The Internet is one giant, attractive nuisance - productive gaming & spare cycles
I sat down at my computer 2 hours ago to look up something important, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was right now. I have a vague sense that it may be all Chris Anderson’s fault.
I ended up at his Long Tail blog where he has a short post up about "the awesome power of spare cycles" which linked up with my interest in productive gaming.
What killed me wasn’t the blog entry, though, it was the comments which led me to Dr. Luis van Ahn’s site at Carnegie Mellon University. From his site:
Most of my time is spent inventing novel techniques for utilizing the computational abilities (or "cycles") of humans.
Applications of human computation so far include:
CAPTCHA, computer-generated tests that people can pass but that computers can’t.
The ESP Game, in which people playing a fun online game end up labeling images (to improve image searches, to improve access to the web for the blind, etc.)
Phetch and Peekaboom are other games - I spent over an hour playing the latter, and found it surprisingly addictive. Dr. van Ahn reports on his research page that some people play the ESP game in excess of 40 hours per week, and that over a million datapoints have already been generated. :0
A video of his Google Tech Talk on human computation here.
Update: A quick miscellaneous plug for another productive use of "spare cycles" (your computer’s) - - I just started my own Folding @ Home team for the fun of it. There’s a full description here, and the client software can be downloaded here. Reluctant Blogger’s team # is 69530 if you’d like to join.
Update 2: A lazyweb question - there’s a startup (in Palo Alto, I believe) using strategies inspired by MMOG’s to enhance email productivity. I read about it on CNet awhile back, and now I can’t find the link. Update 3: Nevermind ;-) Found it. The company is called Seriosity if any one else is interested.
Papers to follow up and read when I have time:
Games With a Purpose
In IEEE Computer Magazine
Luis von Ahn, Ruoran Liu and Manuel Blum
Improving Accessibility of the Web with a Computer
Game. In ACM CHI Notes 2006
Luis von Ahn, Mihir Kedia and Manuel Blum
How Lazy Cryptographers do AI
In Communications of the ACM, Feb. 2004
Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nick Hopper and John Langford
CAPTCHA: Using Hard AI Problems for Security
In Eurocrypt 2003