Peer Production

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Syllabus


April 21

Although the point may seem obvious now, one of the Internet’s most powerful attributes is how it can facilitate the social production of information or computing. From the earliest experiments with dividing memory-intensive tasks amongst different computers, to modern efforts to crowdsource solutions to challenging or urgent problems, peer production is a major benefit from our networked world. And it raises some interesting questions of both Internet control and production theory: How much hierarchy and control is needed to produce? How good is the material that peer production creates? Are there types of things that should not be produced by the crowd? What are the risks to producers and society inherent to peer production?

Joining us this week is Berkman Fellow SJ Klein.


Assignments

Assignment 4 is now due on April 28th, but they will be accepted if turned in today. You can submit your assignment here.

Readings

Development from the edges
Development as a crowd
  • if you’re not familiar, you may want to spend a little time looking at Wikipedia’s entry on Seti@home.
Crowd intelligence

Optional Readings



Videos Watched in Class

Links

Class Discussion

Please remember to sign your postings by adding four tildes (~~~~) to the end of your contribution. This will automatically add your username and the date/time of your post, like so: Andy 15:12, 7 November 2013 (EST)

Hey all, I'm screening the NYT at work this week and came across two articles that I thought would be relevant to share here:

Fighting homelessness with smartphones (a case for why technology has become a basic need): http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/upshot/fighting-homelessness-one-smartphone-at-a-time.html?abt=0002&abg=1

Europe formally challenges Google's dominance in web searches: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/international/european-union-google-antitrust-case.html

Enjoy!

Kelly.wilson (talk)

Thumbs up for Zittrain Video

I usually post quite late, just before class, in case I think of something profound. Today I am posting early, firstly because experience has taught me profundity is unlikely in the hours remaining, and secondly to leave enough time that you might follow my thumbs-up for the Jonathan Zittrain Minds for Sale Video in the Optional Readings section of today’s assignment page. It is a little over 90 minutes, but I wish it were longer. It illuminates many of the questions I wrote in the margins of my notes on the other readings.

I was particularly interested in the discussion about the unusual world we are creating for ourselves as we begin to employ diverse human resources to perform tiny increments of work in return for pennies, points in a game, or nothing at all. Zittrain touches on the many imaginative ways that peer production, including the gamification of peer production, is employed. He asks whether our children will spend their leisure time making a few more dollars on their phones, rather than being a part of real/live activities. It is a fascinating discussion, very well presented.

I highly recommend venturing into this optional reading activity even if you don’t usually go there. If this subject area is at all interesting to you, Zittrain’s video is worthwhile.

Gary Brown (talk) 20:14, 20 April 2015 (EDT)

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