Peer Production: Development from the Edges and from the Crowd

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Syllabus


March 25

Beyond merely providing a forum for political activism, scholars are increasingly aware of the benefits the Internet provides as a mode of production. How can the Internet help us make things together? How much hierarchy and control is needed to produce? How good is the material that peer production creates? And finally, what are the risks to producers (and society) inherent to peer production?

Joining us this week is Rob Faris, the Research Director for the Berkman Center.


Assignments

The deadline for Assignment 3 has moved from March 25th to April 1st. All other deadlines will not change.


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)

Having an extensive background in the social sciences I found the Jerome Hergeaux presentation to be a useful study for sociologists and psychologists alike. A question that came to mind during the presentation was how websites like wikipedia are changing social relationships and forms of gratification. Furthermore do certain groups benefit from these type of platforms more than others? The digital age has proven to be a time of change where "we, the people" feel more and more connected, or at least that's what we believe, but is this statement true across the board for the various socio-economic groups?

Jacqueline Argueta 16:10, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

COMMENTS ON "Jerome Hergeaux, Cooperation in a Peer Production Economy: Experimental Evidence from Wikipedia"

Coming from an operations research background, I find the application of game theoretic approaches to this project rather interesting. However, there are other aspects which were not taken into account. For example, the utility of social recognition derived by contributors to Wikipedia can be obtained at significantly reduced cost and risk compared to other options like authoring a book or publishing a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. Furthermore, the results are immediate so the perceived utility is also immediate.

Ichua 08:40, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

QUALITY OF CONTENT FROM PEER PRODUCTION IN WIKIPEDIA

Because Wikipedia content lacks originality and are mostly copied from other sources, I beg to differ on the usefulness of mentioning contributions to Wikipedia in one's resume. Real scholars would rather contribute to peer-reviewed journals where the benefits are far greater, including promotion and salary increase if working in an academic institution. So while Wikipedia content may be useful to the general public, the quality of the content may not be of high academic value.

Ichua 09:17, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

I think that one of the great examples of Democratizing Innovation are games... A number of highly successful games have been initially created as mods developed by gamers, and later turned into commercial products by the companies whose games were built upon... Some examples off the top of my head include many Half Life/Source engine based multiplayer games, DotA - originally based on Warcraft III, or, outside of video games, the many unofficial rulebooks, expansions and modifications of Dungeons & Dragons or some of the Wizards of the Coast's collectible card games. --Seifip 10:24, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL OPEN COLLABORATION NETWORK

SETi@HOME gave me an idea to enhance air transport safety. The case of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 might have been more clear if air traffic is also being monitored by air control gamers and air traffic control towers can receive alerts, comments, and suggested routings from these gamers in real-time over the internet. For this to be possible, satellite and transponder data from all aircrafts need to be available, also in real-time over the internet, to the gamers. Software programmers can also develop new codes which can analyze traffic patterns or which can make predictions of flight paths based on current and new vectors using the real-time data.

Ichua 11:02, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

PEER PRODUCTION BY AMSAT ENTHUSIASTS OF SECOND INTERNET

When I read how I could access internet for free via the AMSAT satellites, I decided to get the amateur radio license (call sign KC9HKA) while in West Lafayette, IN. I was just curious to find out latest information about AMSAT and found this:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Chaos-Computer-Club-Hackerspace-Global-Grid-SOPA-Protect-IP-Nick-Farr,news-13742.html

Ichua 11:26, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

I will have to look into the AMSAT satellites. Just recently we were discussing an article that appeared in the Daily Mail regarding an "OuterNet."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2552177/Forget-Internet-soon-OUTERNET-Company-plans-beam-free-wi-fi-person-Earth-space.html

The collaboration of people who "tinker" with technology is a fascinating subject. It remains much easier to verify results than from within the academic write-ups. VACYBER 13:23, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

I like this kind of news! I often tell colleagues at my office that "If you can't do it, it is expensive; if you know how to do it, it can be free!" While in the "Optimization in Aerospace Engineering" class as a aeronautical/astronautucal graduate student at Purdue University, I did a project to ascertain the viability of launching low orbit satellites (LEOs). The traditional thinking then was that it is too expensive and rockets typically carry more than a single payload. But calculations showed that it is economically viable to launch single payload of lightweight LEO. Such a project is crucial for education of the poor because the poor have limited or no access to the internet. Ichua 15:04, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

