Wired has a good article on Luis von Ahn and human computing, touching on Google Image Labeler, captchas, reCAPTCHA.
One key point (of many) about gaming and design:
People will contribute their brainpower, but only if they're given an enjoyable, time-killing experience in exchange. Play is the unexpected glue that lashes human brains together into a global overmind. So to build a good human-computation project, you can't merely be a scientist; you also need to be a videogame designer.
This, as it turns out, is a significant hurdle, because few academics are trained in game design.
The author is the excellent Clive Thompson.
Previous von Ahnery on Infocult: another good article, human-enabled spam-killing.
(via BoingBoing)
Well, it is true that maybe the best thing to come from the black-hole of Artificial Intelligence research was that lovely game, Tetris...
Posted by: Steve C | July 25, 2007 at 17:30