User:Lassebosch/2ndyr/Read/Write

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Graduation project proposals in chronology:

v.0.6 Click-workers, Cognitive Surplus and Digital Gateways

Please verify that you are a human-being - General introduction

You are prompted following before being able to proceed, when wanting to comment upon a topic within the forum you are browsing:

To comment on the forum please verify that you are human by solving the following problem:


The mechanism you are going trough is a so called 'reCAPTCHA' stemming from the 'CAPTCHA'-technology, an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". As the naming indicates the technology tries to test whether you are a computer with potential malicious intentions, or a human-being wanting to comment on the forum.

'reCAPTCHA' and 'CAPTCHA' differs in a subtle, yet tremendous way. In the traditional 'CAPTCHA' you are presented an obscured string of letters, uninterpretable by a computer, but legible to the human eye. In the example above the 'CAPTCHA' is the first string of letters. I can decipher that is spells 'nguedMo' while most computer-algorithms would fail in giving the right result if even any. The human is granted access while the computer is not.

The 're' in 'reCAPTCHA' is expressed in the second far more legible string of letters as seen the example above. In this case it spells 'cleared'.

Without further consideration you type in the solution; 'nguedMo' and 'cleared', which gives you access to comment as much as you like.


The exchange at the Gateway

What the reCAPTCHA 'user' understands correctly is the man versus machine verification needed to root out malicious bots and 'software-gone-wrong'.

The term 'user' might not be entirely fitting in this context, since the 'user', doesn't actually 'use' the reCAPTCHA-interface, rather the 'user' is a 'pass-byer', an asylum-seeker, searching to obtain access to the content on the other side. The system of the reCAPTCHA can therefore be looked upon as the gateway keeper, protecting the content on the other side. All pass-byers, computer or man, are told to produce a certain password, a human-verification, before passage is granted.

But what the vast majority of the reCAPTCHA pass-byers, fail to notice is that each time they post a solution, part of what they've been deciphering is a fragment, a word, of scanned book-page. You verify that you are a human but you also digitize a tiny piece of a book. The process of digitization hidden in plain sight, and pass-byers simply encounters this as yet another human-vs-computer security measurement. We don't pay any considerations to this 'micro-task'. In current example you just digitized 'cleared' from an unknown book.

Why not 'harness the cognitive surplus' of the crowd? Luis von Ahn, the inventor of the reCAPTCHA system (currently owned by Google) has an interesting quote on this: 'Basically, I want to make all of humanity more efficient by exploiting the human cycles that get wasted'. Why not utilize and take advantage of the human-brainpower which the pass-byer is all-ready employing to prove that he is human?


Taming the Crowd

The illustration of 'harnessing', 'surplus' and 'waste' and theur visual connotations of production and efficiency, links clearly to my previous research in Piet Zwart within the field of crowd sourcing. With the expansion of the Web and its pervasiveness in almost every online action of the 'modern-day-man', the term and idea of crowd-sourcing has gained a lot of traction. As an illustration, the crowd is no longer seen as an aggressive, amorph, mumbling and stumbling mob, hard to understand and despised and feared by the authorities. In 'crowd-sourcing' the crowd has been tamed and cropped, fitting a smoothly running production facility, outputting whatever desired. The crowd is not an actual physical crowd, but individuals represented as nodes on a network, all linking to each other but not necessarily communicating or directly working together, but eventually contributing to a coherent, final outcome. The fordist assembly-line has gone viral.

Returning to the reCAPTCHA, the crowd, the pass-byers, without noticing continues to complete parts of the enormous task of digitizing hundreds of millions of books. Each node contributing a piece of the puzzle each time passage trough the guarded gate is granted.


What exchange? A symbiotic relationship

On the other side of the gate, the pass-byer is no longer passing by. The other side is his destination, and it's here he does his initial deeds; writing a comment, sending a mail etc. His gain is access and fulfillment in various manners. The exchange between A) verifying that you are human and the less perceivable 'helping to digitize a library' and B) being able to write a message, is small and time-vise diminishing. The pass-byers less tangible needs to fulfill personal urges is exchanged for the minuscule, micro-task of digitizing a book-fragment. In this way there's an asymmetry present within the exchange which is not as easily measurable as a traditional 'time-wage'-scheme would be. The assembly-line is asymmetrical, the laborers and their salaries various, but since the nature of the work they all complete while passing the gate is of such universal format, it does no longer matter whether the each node look different, have a different background or different skills. Everything is accounted for, and one size fits all.

There's a clear symbiosis between the different parties: the pass-byers, the gateway-keeper and the other side. Each party wants something of the other party, and each pay in their own currency and gains another. An essential difference though clings to three intertwined parameters; amount, capability to accumulate and view-control.

