<nettime> Fwd: IOCOSE (2012) - A Crowded Apocalypse

[paolo - IOCOSE <contact@iocose.org>]

This is the email Mark just replied to
(we didn't notice nettime was not receiving, sorry)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: paolo - IOCOSE <contact@iocose.org>
Date: 2 July 2012 09:42
Subject: Re: <nettime> IOCOSE (2012) - A Crowded Apocalypse
To: Newmedia@aol.com


Hi Mark,
thank you for your email

yes these are definitely interesting questions. we don't necessarily
believe there are no 'real' conspiracies any more, but is definitely true
that the multiplication of theories that can now be found online (in form
of youtube videos, or blogs) is undermining the respectability of the few
actual investigations. We liked the idea, however, of combining a form of
work, such as crowdsourcing, where the reasons and motives behind the job
are not known and not asked, to produce conspiracy theories, which are
never complete (otherwise they would be provable, and deniable).

Which, as you say, brings to the question of sort of environment
crowdsourcing is, and how does it frame its employers and employees. Amazon
Mechanical Turk defines itself as 'artificial artificial intelligence',
suggesting that crowdsourcing is an activity where human cognitive ability
is applied to a pure mechanical (and quantifiable) work.

Questions which have not really been asked so far. We have been left with
the enthusiastic narratives about crowdsourcing (Wired magazine, for
example, has contributed to this a few years ago), and yet we have failed
to acknowledge that crowdsourcing is now something quite different from
what we hoped and imagined.

Best,


On 29 June 2012 13:50, <Newmedia@aol.com> wrote:

> **
> IOCOSE:
>
> > Hope you'll find this interesting.
>
> Fascinating!
 <...>

-- 
paolo - IOCOSE
http://iocose.org


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org