obscure firm in Australia used their software and algorithms to crack the puzzle. As a result, the company found an additional 8 million ounces of gold at the mine. The only cost was the nominal [[prize money]] awarded.<ref>Hancock, Denis. (6 Nov. 2008) “The Wisdom of Crowds vs. Uniquely Qualified Minds”. Wikinomics. http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2008/11/06/the-wisdom-of-crowds-vs-uniquely-qualified-minds/</ref>