I am not claiming to posses the final answer as to how and to what extent, these parameters are enforced, but if we consider that the pass-byer leaves a decrypted, digitized word in the possession of the gateway keeper each time he passes by, this quickly amounts. Especially since reCAPTCHA claims to accumulate more than a hundred million digitized words per day. Clearly an issue of scale is apparent here: the pass-byer is payed and spends the payment sending an email, while the gateway-keeper gets to accumulate huge amounts of data.

As goes for the 'view-control', questions can be asked as to whom this digitized material belongs to. The gateway-keeper or the nodes producing the mass? Under current circumstances the material is reserved to the gateway keeper and accessible in trough the Google-books-project. The nodes who amassed the database can view this project but only on the premise of the provider and the gateway-keeper, aka. Google.


Proposal: from exclusion and fragmentation to inclusion and communication

Taking a step back, looking at the reCAPTCHA-project in a less gloomy perspective, the system has many advantages and a real power trough its efficiency. Could the idea of 'harnessing the cognitive surplus' be put in a stronger ethical position? Would it make sense to engage the node more actively and socially in his digitalization of books, rather than wrapping the act of 'harnessing' in the excuse of determining your man or machine features? Why leave out any questions or interests raised from the actual human digitizing the fragment, and why render the human merely as a tweaked computer-algorithm? The slogan of reCAPTCHA: 'stop spam, read books' is currently a strange cloaking, but it could maybe become a lot stronger if turned inside-out.

In my graduation project so far I've been making various attempts to engage this relative new kind of on-line micro-based laborI've been making various attempts to engage this relative new kind of on-line micro-based labor, taking place at times in very concealed and hardly considerable conditions. This of course asks what is work and when is it work? When does a task become a unconscious micro-task? And when does any on-line actions gain value of any sort?

Personally I'm both very intrigued by these processes and the potential power of them, yet I also hold a strong skepticism towards how they can be wielded toward exclusion of the individual, its labor and the fruit of it, overseer-ed, accumulated and 'locked-up' by the gateway-keeper.

I purpose to continue the work and research I've done on the reCAPTCHA-system. I wish to rebuild the reCAPTCHA in a state which will alter several aspects of the original. The idea of 'harnessing' and 'surplus' should change flavor to something less machine-like and more human-related. Options (not necessary succeeding each other):


  • Books being translated are provided by 'Project Gutenberg' and released into the public domain (Again)
  • As a pass-byer you will see the word as a fragment, but you will also see the title of the book and the chapter , and you will be able to digitize more than a fragment.
  • As a pass-byer you will see the fragment you are to translate but you will also see a larger context; eg. the page of the word you translate
  • As a pass-byer you will, hopefully become more than a passbyer
  • You can chose a book that you want to 'stick to' by digitizing word by word chronologically. Each time you return to the re-reCAPTCHA you will be presented next word of the same book
  • More users can engage in translating the same book by 'sticking to' the same book and thereby 'share the job'

v.0.5: The Individual in (and out of) the Database

Please verify that you are a human being - General introduction

Wanting to comment upon a topic within the forum you are browsing, you are prompted following before being able to proceed:

To comment on the forum please verify that you are human by solving the following problem:

The mechanism you are presented is a so called 'reCAPTCHA' stemming from the 'CAPTCHA'-technology, an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". As the naming indicates the technology tries to test whether you are a computer, with malicious intentions of spamming, or an honest human being actually, wanting to comment on the forum.

'reCAPTCHA' and 'CAPTCHA' differs in a subtle, yet tremendous way. In the traditional 'CAPTCHA' you are presented an obscured string of letters, uninterpretable by a computer, but legible to the human eye. In the example above the 'CAPTCHA' is the first string of letters. I can decipher that is spells 'nguedMo' while most computer-algorithms would give the wrong result if even any. The human is granted access while the computer is not.

The 're' in 'reCAPTCHA' is expressed in the second far more legible string of letters in the example above, in this case it spells 'cleared'.

Happily you type in the two strings 'nguedMo' and 'cleared', which gives you access to comment as much as you like.

Taking a step back, what is then the difference between 'reCAPTCHA' and 'CAPTCHA', other than the 'reCAPTCHA' presents a secondary string of letters for you to decipher? This is where my interest is coming forth.

While the first string ('nguedMo') is algorithmically created, distorted by filters and obscured in multiple ways making it difficult for a computer to decipher, the second string is not.

The second string, the 're' of the 'reCAPTCHA', is a fragment of a digitally scanned text, which partners of the reCAPTCHA-system, wishes to have digitized. By deciphering the text-fragment 'cleared' before having access granted, you performing a minuscule cognitive operation. This performance is hardly considerable and labor-wise diminishing, yet performed a hundred thousand times per day* by unique individuals each deciphering their own fragments, the total outcome and end-product is very tangible and concrete: approximately 60 pages of digitized text.

the 'reCAPTCHA'-system is an extremely clever way of utilizing the 'crowd' of the web without evoking the feeling of actually doing a piece of concrete work. As a user of the forum you understand the need to block spam-bots and therefore you don't hesitate a second (the solving of a reCAPTCHA takes but a second) before you decipher the strings and hit submit.


