Has This Book Sparked Your Interest?
If any of this has sparked your interest, and you want to use crowdsourcing to reach a potentially positive future for humanity, here are some steps you can take to now make it happen:
Advanced Robotics as an Always On Workforce Build a website that allows people to log-in and bid for tasks to be completed. Then, buy a telepresence-robot (add a robotic-arm if you’re ambitious), and program it to allow it to be controlled by anyone who passes certain tests that you create.
Add a payment system, and now you have a highly capable robot that can do your bidding!
Then tell the press about it so that others can copy your system!
((I did something similar once (A few years ago, I bought a simple telepresence robot to act as an intern for my start-up), but the technical details proved to be too great of a challenge for me. I only got it to work for a handful of people. But, it was fun all the same.))
- Eliminate Want and Need, and Push Progress Forward with Amply Funded Open-Innovation Projects
Build a microtasking platform that functions as a crowdfunding platform (easier said than done…I know because I tried this too.)
Then hold open-innovation contests with the money you raise. Make it a requirement that all ideas generated on the platform become de-facto open-source!
- Using Social-Search to Make-Up for the Lack of Super-Smart AI (i.e., be brilliant all the time…)
Create a live-video streaming-service that matches people based on questions, answers, expertise, and interest. It must be a ‘real-time’ service. Also, work with companies that have ‘smart-glasses’ to create apps that do the same thing.
This could potentially still work with smartphones, but it would be much less popular / useful.
- Plug-In and Un-Plug At-will with VR and AR (make flex work the norm)
Start microtasking… Use microtasking websites to request tasks and to do tasks. Also, start using VR! Any VR you can get your hands on!
Then, once you understand both worlds, ask microtasking companies (write them) to build apps for VR. If you’re really ambitious, try building your own service.
- Give Big-Data a Big-Push to Help Build Better AI Faster
Find companies and nonprofits that are using crowd-input to improve AI and other algorithms, then volunteer to help them! Google the word ‘microvolunteering’ to get started.
Practical Tips for People Serious About This Stuff
Since these things are hard to build from scratch, familiarize yourself with API’s and web-site builders. Some website-builders (a very small handful) today have more functionality than ever before. You can even create relational-database driven websites typical of crowdsourcing platforms…
(Some custom code might be required, so it doesn’t hurt to learn some Javascript (or hire a dev)! Also, community-college web development or content-management system classes (like Wordpress) are a great start.)
If You’re in the Crowdsourcing Business: Try Something Different…
Play around with VR. Think about solving poverty with your service-solution. Research the ‘social-search’ / Q & A field. Try to mix and match crowdsourcing services from microtasking, social-search, crowdfunding, and open-innovation.
Just try something different! The crowdsourcing field is still ripe for discoveries of all kinds…
Get Educated
Find a list of current crowdsourcing platforms and resources. Research them deeply, and learn what it’s like to participate in different types of crowdsourcing.
Conclusion
So, there you have it.
This is my insight into some possible futures from my perspective as a crowdsourcing expert and a futurist. But, wait! Didn’t I say this was all leading to the technological singularity?
Yep, sure did.
Well, ok. Wait then… Here’s the connection:
Keep in mind, what I’ve been suggesting and describing can also be thought of as leading up to a kind of hive-mind, a collective swarm of intelligence that is strategically buzzing around the internet to solve humanity’s problems..
But, think about the end-game of that. It’s only a hive-mind for a moment…
A well functioning human task-routing machine will lead to high-functioning AI very quickly. A strong crowdsourcing-community is a problem-solving machine, and it will solve almost any problem…. And, that means it will also solve the problems of technology at a faster rate. It’s all connected; it can’t not be.
And, while that may lead to an ‘absurd-ularity’, as I suggested in the introduction, at least a human-powered one might be preferable to a robot take-over!
Before that though, Cheers! Here’s to techno-utopia…