Two things have got me thinking recently on ways to harness crowdsourcing (convincing large groups of people to do your work for you) to effect change in the real world, from the worlds of pranks, gaming and ARGs (alternate reality games, which use clues and interactions in the real world to further a fictional plotline):
* There’s an account of how members of the 4chan / Anonymous / whoever community used crowdsourcing techniques to game Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people, not only placing the 4chan founder at the #1 spot, but also using the next 20 spots to spell out a secret message.
The story is fascinating (also a little risqué, you’re warned) — a core team of motivated individuals with technical know-how to figured out how to exploit holes in the Time 100 voting system, writing custom voting apps that allowed a horde of less-technical but also highly-motivated individuals to cast — by hand — the thousands and thousands of targeted votes they needed to get the desired result. (In an interesting behavioral note, in order to keep the foot soldiers voting and doing the Web equivalent of manual labor, the organizers incentivized them not with money, but with… porn, built into the voting app.)
* I finished reading This Is Not a Game, a sci-fi novel by Walter Jon Williams set in the more-or-less contemporary world. It features an ARG game designer (puppeteer, really), who uses the resources and knowledge of the game’s several million participants to escape (in real life) a country in the throes of an economic collapse.
Later, the game’s community is used to both commit murders, and then foil the murderers. Along the way, events in the real world (like the murder) are incorporated into the game, and elements of the game cross over into the real world. And of course, the many of the millions of gamers are unwitting participants.
Because the Stakes Are So Low
In both the real-world Time hack and This Is Not a Game’s fictional ARG (an extrapolation of real-world ARG experiences), the participants spend their own time and resources, for no tangible reward. And it’s precisely because there’s no tangible reward that they’re willing to spend stupid amounts of time and energy into trivial pursuits.
Consider the common paraphrasing of Sayre’s Law: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” In my examples, the “gamers” are motivated by non-monetary means: the thrill of the challenge, “lulz,” social capital, community cred, peer recognition, etc.
From a behavioral economics perspective (recall my entry on Predictably Irrational, though I didn’t cover this point), it’s precisely because there’s no money involved in the enterprise, that lets participants keep their contributions in the social context (akin to a favor, donation, hobby or game), whereas introducing any monetary compensation would move it into the market context, where any token payment would pale in comparison to real-world compensation, or even opportunity cost. (See this excerpt from Predictably Irrational that talks about social vs. market norms when it comes to lawyers’ pro bono work and paying Mom for Thanksgiving dinner.)
It’s All About the Lulz Fun, Stupid
Anyway, the use of computer-mediated communications to mobilize distributed communities to affect change or achieve real world goals is nothing new, ranging from SETI@home, various activist and political campaigns, enthusiast efforts like couchsurfing, geocaching, collaborative quilting, etc.
In most of these cases, the crowd in the crowdsourcing is motivated because it’s doing something new, interesting, cool, or otherwise fun. (Though there something to be said for the power of philanthropy, enlightened self-interest, and righteous outrage, as seen by something like One Million Voices Against FARC.)
For groups looking to motivate crowds online to effect actual real-world results, it’s important to keep sight of the fact that keeping activities in the social context, by implicitly or explicitly turning activities into games, is a great incentive for people who are working for you for free.
Just as long as the games are actually, you know, fun.
I know there are plenty of examples I’ve left out, involving crowdsourcing games for tagging photos and doing OCR on books, etc — if you know of a crowdsourced game example, leave a comment below.
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