Asymmetry and Accumulation - Field of study

My focus for the graduation project will be systems such as the reCAPTACHA, which trough unconscious micro-tasking aggregates power of the human brain, to build up extensive databases.

I intend to discuss the individual in relation to the system and it's accumulating database and our position as database-moderators or aggregators within these intentionally opaque structures. A central concern is the notion of asymmetry apparent within such a symbiosis. In the case study of the 'reCAPTCHA', the issue of asymmetry is also applicable. Noble as it might seem, you helping to digitize the analog knowledge of the world, questions should be raised as to whom this database of digitized material belongs to and to whom database-access is granted. We might gain access to comment on the forum, which is our actually goal, but asymmetrically you perform a piece of work that you might never fully gain access to, other than the lost fragments of unknown books you are presented trough the 'reCAPTCHA'.


The Design Crowd - Previous pratice

(remember to place link)

This links back to my previous practice at the Piet Zwart Institute, also touching upon the issue of asymmetry. The main case study has been digital outsourcing or crowd-sourcing of design-related labor, which is offered by multiple online platforms. Within the platform the designer can participate in a vast amount of competitions on a world wide scale. The tone and atmosphere of platform lures the designer into producing a very tangible piece of work, while the paycheck is a promise of 'personal promotion' and 'exposure' and it's less tangible currencies, and (if even) a diminishing sum of physical monetary currency. Your gain (personal promotion) as a designer is very different, even incomparable than to what you pay (time and physical labor) and produce (an actual physical product).


The Asymmetrical assembly-lines - Pratical steps

The concrete project will take form of a series of asymmetrical assembly-lines, where the revolving issue will be alienation or empowerment of the individual. My main tool for this exploration will be public wifi-networks and the 'forecast of free internet access' if only simple steps are followed. I will setup various experiments with my own created free wifi hotspots each trying to;

a) push people into performing, exposing themselves and their surrounding, engaging in larger collaborations, with the promise of gaining access to the free wifi once the 'task' is completed. I will be presenting the conducted experiments in forms that:

1) will display the data I've gathered, whether the users trying to gain wifi access had to cooperate on writing a poem, rat out their facebook-friends etc.,
2) recordings of physical interactions the 'users' had to commence upon before gaining access,
3) a series of networks 'on-site' (TENT/V2) with each their own 'entrance-fee/task' – 'one being worse than the other'.

or:

b) make people aware that they are performing a certain task before they can gain access to what they initially wanted, and that they actually have the rights to access the data that has been accumulated trough the tasks.

Practically I see the possibility to extend the system of the reCAPTCHA, but take it into a the physical context of the library. By this I mean;

1) going to the local public library, finding a book that would be interesting to have digitally available
2) scanning it
3) prompting people to 'digitize' parts of the books upon accessing the internet (this could also be upon entering the building, etc.)
4) Everything should take place within the library it self.

v.0.4: The Individual in (and out of) the Database

Wanting to comment upon a topic within the forum you are browsing, you are prompted following before being able to proceed:

To comment on the forum please verify that you are human by solving the following problem:


The mechanism you are presented is a so called 'reCAPTCHA' stemming from the 'CAPTCHA'-technology, an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". As the naming indicates the technology tries to test whether you are a computer, with malicious intentions of spamming or an honest human being actually, wanting to comment on the forum.

'reCAPTCHA' and 'CAPTCHA' differs in a subtle, yet tremendous way. In the traditional 'CAPTCHA' you are presented an obscured string of letters, uninterpretable by a computer, but legible to the human eye. In the example above the 'CAPTCHA' is the first string of letters. I can decipher that is spells 'nguedMo' while any standard computer text recognition software would give the wrong result if even any. Maybe the computer result would look like 'wyieoWo'. Clearly this is wrong and the computer is not granted access while the human is.

The 're' in 'reCAPTCHA' is expressed in the second far more legible string of letters in the example above, in this case it spells 'cleared'.

Happily you type in the text 'nguedMo cleared', which grants you access to comment as much as you like. Taking a step back, what is then the difference between 'reCAPTCHA' and 'CAPTCHA', other than the 'reCAPTCHA' presents a secondary string of letters for you to decipher? While the first string is algorithmically created, distorted by filters and obscured in multiple ways, the second string is not. The second string, the 're' of the 'CAPTCHA', is a fragment of a scanned page of text, from a book, a newspaper or likewise. This fragment has been determined hard to read by a computer and therefore needs power of the human brain to be deciphered and retyped in to digital a digital context.
This means that you are helping do digitize analog, written material by performing a minuscule mental operation before actually getting what you wanted; the grant to comment on the forum.