Thus far, most "peer production" has been limited to the entirely digital world. I'm interested in the intersection between peer-production and the emerging technology of 3D printing. It seems to me that most of the things sold on etsy.com could be printed by a 3D printer; there are even technologies emerging that allow printing of electronic circuits (e.g., the Kickstarter EX project). Clothing seems like one of the first things that could be a mass-market success for 3D printing. It seems like there's a huge range of new issues that will emerge, not only in the area of intellectual property but also things like product liability, etc. Once the technology exists on a massive scale at consumer homes, it seems like some of the same things that promote prosocial peer-production behavior, as discussed by the writers/speakers in this section, could unleash even more world-changing innovation once it includes the world of physical goods. Jradoff 14:18, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

The idea that crowd intelligence boosts the wisdom of the whole seems completely intuitive....and yet research does suggest (strongly) that people are more creative/innovative when they work alone. [1] Mind you, it could be that people are individually more creative, and then when they put these individual efforts together, the strength of that innovation is heightened…. And perhaps it's dependant upon what it is that is actually being produced. Twood 15:25, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

What a great article! Thank you for sharing.

I was wondering, when I read your message, if perhaps communicating through the internet is a convergence point whereby people are able to operate and create individually, and then join their individual thoughts, ideas, etc. with a group so that the benefits of both solitude and collaboration are achieved. It begs the question of whether spacial distance allows people to not only be more creative for whatever reason, but to also be stronger in their convictions. By this I mean to suggest that in a group-- especially when a group is physically together-- people are more likely to compromise or go with the most popular opinion, as seen in the famous Milgram experiments (not only the one on authority, but his later experiment in which a subject would be placed with a group who would answer a question incorrectly and the subject would be asked the answer, which was nearly always the incorrect answer). Castille 13:17, 28 March 2014 (EDT)

Peer Production and Crowdsourcing is very effective elements for civil society. It is self-organizing community which proves to be very effective, for example Wikipedia and experience with Red Balloons. PP is very essential for firms and companies. They can benefit from solutions provided by PP for their services and products and etc. But, the main concern is lack of the organizational and legsialtive aspects of these little communities. Can these little communities be relaible wihout proper organizational and legislative support? Let's take Wikipedia as an example. As it is mentioned by one of students, Wikipedia is not considered as relaible source at universities in our coutry. Aysel Ibayeva (Aysel 15:39, 25 March 2014 (EDT))

Democratization of innovation seems to have positive side effects on product development. While far from being ideal for intricate and sophisticated research projects, user innovation benefits the community as a whole especially when the users/innovators share their work freely. This provides an opportunity for other users to improve upon the work thus creating rich opportunities for improvement. This democratization of the creative development segment of the market goes in hand with freely sharing alterations and product innovation. This mutually benefits both manufactures and consumers, as the user knows what they want and need most. SETI@home is a novel idea and an excellent example of using the Internet not just as a social tool, but as way to connect thousands if not even millions of personal computers as a useful tool. The concept of the SETI is to search the universe for “radio transmissions from extraterrestrial intelligence”. By utilizing the down time of millions of computers CPU, the program is able to achieve monumental advancements that previously were possible only from supercomputers. That is similar in a way to the social strategies that the teams employed in the Red Balloon Challenge. MIT won, and by using a pay for information approach, they were able to quickly connect a web of people to help them pinpoint the position of all ten balloons. Even though the other teams did not find all the balloons, their approach to the search is an excellent example of how social networks and group efforts can achieve a far greater number of things than a lone individual could. James Surowiecki brings up an interesting point, that crowds can and normally do perform much better then individuals in making predictions and decisions, but it’s also possible for a large group to do much worse. Emmanuelsurillo 15:51, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

The James Surowiecki reading points to an important issue involving internet and society: the use of crowdsourcing. Increasingly, artists, even major players such as Spike Lee now resort to Kickstarter and other “crowd funding” sites. Arguably, the repercussions from such use are negligible; perhaps bigger names will eclipse up-and-coming artists? Yet, certain forms of crowd sourcing do hold the potential for danger.

