Lesson plan
Crowd computing
Crowd computing is a form of distributed work where tasks that are hard for computers to do, are handled by large numbers of humans distributed across the internet. It is an overarching term encompassing tools that enable idea sharing, non-hierarchical decision making and utilization of "cognitive surplus" - the ability of the world's population to collaborate on large, sometimes global projects. Crowd computing combines elements of crowdsourcing, automation, distributed computing, and machine learning. Prof. Rob Miller of MIT further defines crowd computing as “harnessing the power of people out in the web to do tasks that are hard for individual users or computers to do alone. Like cloud computing, crowd computing offers elastic, on-demand human resources that can drive new applications and new ways of thinking about technology.”
Article summary
Crowd computing is a form of distributed work where tasks that are hard for computers to do, are handled by large numbers of humans distributed across the internet. It is an overarching term encompassing tools that enable idea sharing, non-hierarchical decision making and utilization of "cognitive surplus" - the ability of the world's population to collaborate on large, sometimes global projects. Crowd computing combines elements of crowdsourcing, automation, distributed computing, and machine learning. Prof. Rob Miller of MIT further defines crowd computing as “harnessing the power of people out in the web to do tasks that are hard for individual users or computers to do alone. Like cloud computing, crowd computing offers elastic, on-demand human resources that can drive new applications and new ways of thinking about technology.”
Key claims
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.