'reCAPTCHA' is an extremely clever way of utilizing the 'crowd' of the web without evoking the feeling of actually doing a piece of concrete work. As a user of the forum you understand the need to block spam-bots and therefore you don't hesitate a second (the solving of a reCAPTCHA takes but a second) before you fill out the form and hit submit.

My focus for the graduation project will be systems such as the reCAPTACHA, which seeks moderation power of the human brain, to build up extensive databases. In the mentioned case the human, user of the forum, lends itself to text digitization, helping to build up a huge database of written material.

The departing hypothesis for the project is that all individuals in a digitally influenced society are domesticated by technologies such as the reCAPTCHA and depending subjects to its belonging databases.

I intend to discuss the individual in relation to the database, and our position as database-moderators or aggregators within these complex structures. I seek to highlight the asymmetry between what we get and what we pay as users of the system. My vantage-point is in this manner rather Marxist inspired, critiquing the alienation of the worker within the factory. What does the modern western factory worker look like? What are the gains for platform providers versus our personal gains as users of the platform, and what kind of currencies (tangible or not) are circulating?

Returning to 'reCAPTCHA', the issue of asymmetry should also be raised here. Noble as it might seem, you helping to digitize the analog knowledge of the world, questions should be raised as to whom this database of digitized material belongs to and to whom database-access is granted. We might gain access to comment on the forum, which is our actually goal, but asymmetrically you perform a piece of work that you might never fully gain access to, other than the strings of letters you are presented trough the 'reCAPTCHA'.

This links back to my previous practice at the Piet Zwart Institute, also touching upon the issue of asymmetry. The main case study has been digital outsourcing or crowd-sourcing of design-related labor, which is offered by multiple online platforms. Within the platform the designer can participate in a vast amount of competitions on a world wide scale. The tone and atmosphere of platform lures the designer into producing a very tangible piece of work, the paycheck being a promise of 'personal promotion' and 'exposure' and it's less tangible currencies, and (if even) a diminishing sum of physical currency. Your gain (personal promotion) as a designer is very different, even incomparable than to what you pay (time and physical labor) and produce (an actual physical product).

The concrete project will take form of a series of asymmetrical assembly-lines, where the revolving issue will be alienation or empowerment of the individual. My main tool for this exploration will be public wifi-networks and the 'forecast of free internet access' if only simple steps are followed. I will setup various experiments with my own created free wifi hotspots each trying to;

a) push people into performing, exposing themselves and their surrounding, engaging in larger collaborations, with the promise of gaining access to the free wifi once the 'task' is completed. I will be presenting the conducted experiments in forms that:

1) will display the data I've gathered, whether the users trying to gain wifi access had to cooperate on writing a poem, rat out their facebook-friends etc.,
2) recordings of physical interactions the 'users' had to commence upon before gaining access,
3) a series of networks 'on-site' (TENT/V2) with each their own 'entrance-fee/task' – 'one being worse than the other'.

or:

b) make people aware that they are performing a certain task before they can gain access to what they initially wanted, and that they actually have the rights to access the data that has been accumulated trough the tasks.

Practically I see the possibility to extend the system of the reCAPTCHA, but take it into a the physical context of the library. By this I mean;

1) going to the local public library, finding a book that would be interesting to have digitally available
2) scanning it
3) prompting people to 'digitize' parts of the books upon accessing the internet (this could also be upon entering the building, etc.)
4) Everything should take place within the library it self.

v.0.3: Interfacing the database and everything in between.

My focus for the graduation project will be 'the database' and our, as interface users, constant modification, contribution and dependence on such.

The departing hypothesis for the project is that all individuals in a digitally influenced society are domesticated by interfaces and subjects to its belonging databases.

Accessing a digital system the individual is assigned the role of the 'user', entering on a fixed premise of the system. As users within the system we seek to modify its database whether that would be changing values, status, adding or removing entries. The interface is the surface, serving to connect the user to the database. The goal of the interface is to establish a clear connection to the database for the user to navigate within. Deviation within the interface is not possible, lest this is expressed clearly as another parameter. Even the 'wrong' queries are appropriated.

It is important to understand that this 'technical' depiction of user, interface and database not only should be seen as a computer-based digital transaction. The formulation is applicable to other structures as well, for example the user as the student interfacing the educational system trough the acquiring of points and grades. The interface is clear; below a certain grade you fail and above another you excel. The results are numeric (digital), easily translated from the interface to the database. As the entries has been made in the database, they can be retrieved, analyzed and applied again; your grades gives access some educations while denying access to other.

