Free Choice Blog

I just finished reading Chapter 7 of Now You See It, and I must say that this chapter has been my favorite so far. I’m really intrigued by the idea of crowd sourcing and mass collaboration, and Davidson’s account of visiting Wikipedia’s offices made me wonder why group collaboration doesn’t play a bigger role in modern society. If a small team of only 35 people can manage and produce a valuable research site like Wikipedia, then why aren’t others collaborating on a larger scale to find the solutions to our world’s most pressing problems, like trying to put an end to all the poverty and hunger that exists? Why are great minds collaborating on stupid things like FarmVille instead of tackling social issues and all the injustices in the world?
I was watching the news the other night, and they had a story about this pretty cool website called Quirky.com, which prides itself on helping people bring their product ideas to market via group collaboration and crowd sourcing. Basically, if someone has an idea for a new product, they can go to Quirky.com and submit it to the Quirky community. Members of the community are known as “influencers” and if they like the new product idea, the influencers will do further market research and maybe even create a prototype. If a person’s idea is well-received, Quirky will even pay to have their product mass-produced and help the inventor sell it in national stores like Toys R Us or Walgreens. Quirky has been wildly successful because of it’s collaborative aspect, and it’s just yet another example of why I think crowd sourcing and mass collaboration need to play a bigger role in society. Doing something like developing an invention/product takes a ton of money and know-how, yet thanks to Quirky’s mass collaboration, it has become a rather easy process.
I think crowd sourcing is a fantastic way to make the world a better place, and I was trying to think of some other aspects of life where implementing this strategy would be beneficial. I decided that crowd sourcing could improve just about every aspect of life, from raising children to investing to teachers grading papers in school. If crowd sourcing has so many benefits, then why isn’t it more popular?