https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
The magazine article that frames the neologism
http://www.crowdsourcing.com
The tag 'crowdsourcing' as a platform for development
Jeff Howe:
'May 27, 2006
'Birth of a Meme
"A lot can happen in a week. Nine days ago Scott Laine, a colleague of mine in the New York office of Wired snapped this shot off his browser:
"At that time, Google returned three hits from a search for "crowdsourcing." One linked back to the Web site created by the illustrator on the story, James Jean. Another linked to an interview with Steve Silberman, a fellow contributing editor at the magazine. The third linked to a comment by VC Steve Jurvetson.
"Sending me the Websnap, Scott said I'd want it as a historical document. I was skeptical: The June issue of Wired had just hit the stands, and while I was proud of the story, I hardly expected the explosion of interest that quickly followed. A google search now produces 182,000 returns.
"The volume of mentions is less significant than the nature of those mentions: "crowdsourcing" now has its own Wikipedia entry, and seems to have been adopted by Valleywag as a euphemism for click-slavery. And if we need yet more evidence that the cycle of adoption to commercialization to satirization has hit light speed, Supr.c.ilio.us gives the term new meaning in this entry. As mentions of crowdsourcing really only picked up steam this past Thursday, I'd estimate the lifespan of this particular cycle at 48 hours.
"Fortunately, the subject is receiving more serious treatment as well. I'm going offline for a few days for a much-needed fly-fishing trip in British Columbia, where I've come to work on my next Wired story. Next week I'll cover a few of the blogs and Web sites that are exploring crowdsourcing concepts in greater earnestness. There's nothing wrong with a buzzword if it actually signifies a meaningful trend or development; it's my belief crowdsourcing does just that."
(((Like Jeff Howe, I also believe that "crowdsourcing" is indeed a useful neologism. That's because "crowdsourcing" names part of the same elephant as "Long Tail," "Invisible Tail," "collective intelligence," "folksonomy," "search and publish/publish and search," "attention economy," "collaborative web filters," "architecture of participation" and "commons-based peer-production," among other such. New terminology is boiling out of this realm of activity practically every day now. It is being created because there is a pressing and demonstrable need for it.)))
(((I could spend all day trying to explain how Jeff Howe's "crowdsourcing" has a different structure than "commons-based peer production." This would be no mere academic hairsplitting, either. You see, it's like mapping the mountains and finding two seams of gold. In one, a bunch of hairy-bearded *NIX prospectors are standing hip-deep in the water panning for lumps of gold, while in the other, Three Initial Corporation is data-mining vast spoilage heaps of almost-useless rubble.... I could go on. Others most certainly will.)))
(((If you want to know why "crowdsourcing" matters, ask yourself why WIRED editor Chris Anderson has a really good "Long Tail" idea and immediately starts a Long-Tail website, and why WIRED contributing editor Jeff Howe has a really good "Crowdsourcing" idea and immediately starts a Crowdsourcing website. These guys are professional journalists. They know how to find out about stuff and get it published. But they're crowdsourcing their research. And that approach works.)))
(((I myself ended up doing that, more or less by accident,
when I finally figured out that "ubiquitous computation" was just too big an idea to think about all by myself. If I had more on the ball as an industry journalist, I'd likely start up "sustainablespime.com," your one-stop web-shop for all things ubiquitous. But I'm a novelist. So if I stuck to one good tech idea, where would I put my mordant wisecracks, travel snapshots, art weirdness, flarf poetics and Bollywood obsessions? That sacrifice is just too much to ask of the likes of me.)))
(((After spending some years here in blogdom, I'm increasingly sure now that blogs are not a literary means of expression. By their nature, blogs are platforms for tech development. That is their "intrinsic advantage." Even if some blogs emit books ("blooks"), blogs are not about books. Blogs are about long tails, invisible
tails, architectures of participation, commons-based
peer production and crowdsourcing. Blogs by their semantic
nature are aggregative mini-Internets. Even if run by theorists, blogs don't produce "theories" but "theory objects." If you don't believe me quite yet, well, just wait and see. The elephant is marching out of the haze, and soon we will see it revealed in its full, stark, hairy, mammoth proportions.)))