For instance, after the horrific Boston Marathon bombings last April, Reddit users perused photos from the event, which, per the sites founder, “fueled online witch hunts.” Redditors pointed to Brown University student Sunil Tripathi. Authorities found Tripathi dead days after the arrest of Dhokhar Tsarnaev, with no cause of death known. But the unnecessary finger pointing led to harassment of Tripathi’s family who had their own grief to contend with. [2]

Perhaps in cases involving criminal investigations it is best to leave sleuthing to the professionals. Yes, citizens can still participate in the process by sharing information with authorities, but sites like Reddit are not the best means with which to do so. Are there instances where online crowd sourcing has turned up successful leads in a criminal investigation?

In a somewhat related story, 90’s grunge icon Courtney Love believes that she discovered the wreckage of MH370. [3] Vance.puchalski 15:54, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

As the saying goes, "Union makes strength." I am not claiming that this ancient wisdom perfectly holds in all circumstances but I think that it could greatly help scholars make things together on the internet. It is true that some people do work better individually than in groups. However, when it comes to the internet, one can easily see the power of collective work and peer production particularly in the academia. Even the world's most famous online sources of knowledge were produced by groups of people of the same interest. For example, the Wikipedia platform would not have gone this far had it not been for its community's peer production. Albeit its lack of originality and sometimes questionable quality of its content, the concept of aggregating such vast areas of knowledge into a single free online encyclopedia would not have been possible had it not been for peer production. Yes there is still much hierarchy and control in the production process. Yes there are risks inherent to peer production as well. However, I believe that the advantages of creating an atmosphere for either groups (political activists and scholars) outweighs the disadvantages not to. cheikhmbacke 15:56, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

COMMENTS ON THE WISDOM OF CROWDS I found the excerpt from The wisdom of crowds really interesting. The last sentence in the article "The judgment of crowds may be good in laboratory settings and classrooms, but what happens in the real world? " From my understanding, the judgement of crowds is not as good as the judgement of an individual most of the time. As people tend to make more mistakes when they make decision together. However, this is not what we see in the experiments. I wonder what makes the difference between the results we have from the experiments and the real world. Perhaps, it is just because there is no such thing as a correct answer in the real world.

Jolietheone 16:12, 25 March 2014 (EDT)


I apologize for the tardy posting. I tried to post on the Wiki several times today from my office in Boston, which situates over 50 companies. We were all affected in some way this afternoon. On a side bar, it is amazing to see what happens when the Internet is not accessible.

This brings light to Ethan’s article this week in our course readings. Ethan discussed Sunstein’s argument, and concerns in regards to the isolation of individuals/society, and exposure to certain materials not normally sought after.

For those who are not connected to the internet, (which would be me today), Sunstein argues a lack of joint decision making and common experience could potentially be lacking.

At the basis of his argument, we do find a bit of truth. Multiple companies would not make decisions today in the building, due to the lack of Internet and information. It was like the Wiki Blackout. Although decisions could be made, they were put on hold.

Hours later, I found myself at John Harvard’s Brewery & Ale House. It became my new office. I could still make a decision; hence my selection of an Ale house over a coffee shop. However; I could not make some critical decisions, and lacked information to do my job (to include posting this thought on time).

Interesting.

Try to Work at John Harvard’s Brewery. It’s impossible. The beer is too good. --Melissaluke 17:43, 25 March 2014 (EDT)

Ugh. I just realized that my posting apparently didn't go through from my iPad last week :(

I have taken a particular interest in the articles on Crowd Intelligence, as there seems to exist a fine line between trusting the accuracy of crowd response and following blindly. Not that I mean to start something too controversial, but how can one distinguish the difference between accurate answers, such as the average in the jelly bean experiments, versus what could be dangerous thoughts disseminated throughout a small group. As Ethan Zuckerman states in his article about Sunstein's Infotopia, "People find it difficult to defy the will of a group, and may polarize to avoid interpersonal conflict." How does the internet factor into this? Does the isolation-- since one is typically operating alone when they use their computer-- serve as a buffer, thus enhancing creativity and maintaining individual beliefs? Or does the ability to attract a large audience and build a "fanbase", for lack of a better word, only increase the likelihood of falling into a collective ideology that may or may not be legitimate or accurate? Castille 13:17, 28 March 2014 (EDT)

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