110,410

(Apparently I have not accepted that it *is* in fact 2011. Written today.)

When Neurons Fire

Thought process: Tuesday, 1151, 13JAN09

DESIRE: Ham sandwich on wheat, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes. Oatmeal raisin cookie, coffee (black). [Paid: debit card, music: DJ Shadow]

CONSUMED sandwich, stared at new iPhone, fascinated. Wondered how such an amazing device ever came about.

THOUGHT: “There are too many people in the world. Getting harder to shelter, feed, clothe, educate them all…”

(LOOKED back at my sandwich, THOUGHT about all the people who played a part in feeding me today. Without them, I’d still be hungry…

EMOTION: humility, gratitude. Posted thank you to Twitter. Unfortunately, my voice doesn’t carry very far.)

MEMORY: article: “I, Pencil“

THOUGHT: ‘crowdsourcing’, term first coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article. [Crowdsourcing: a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call.]

IDEA, SHORT STORY:
10 Child enters local fast food establishment, orders meal, gets free game.
20 Child solves game, returns game, awarded free meal and new puzzle.
30 Clerk takes game, downloads to larger machine.
40 Game ‘solution’ is tiny fragment of one of the World’s Problems.
50 Over time, child solves many puzzles, is awarded many games.
60 Child gains attention of benefactor (see also: silent partner, guardian.)
70 Benefactor quietly ensures child gets into good school, is taken care of.
80 Child flourishes, fulfills potential, becomes benefactor to next child.
90 GOTO 10.

REALITY: ‘ESP Game’, an idea in computer science for addressing the problem of creating difficult metadata. The idea behind the game is to use the computational power of humans to perform a task that computers cannot yet do (originally, image recognition) by packaging the task as a game. (Originally conceived by Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University)

SEE ALSO: Google Image Labeler

Train of thought: derailed, 1201 (Probably cause: shiny object, thoughts of sex, good song, etc.)