I intend to discuss the individuals relation to the database in the digital sphere, and our position as database-moderators or aggregators within these complex structures. I seek to highlight the asymmetry between what we get and what we pay as users of the system. My vantage-point is in this manner rather Marxist inspired, critiquing the alienation of the worker within the factory. What does the modern western factory worker look like? What are the gains for platform providers versus our personal gains as users of the platform, and what kind of currencies (tangible or not) are circulating?

This links back to my previous practice at the Piet Zwart Institute, also touching upon the issue of asymmetry. The main case study has been digital outsourcing or crowd-sourcing of design-related labor, which is offered by multiple online platforms. Within the platform the designer can participate in a vast amount of competitions on a world wide scale. The tone and atmosphere of platform lures the designer into producing a very tangible piece of work, the paycheck being a promise of 'personal promotion' and 'exposure' and it's less tangible currencies, and (if even) a diminishing sum of physical currency.

The concrete project will take form of a series of asymmetrical assembly-lines. My main tool for this exploration will be public wifi-networks and the 'forecast of free internet access' if only simple steps are followed. I will setup various experiments with my own created free wifi hotspots each trying to push people into performing, exposing themselves and their surrounding, engaging in larger collaborations, with the promise of gaining access to the free wifi once the 'task' is completed.

I will be presenting the conducted experiments in forms that:

1) will display the data I've gathered, whether the users trying to gain wifi access had to cooperate on writing a poem, rat out their facebook-friends etc.,
2) recordings of physical interactions the 'users' had to commence upon before gaining access,
3) a series of networks 'on-site' (TENT/V2) with each their own 'entrance-fee/task' – 'one being worse than the other'.


v.0.2: Interfacing the database and everything in between.

My focus for the graduation project will be 'the database' and our, as interface users, constant modification, contribution and dependence on such.

The departing hypothesis for the project is that all individuals in a digitally influenced society are domesticated by the interface and subjects to the database.

Accessing a digital system the individual is assigned the role of the 'user', entering on a preset premise of the system. As users within the system we seek to modify its database whether that would be changing values, status, adding or removing entries. The interface is the surface, serving to connect the user to the database. The goal of the interface is to establish a clear connection to the database for the user to navigate within. Deviation within the interface is not possible, lest this is expressed clearly as another parameter. The 'wrong' query will return an error or be flagged as a 'hack'.

It is important to understand that this 'technical' depiction of user, interface and database not only should be seen as a electronically digital transaction. The formulation is applicable to other structures as well for example the user as the student interfacing the educational system trough the acquiring of points and grades. The interface is clear; below a certain grade you fail and above another you excel. The results are numeric, easily translated from the interface to the database. As the entries has been made in the database, they can be retrieved, analyzed and applied again; your grades gives access some educations while denying access to other.

I intend to discuss the individuals relation to the database in the digital sphere, and our position as database-moderators or aggregators within these complex structures. I seek to highlight the asymmetry between what we get and what we pay as users of the system. My vantage-point is in this manner rather Marxist inspired, critiquing the alienation of the worker within the factory.

The concrete project will take form of a series of asymmetrical assembly-lines. My main tool for this exploration will be public wifi-networks and a promise of 'free internet access'. I will setup various experiments with my own created free wifi hotspots each trying to push people into performing, exposing themselves and their surrounding, engaging in larger collaborations, with the promise of gaining access to the free wifi once the 'task' is completed.

I will be presenting the conducted experiments in forms that 1) will display the data I've gathered, whether the users trying to gain wifi access had to cooperate on writing a poem, rat out their facebook-friends, 2) recordings of physical interactions the 'users' had to commence upon before gaining access, 3) a series of networks 'on-site' (TENT/V2) with each their own 'entrance-fee/task' – 'one being worse than the other'.


v.0.1: Informing the Database and everything in between

Intro

My focus for the graduation project will be 'the database' and our, as interface users, constant modification, contribution and dependence on such.

The departing hypothesis for the project is that all individuals in a digitally influenced society are subjects to the database. This idea ranges widely, and can be identified within all systems focused on accountability and quantified measuarablity. Examples includes the governmental structures we take part in such as healtcare and educational systems, the sudo-private sphere with banks and insurance and pension corporations, and naturally also the private sphere where accountability is a must. As individuals we interfere and exchange with these systems in various manners, yet these transactions are always defined by the interface of the system. In this manner I define the interface as the surface, connecting the individual to the backend of the system - the database. The ultimate goal of the interface is to establish a clear connection to the database for the user to navigate within. Deviation within the interface is not possible, lest this is expressed clearly as another parameter. The 'wrong' query will return an error or be flagged as a 'hack'.

It is important to understand that this 'technical' depiction of user, interface and database not only should be seen as a digital transaction; the individual using a digital interface to connect to the database of a system. As mentioned above the formulation it is applicable to other structures as well eg. the user as the student interfacing the educational system trough the acquiring of points and grades. The interface is clear; below a certain grade you fail and above another you excel. The results are numeric, easily translated from the interface to the database. As the entries has been made in the database, they can be retrieved, analyzed and applied again; your grades gives access some educations while denying access to other.

