The Baffler - The Crowdsourcing Scam
This long-form article explores the dynamics of "crowdsourcing", a common method employed by both tech startups and monolithic multinational corporations to get work done cheaply or for free through users of internet-based applications. It starts with drawing similarities between modern life and a science fiction short story "Codemus" written in the late 60s by Tor Åge Bringsværd, in which everybody has a benign personal robot that tells them what to do and when, for the ultimate betterment of an increasingly isolated society. The focus then widens and compares that fiction to how our workflow and, increasingly, our entire daily lives, are run by computer software and mobile devices.
This isn't a "computers are taking over our lives" rant. Instead, it is a sustained discussion about how the trend to crowdsource content that became ubiquitous with Web 2.0 has increasingly turned into crowdsourcing labor either for free (see: Duolingo, CAPTCHA) or for rates at far below what society has historically priced labor (see: iStockphoto, Innocentive). Uber and TED talks are brought up as different examples: TED talks are transcribed and translated incredibly cheaply by a crowd of amateurs rather than a professional translator, Uber (ostensibly) employs thousands of amateur drivers cheaply to do the work of cabbies. The owners of these systems reap an increasingly greater share of the profits, while labor expertise declines. Amateurs armed with technology take the place of experts, but collectively get paid a fraction for it. People become isolated and job security disappears as their "managers" are, increasingly, computer programs that tell them what their next task is, to be accomplished efficiently or not at all, since somebody else is waiting for their next "micro-job". The argument is that this is the next generation of outsourcing.
