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According to company cofounder Anand Kulkarni, the aim is to get the crowd of workers to "behave much more like an automatic resource than like individual and u

According to company cofounder Anand Kulkarni, the aim is to get the crowd of workers to "behave much more like an automatic resource than like individual and unreliable human beings." Rationally, this makes sense. Emotionally, I find it repulsive. I'm not sure which impulse is stronger. I feel like if I were involved in this company, I'd have to focus to some extent on providing a leg up to people in developing countries. Turning people into (potentially miserable) cogs in a machine would weigh on me after a while.

patio11 14y ago
I'd have to focus to some extent on providing a leg up to people in developing countries. Get them paying jobs which involve nothing worse than sitting at a computer screen and you're already more effective than, oh, approximately all charity and foreign aid. After you have the jobs you can even try to make them fun jobs, but un-fun jobs beat 3rd world poverty by quite a lot.
- patdennis 14y ago
  I don't think fun jobs are the goal. I think merit based opportunity is the goal.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
anandkulkarni 14y ago
Our goal is to get the crowd to behave like an automatic resource, taken as a whole, while providing a decidedly non-cog-like experience for individual workers. We want users to be able to trust the crowd, but we want people to behave, well, like people. In MobileWork, workers work together in small teams under real names, have a dedicated manager and persistent chat, and talk and collaborate closely on work. Even if there is an algorithmic component to the work, the outcome is much more of a virtual office than the anonymous task machine that you're describing. This worker-centered approach is also a point of departure from just about every other crowd platform out there. To tell the truth, we've invested considerable effort into developing an environment where we'd actually be happy working ourselves. Our studies show that this approach works: far from feeling like cogs, folks really do enjoy being MobileWorkers. See, for instance, our upcoming paper in IEEE, cited below. There's a rational reason for this strategy. Our starting premise is that happy, motivated, and fairly-paid workers working in a collaborative environment will outperform anonymous crowd agents. Helping people with a leg up is the other half of that mission.
- patdennis 14y ago
  I don't want you to come away with the impression that I'm attacking what you're doing. Day to day you're providing a hell of a lot more opportunity than I am... and creating a lot more value at the same time. I think the root of my emotional response might lie in an idealistic desire to see the opportunity for merit based latter climbing. Rationally, however, just creating a revenue source for people is a hell of a leg up.
  - anandkulkarni 14y ago
    Certainly, no offense taken :) I recognize that there's often a knee-jerk reaction when thinking about startups that attempt to address social issues in the developing world: it's not easy to separate out work that is ethical and impactful from work that is well-intentioned but harmful, particularly when the technologies involved are as new as crowd computing is. You might be happy to know that we actually do offer opportunities for advancement within the system, and that it's one of our long-term objectives: there's a nascent system of skills and certifications that workers can train towards and develop, and workers can advance from doing very simple work to sophisticated work. Eventually we expect that our workers will be able to develop enough certifications to transition up out of MobileWorks and into the traditional economy -- or better yet, to get to the point where they can build their own business around MobileWorks, as some workers have done. More on our philosophy here: http://mobileworks.com/fairtradework http://mobileworks.com/fairtradework

patio11 14y ago

I'd have to focus to some extent on providing a leg up to people in developing countries. Get them paying jobs which involve nothing worse than sitting at a computer screen and you're already more effective than, oh, approximately all charity and foreign aid. After you have the jobs you can even try to make them fun jobs, but un-fun jobs beat 3rd world poverty by quite a lot.

patdennis 14y ago
I don't think fun jobs are the goal. I think merit based opportunity is the goal.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

anandkulkarni 14y ago

Our goal is to get the crowd to behave like an automatic resource, taken as a whole, while providing a decidedly non-cog-like experience for individual workers. We want users to be able to trust the crowd, but we want people to behave, well, like people. In MobileWork, workers work together in small teams under real names, have a dedicated manager and persistent chat, and talk and collaborate closely on work. Even if there is an algorithmic component to the work, the outcome is much more of a virtual office than the anonymous task machine that you're describing. This worker-centered approach is also a point of departure from just about every other crowd platform out there. To tell the truth, we've invested considerable effort into developing an environment where we'd actually be happy working ourselves. Our studies show that this approach works: far from feeling like cogs, folks really do enjoy being MobileWorkers. See, for instance, our upcoming paper in IEEE, cited below. There's a rational reason for this strategy. Our starting premise is that happy, motivated, and fairly-paid workers working in a collaborative environment will outperform anonymous crowd agents. Helping people with a leg up is the other half of that mission.

patdennis 14y ago
I don't want you to come away with the impression that I'm attacking what you're doing. Day to day you're providing a hell of a lot more opportunity than I am... and creating a lot more value at the same time. I think the root of my emotional response might lie in an idealistic desire to see the opportunity for merit based latter climbing. Rationally, however, just creating a revenue source for people is a hell of a leg up.
- anandkulkarni 14y ago
  Certainly, no offense taken :) I recognize that there's often a knee-jerk reaction when thinking about startups that attempt to address social issues in the developing world: it's not easy to separate out work that is ethical and impactful from work that is well-intentioned but harmful, particularly when the technologies involved are as new as crowd computing is. You might be happy to know that we actually do offer opportunities for advancement within the system, and that it's one of our long-term objectives: there's a nascent system of skills and certifications that workers can train towards and develop, and workers can advance from doing very simple work to sophisticated work. Eventually we expect that our workers will be able to develop enough certifications to transition up out of MobileWorks and into the traditional economy -- or better yet, to get to the point where they can build their own business around MobileWorks, as some workers have done. More on our philosophy here: http://mobileworks.com/fairtradework http://mobileworks.com/fairtradework