Inherit to the ideas of the database are the notions of order, sorting and comparison. This implies that the entries made in the database should be interpretable and comparable by an algorithm, whether processed by human or computer, if not the database loses its function. The database strives generalization, unison and algorithmic interpretable conditions.

As computational power constantly grows by exponential force, algorithms are bound to get more complicated. The question of interpretable conditions is expanded from numeric values to larger amorph relational conditions (although in the end everything comes down to ones and zeros). The database prevails and lends itself to sorts of thinkable systems, increasing the focus within whole societies on the core of the database; order, sort, compare, computational efficiency.

This will be the entry-point for my graduation project. I intend to discuss the individuals relation to the database in the digital sphere, and our position as database-moderators or aggregators within these complex structures, not graspable because of scale and exclusion (this should be discussed further).

Our acting trough the interfaces we use is, ideally, measurable.
Our acting, now measured, is analyzed and fed back to us in new disguises.
Our acting means modifying and manipulating a database.

I will look at and experiment with systems, techniques, platforms and companies that renders the hypothesis of the 'database aggregators' tangible. This includes reCAPTCHA, Amazons Mechanical Turk, Bitcoinget, various SEO-strategies (search-engine-optimization), and more. A short introduction of Bitcoinget follows, pointing out some of the core issues.

Bitcoinget offers its freelancers to watch YouTube-videos for Bitcoin. On average the freelancer is paid 40 μBTC (0.00564 USD), per video watched trough the Bitcoinget-platform. While watching videos the freelancer adds 'views' to the viewed item on YouTube. The more views, the higher ranking within the Youtube-database, and therefore the higher chance of breaking free from the video-masses and attracting new viewers.

This 'pay people to vote'-strategy is rather simple, yet it proves efficient within a system structured around a database. One could say that Bitcoinget hacks the database of Youtube by 'artificially' modifying values and changing hierarchies. Additionally Bitcoinget further reveals some underlying structures supporting my thesis:

  • There is a very measurable value of each act performed within the interface, which is expressed trough the minuscule 'salaries' of the freelancer.
  • The act of paying people to modify a database underlines the value of it. Database is king.
  • Whether the Bitcoinget freelancer consents with the video or has any sort of affection towards it, does not count. The act of changing a numeric value does. There is a clear notion of futility apparent here.


Options and experiments which could amount to an actual project:

  • Investigating the systems which purposefully hack the database for profit and the laborers relation to such:
  • A two-sided-production: letting people perform a task which outputs two types of products, one being the initial motivator for the person engaging in the task, the other a product valuable to the task-giver (inspiration from reCAPTCHA).
Practically this could be offering free WIFI with the trade-off of doing certain tasks in certain intervals: reconfirm activity before kicked from network, a physical activity - lift computer up and down, blow on the screen. etc. how far can I push people before resistance and questioning is met? How much personal information can I get in exchange for 'free' wifi?
  • participate in platform: do click tasks/watch videos etc. describe work that i do, how much can money can i accumulate in a days work? Etc
  • A keystroke/click-logger alarming clicks/strokes with pop-ups! CONGRATS YOU'VE REACHED 10000 CLICKS! again can i make people perform a hidden task?
  • Assembly-line thoughts: break down task in micro-tasks and make people do it for free.
  • Poster with: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy."
  • What slogans/company names etc are used to break down the borders between work and play?
'We are all in this together'
'We.Ourselves.And Us.'
  • Expose myself: offer people on the street to 'like' their Facebook profile for cents etc. and the other way around.
  • get banned from Google using old-school black-hat seo'ing - invisible text etc.
  • Start a fictive writers club for seo-ing: writing for the algorithm


Bibliography Deleuze/Foucault: Postscript on societies of control http://libcom.org/library/postscript-on-the-societies-of-control-gilles-deleuze
Pascal Gielen: The murmuring of the artistic multitude
Chris Anderson: The Long Tail (also performance by Mark Leckey) and Free (book)
Lawrence Lessig: Code v2.0
Trebor Scholz: DIGITAL LABOR (essay collection)
Tiziana Terranova (also featured in DIGITAL LABOR - term coined by her)
Karl Popper: 'The Open Society and Its Enemies'
Friedrich Hakey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek
'Dread Pirate Roberts': http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-interview-with-a-digital-drug-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/
Wired article: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/09/bitcoin-homeless/all/

https://www.mturk.com/mturk/searchbar?selectedSearchType=hitgroups&searchWords=frankfurt&minReward=0.00&x=0&y=0
http://florianschmidt.co/full_articles/ (met at the transmediale)
http://socialcloud.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/workshops/CrowdWork/
http://opensource.com/life/10/10/does-market-need-freedom-or-it-modern-sharecropping
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary
http://mondediplo.com/openpage/abracadabra-you-re-a-part-timer
http://baggrund.com/crowdsourcing-er-udnyttelsens-skalkeskjul/
http://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-graeber
the panopticon: http://cartome.org/foucault.htm
Crowdsourcing volunteers: http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2012/10/14/wanted-skilled-volunteers-to-change-the-world/
Thomas Friedman: the world is flat & the 4-hour work-week



