The Power Of Crowdsourcing

The Internet is a prime place to gather people together. Sometimes you don’t necessarily need a group of trolls coming together to slam the Yeezy Boost, or unendingly comment on the blue-black-gold-white dress debate. You might wonder why these people don’t crowd together to sort out some of the damages in the world, instead of having collective minds blown by a weasel riding a hummingbird. (Yes that is Dan Bilzerian.)

But you can harness the collective voice for good. We’ve seen the Ice Bucket Challenge bombard our social media and even the £1 Fish Man was lent a viral helping hand releasing an EDM version of his catchy sales pitch.

And it’s not just about virality and pop-culture content. The creative crowdsourcing opportunities of the Internet are endless. Stuck for the ending to your novel? Take a leaf out of the Collabowriters and get the Internet to lend a hand. Can’t bear to sit through another series of The X-Factor? Well contribute to Japan’s post-Britney crowdsourced popstar Hatsune Miku. Crowdsourcing can help fund projects, raise awareness for charities and tap into the best, altruistic side of the web.

But can empathetic good vibes and the Internet run even deeper? There are certain projects that aim to make our crowdsourcing instincts something more, from the charitable to the political.

A project that seeks to combine adventure with charity, altruism with human avatar, is the crowdscourced telepresence experience Omnipresenz. They gained some traction last year during their Indiegogo campaign (although they didn’t reach their target funding). They first described their human avatar project as “a charity system”, where “users will have to possibility to back [an] action immediately, and your avatar will accomplish the mission via live- stream, in an interactive way, and as it happens”. However, now it’s branded as “an online interactive television channel”, where one can experience the world from behind a screen in real-time. Want to run with the bulls? There’s an avatar for that. Wanna jump to a trek through Australia? You can watch that too, experiencing all the noises and visuals the person with the camera does. It takes ‘walk a mile in their shoes’ to a new level.

However, I find these premises give way to a slightly uneasy feeling when it comes to crowdsourcing. One the one hand, the charitable giving is good natured and helpful, but also pressurised and dependent on the participant on the other end of the computer. The tagline for Omnipresenz runs “Be anywhere, Play anyone”. The crowdsourcing works both ways – the viewer essentially controls the filmer, and the viewer needs an unlimited number of filmers to fulfil the promise of Omnipresenz. As interesting and potentially enriching an idea as this is, it’s also kind of creep-inducing and brings a pointedly ethical dimension to crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing has also been utilised in politics too this year, via the UK Pirate Party. They’ve taken to Reddit to crowdsource their political manifesto for 2015. The party ethos is pro-democratic, pro-equality and crowdsourcing lends itself to the idea that everyone has a voice. Arguably, what is seemingly missing from mainstream UK politics is a lack of listening to the common voice. Marching on Parliament elicits scepticism and deafness from politicians; but maybe the open-source nature of this Internet manifesto can combat the voicelessness not being heard induces. Key political issues that have been discussed so far through Reddit include the abolition of nuclear weapons globally, taxes for the super rich, the NHS in public hands and more funding and recognition for mental health patients. As they put it “this policy document is a living, breathing reflection of a truly 21^st century politics – one which aims to make the world better by enhancing participation not by imposing”. You can take a look and contribute here.

The Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon is another example of crowdsourcing done good. Around 600 volunteers in 31 venues around the globe wrote art profiles on Wikipedia for female artists who had been overlooked. This crowdsourcing-within-crowdsourcing sought to right a consistent bias in Wikipedia. Scholar Ximena Gallardo C said on the project “This is the world brain. It’s just starting.”

And indeed, it’s tempting to think that this crowdsourcing, hive-mind mentality is just starting. But crowdsourcing has been around since the 1930s, when Toyota approached the crowd for its first logo and brand name in 1936. Their open call received 27,000 entries. Meanwhile, in 1981, a year after it had launched the first ever Walkman, Sony crowdsourced logo redesigns. They received over 30,000 submissions – but Sony decided that their original logo was best. We think their top three picks were pretty good though (Bruno Grasswill from Australia, we’re lookin at you. Nice curves): 

Of course, there are negatives to this new open-sourced world. Freelance photographers and writers are suddenly up against cheap stock photograph websites or Amazon’s marketplace for jobs Mechanical Turk. As the way we work, interact and fundraise expands, the emphasis should be on collaboration and sharing, not just cheap labour. For designers, writers, illustrators or editors the skills one has are invaluable – but the price charged now has to be inline with the online. Or perhaps you need to think of offering something more, a personalised touch with an emphasis on collaboration.

Overall, though, crowdsourcing offers people a voice and a chance to learn more through accumulative knowledge. The online community can almost take the place of traditional forms of communication. Want to fundraise? Start a Kickstarter. Want to be a pop star? Submit some licks or lyrics to Hatsune Miku. You might even be able to influence politics, through Reddit. As James Surowiecki notes in The Wisdom of Crowds, “Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise”. In disparity we can come to collective understanding. Or just raise enough money to finally see a hoverboard become reality in the 21^st Century.