The Brave New World of IoT
Interesting thoughts on the potential of crowdsourcing, I’m interested in learning more about its potential. Recently, I’ve read a few studies that suggest that crowdsourcing can be slightly unreliable, or doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes. Mostly, this relates to crowdsourcing for some kind of output, like metadata, but I believe there is some evidence to suggest that crowdsourcing can be intentionally manipulated and that social influences can play a larger role than originally thought in the outcomes.
Again we are faced with the who owns/handles the mountains of data issue. I think this may be the primary thread that runs through all the topics we have covered. On the one hand, this data is valuable, but on the other, it’s also costly to manage. At some point, we will have to grapple with the responsibilities that come with these systems, who has the rights, who has the responsibilities, and what are the paths to achieving trust and reliability. Honestly, this class had made me feel really uneasy about, what I view is, a collective apathy around this policy issue.
I wholeheartedly agree with your last statement, the future is coming whether we are ready for it or not. In fact, In many ways, it’s here.
You make some excellent points about the possible shortcomings of crowdsourcing. I suppose my somewhat pollyanna attitude about it is rooted in my experiences in the practical world. In my last agency job, I had the opportunity to work with a start-up company that was built on the idea of crowdsourcing capital to help pay for important local commercial real estate projects. The company, called Groundfloor (www.groundfloor.us) used the recent passage of the JOBS (Jumpstart our Business Startups) Act to clear SEC legal hurdles and offer regular citizens an opportunity to invest as little as $10 to help get new commercial real estate projects started in their own communities. They’re now in about 10 states and still growing. In this case, it’s clear that crowdsourcing is not only helping to bring some worthwhile projects to life, but also paying their investors much better interest rates than they could hope to earn from any bank.
Whether this same approach of crowdsourcing solutions to complex policy issues would work is probably a little unrealistic. Although I do think that some sort of network where people could share problems, ideas, and solutions would have some merit.