Influential work:

Multiple works by Andrew Norman Wilson: amongst google scan-ops
Harun Farocki: Workers leaving the factory & INEXTINGUISHABLE FIRE (see end)


PREVIOUS DESCRIPTIONS

Worklog:
Think of experiments to commence, opening op the practical aspect of the project.
These could be online based - forum supported, chat-based or similar. These could also take a physical manifestation: eg physical micro tasking - working towards a coherent 'piece of work'

Preliminary project proposal

My work and research at the Piet Zwart Institute by large concerns it self with various forms of digital and precarious labor and its bordering areas such as user-generated content, the notion of the crowd, professionalism and amateurism. It takes into consideration the rapid expansion of computational and 'web'-access across the globe, often looked upon as the liberation of the individual and the equilibrium of humankind. Questioning this utopia I seek to look upon this relatively new technology not only as a tool enhancing freedom and equality but also as a tool of oppression and exploitation, depending on how it is wielded.

With a bachelor degree in graphic and interactive design, I find the vantage point for my research within these fields. I look at how the practice of design is changing, ranging from the 'coming of armatures', the freedom of freelancers, to larger professional design agencies. Within my first year of study I've engaged intensely in researching online platforms offering design on a crowd-sourced basis. Following indented paragraphs coherently describes my observations and critique on this specific topic. (feel free to skim)

Previous related research
"Squadhelp.com - Helping you to tap into the collective wisdom of thousands of experts across the globe. The best part is that all these experts compete against each other for your project like a contest by actually doing the work for you. So it's more of a game where experts play to win, rather than boring work, sparking creativity you could never imagine." (promo-video, Squadhelp.com)
Often critically referred to as 'logo-mills', the majority of this type of platforms provide a system for individuals or companies to offer design-related jobs. Presented as an 'open contest' the job is released to a crowd of platform users signed up as designers.
Contest awards ranges widely (usually from 100$ to 500$) depending on the characteristics and scale of the job. The submitted designs enters the collected pool of proposals, in most cases publicly visible. Each proposals is rated by the contest-holder, mostly using stars, hearts or other 'like'-symbols, though s/he also has the option to write comments, rendering it simplistically clear for the designers to consider adjustments in their submitted proposal.
Encouraged by this structure, individual designers enter fierce competition against each other. Inspiration edges towards plagiarism, creating a sour, hostile environment. This is all to the productive benefit of the contest-holder since thousands proposals are being generated freely, of which the preferred five-star proposals, constantly are being refined by the eager crowd, at the expense of the battered individual squashed beneath the ever higher reaching mass.
As a winner eventually is chosen, the payout (deducted substantial transaction and commission fees) leaves the lucky one victorious; s/he has conquered the glorified bounty, s/he has won the race. Accompanying the almost symbolic monetary award is most often a virtual trophy adorning the profile of the winner: a PNG-medal, a 'LVL UP', an extra ten points in PhotoShop-skills.
Wrapped these the dazzling cloaks of gamification the platforms promises the individual designer a star-like status, creative exposure and expansion of the vital network.
The excitement of winning seems to overshadow the fact, that the salary per-hour-ratio is diminishing. Especially taken into consideration that hardly every competition you enter is won by you. All the losers, the actual crowd, is left unpaid, yet they frantically cling on, in hope to win the logo-lottery. The posing, hard-trying, day-laborers are all inspected, the ones who manages to stand out (or stand upon the others) are picked out, used, worn down, and thrown back into the willing crowd, where the next strong individual is ready to replace and replenish the 'cliental' needs.
The core themes in my research within this field, revolves around the illusion of promised freedom, the empowerment or on the other hand the total exploitation of the individual, and the fine line in-between. The post-industrial worker finds himself in flux between various environments and types of activities - on one hand offering refreshing change, on the other the pitfall of flexpolation - a term coined by 'flexibility' and 'exploitation'. Further complicating the issue is the question of resistance. Is it possible to unite the crowd, when the crowd is no longer locally centralized but in fact individuals spread across the globe? Can you find a common stand, when interests and individual circumstances do not have anything in common? In platforms such as Squadhelp.com, 99designs.com, DesignCrowd.com amongst other the crowd has been efficiently dispersed. Passively each peer awaits the next existential battle, all aspiring to take home the promised prize.

