I was listening to Mohammad Yunus talk about the beginnings of microcredit on NPR . Though principally very different, it seems to have much in common with crowdsourcing
Whereas in microlending, a large number of people may chip in to raise money for a poor farmer to buy a cow, crowdsourcing is about a large number of people producing goods and services on their spare time that are orders of magnitude cheaper than commercial alternatives. In both cases the crowd offers a better value proposition to the buyer than an individual (the village moneylender in the case of the farmer) or an institution ( a corporation trying to license stock images). Both have to do with the strength in numbers and how sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
How crowdsourcing is different from outsourcing is aptly summarized in the Wired article :
“Outsourcing is when I hire someone to perform a service and they do it and that’s the end of the relationship. That’s not much different from the way employment has worked throughout the ages. We’re talking about bringing people in from outside and involving them in this broadly creative, collaborative process. That’s a whole new paradigm.”
I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
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