Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Abstract

The Amazon Mechanical Turk is an online platform on which employers can post "Human Intelligence Tasks" (HITs) that are searched by prosumers looking for paid employment who select and perform these knowledge tasks with the help of their computers, submit the results, and then get paid."Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web service to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk website, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications.To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call: the application sends the request, and the service returns the results.Behind the scenes, a network of humans fuels this artificial artificial intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work" (mturk.comFAQs, accessed on November 23, 2007).The reward per task ranges between zero, a few cents (in most cases), and some dollars.One example of an HIT assignment is to determine the presence of opinion in a text article and submit the result, e.g., "Your task is to read the news article or blog post below and determine whether it is editorial in nature or is an expression of opinion, and whether it is positive, negative, or neutral" (mturk.com,accessed on November 23, 2007).Multiple users will input their results which will be used by the task assigner who aggregates and sells the results as a commodity.The example is characteristic for what Tapscott and Williams celebrate as Wikinomics -an online economy based on networking, peering, and collaboration.Sound like a good way for earning some money?The shadow side in which Tapscott and Williams are not interested, is that the remuneration is poor.In the example just cited, the reward is four cents for an estimated task time of 10 minutes, which results in a total hourly compensation of 24 cents if you repeatedly carry out similar tasks.Hence, this "new" economy of mass collaboration seems to support and advance an extremely flexible regime of accumulation that brings about precarious labour.In Critical Theory, representatives like Brecht, Benjamin, and Enzensberger argue that the prosumer brings about the emergence of an emancipatory collectivity in media production.The theme that unites these authors is the idea that collective media production by all, for all, is socialistic.Brecht (1932, p.64) contends that radio would advance public life if it were changed "over from distribution to communication.The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes.That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him.On this principle, the radio should step out of the supply business and organize its listeners as suppliers" (Brecht, 1932, pp.64 & 54).Walter Benjamin (1936, pp.39 & 28) argues that printed letters to the editors would anticipate a situation in which literary license has become a common property."Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character . . . .At any moment, the reader is ready to

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