In my graduction project I intend to keep focus on emerging forms of digital labor. As of now I've addressed the design-field, but I wish to broaden this perspective to other areas. This might bring new observations and opinions forth leading to an awesome project!!!
Currently I have no specific approach or particular field of work that I want to explore, but I have multiple options and I wish to pursuit before converging upon a specific direction. Some of these directions are bullet-pointed out beneath.


  • SEO (search engine optimization)
Keyword-fiction
deception and cloaking
clicking 'up' sites
  • Click-ranking (extends bullet from above)
You-Tube Hitters (bitcoin Get)
  • 'Database-aggregators'
Fill in
Scan
Scrape
  • Captcha
Captcha-bending


Modes of work – click vs thinking or both? ….......

What characterizes this kinds of jobs While the outcome of all the jobs intends to reach a more or less specific group of persons, the path trough which it reaches the human-being is all tunneled trough a database.
Any YouTube video will rise in the database-hierarchy for each 'view' it receives. The more views, the more chance for exposure and breakthrough. Thus the job for the person who is paid to give 'views' is of a rather simple character – s/he merely becomes a database-manipulator jobbing to promote certain database objects without any emotional or relational bonds attached.
The database-aggregator who's objective is to fill in new entries in the database, expands the options and potential for analysis by each entry. Yet s/he is not capable of performing any analysis since s/he cannot access the database (of course not always the case), but only contribute to the pool.
The products of the SEO-worker implemented in a clients website, does not get consumed by any person directly, rather it's intended to reach the spider of the search engine which, hopefully will rank it higher. Deceivingly the point is to promote the website 'behind the facade', a form of very indirect promotion, which then leaves the meaning of the workers outcome quite questionable.

What is interesting (and critical) about this type of work is the I/O-simplicity that it consists of. In many cases the job is much more suited in an automated computational process rather than a human. Yet within the system certain things require 'human-authentication' to be performed, the YouTube-viewer needs to be human despise the level of disinterest s/he expresses. The fiction-writing of the SEO-worker seams pointless, since only the algorithm will get to it, and as a broader question; do these kinds of jobs contribute with anything productive?



LINKS AND REFS.:

Project-Proposal-Archive


https://www.mturk.com/mturk/searchbar?selectedSearchType=hitgroups&searchWords=frankfurt&minReward=0.00&x=0&y=0 http://florianschmidt.co/full_articles/ (met at the transmediale) http://socialcloud.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/workshops/CrowdWork/ http://opensource.com/life/10/10/does-market-need-freedom-or-it-modern-sharecropping http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary http://mondediplo.com/openpage/abracadabra-you-re-a-part-timer http://baggrund.com/crowdsourcing-er-udnyttelsens-skalkeskjul/ Deleuze/Foucault Postscript on societies of control: http://libcom.org/library/postscript-on-the-societies-of-control-gilles-deleuze http://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-graeber the panopticon: http://cartome.org/foucault.htm Crowdsourcing volunteers: http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2012/10/14/wanted-skilled-volunteers-to-change-the-world/ Catchafire Their keywords are: experiences, efficiency and optimization. Thomas Friedman: the world is flat & the 4-hour work-week


Bio-politics: the murmuring of the artistic multitude (book) http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2011/09/18/book-review-the-murmuring-of-the-artistic-multitude-global-art-memory-and-post-fordism/

This logic gravitates ideologically around terms such as creativity, flexibility, authenticity, an open project oriented spirit, a focus on ideas (knowledge), communication and the dynamic of psychic and social relations. Also, the condition of contemporary labour increasingly resembles the precariousness and dependability of ‘the life of the artist,’ as well as the diffusion of ‘work-time’ and ‘free-time’ (see image above). Furthermore, it is not necessarily the quality of the particular result (the work), but the personal character and ‘learned’ skills of the producer that renders the value of the (potential) outcome. Hence, according to Virno, the necessity of an extensive and invasive biopolitics (21).

HOT100

What is also shared by the artists and the immaterial workers of the new economy, is the combination of both over-supply and lack of demand, which obviously generates a dynamic of a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude on the side of the investors and employers, and a necessity to comply on the side of the ‘worker,’ albeit an often cynical compliance. For example, one of the lecturers present advised us not to use the term ‘artist’ when describing ourselves to potential investors, but rather to use a term like ‘branding strategists.’

Thus I came face to face with the tendencies Gielen discusses, the de-differentiation of specialized subsystems, the integration and diffusion of art, business models, design, governmental PR, technology, media and so on.

his problem is no longer how to shield a formalist art from the vulgar culture industry but how to find a niche were the necessary complicity of art, media, economy and culture can be exploited. For it creates the opportunity for an art that is finally freed from its elitist guild, theorized for example in Sartre’s What is Literature?.

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