A new software tool developed by Amazon, called Mechanical Turk, that allows computing tasks to be farmed out to people over the internet, presents new possibilities in the way we actually collaborate and use machine based systems.
The "original" mechanical turk
"The premise is that humans are vastly superior to computers at tasks such as pattern recognition, so why not let software take advantage of human strengths?".- Peter Cohen, director of the Amazon's Mechanical Turk project.
"A firm called Seriosity (www.seriosity.com/) is working in these kinds of technologies to promote the collective brainpower of the millions of players of online games such as “World of Warcraft”, by getting them to perform small real-world tasks (such as sorting photographs) while playing, and paying them in the game's own currency." - Economist
Instant limitless work-forces? New retribution models? Business chain reduction? What if ...?
