首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Crowdsourcing a Better World The crowdsourcing concept—collecting contributions from many individuals to achieve a goal—was
Crowdsourcing a Better World The crowdsourcing concept—collecting contributions from many individuals to achieve a goal—was
admin
2013-07-20
45
问题
Crowdsourcing a Better World
The crowdsourcing concept—collecting contributions from many individuals to achieve a goal—was being used long before Wikipedia. The National Audubon Society has been organizing people to do an annual count of all the birds in the Western hemisphere since Christmas Day, 1900. The Pilsbury Bake-Off— crowdsourcing for a commercial cause—is now 62 years old.
But online crowdsourcing is a relatively recent phenomenon, and the efficiencies it brings to communicating within a large group make it useful in many new ways. At catwalkgenius. com it is bringing together fashion designers and financial backers. At usertesting. com it provides feedback on why people leave your Web site. It connects musicians and their fans to help organize private concerts at owngig. com. Innocentive. com uses it to solve scientific and technological problems: companies stuck on a problem put it up on the site and offer a cash prize for a solution. But today, I’ll look at how crowdsourcing can help with something else: aggregating and organizing knowledge.
Typical Crowdsource Sites
Immediately after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors began to fail in Japan, people turned to official sources for information. What they heard were often bland (平淡乏味的)and vague assurances of safety. But people wanted specifics. They wanted to know the radiation levels in their areas, and did not trust the government sources. In response, several crowdsource sites sprang up to collect and map radiation levels in Japan and even on the west coast of the United States: rdtn. org, geigercrowd. net and japanstatus. com are three of them. These sites ask people with Geiger counters—and if you happen to not own one, they tell you where to buy one—to measure radiation levels and send the information to their site. They aggregate and map the responses.
One prototype for this kind of crowdsourcing is Ushahidi.com. Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, was developed in Kenya in 2008 to map numerous reports of post-election violence. Ory Okolloh, a blogger, simply asked her readers-. "Guys looking to do something: Any techies out there willing to do a mash up of where the violence and destruction is occurring using Google Maps?"
A few days later, Kenyans had a Web site that allowed people to text or e-mail reports and see them plotted on a Google map of the country. It became useful not only for rapid intervention, but—as the name suggests—to document the deaths, injuries and destruction when virtually all other media were blacked out.
Since then, Ushahidi, led until recently by Okolloh, has become as ubiquitous (普遍存在的)in a disaster as the Red Cross. Just two hours after the earthquake in Haiti, Ushahidi set up a Haiti site and an Ushahidi techie who was studying at Tufts University in Massachusetts worked with a student group to organize 300 volunteers. Haitian radio stations told their listeners to text 4636 with their reports, which thousands of Creole-speaking volunteers in the US instantly translated. Any report that required action— about or from a trapped person, for example—was mapped by the volunteers and sent to rescuers.
Ushahidi has tracked reports of election fraud in Mexico, damage caused by the Gulf oil spill and critical shortages of important medicines at public health clinics in Uganda. During Washington’s Snowmageddon last winter, Ushahidi was used to map obstacles like stuck cars and toppled trees. The idea was not to just give information to official work crews, but to allow ordinary citizens to organize themselves. Anyone with a shovel (铁锹)and a strong back could check the map for a site nearby and go. It has since been used in snow emergencies in other cities, including New York.
The Operations of Crowdsourcing Online and in Journalism
How can you be sure the information on a crowdsource site is trustworthy? Well, you can’t. But Ushahidi is taking a stab at vetting (审查)its data through, of course, crowdsourcing. Its Swift River project aggregates and plots on maps not only data sent or texted to Ushahidi, but combines it with data from Twitter, YouTube and other sources. When data comes in, anyone can rate it for trustworthiness. The higher the rating it gets, the more prominently it is displayed.
Crowdsourcing can aggregate ideas as well as data. The California-based design firm Ideo has a site called openideo. com, which posts various challenges: How can we get people to register to be bone-marrow donors? How can we use cell phones to improve maternal health in poor countries? How can we get kids more interested in eating fresh food? Each challenge has a financial sponsor: a group interested in solving the problem—the kids and food challenge, for example, was sponsored by British chef and healthy food crusader (改革者)Jamie Oliver.
The process collects random ideas from the public, winnows (筛选)them down by theme and then asks readers to refine the ideas. The public then votes. Jamie Oliver’s organization has launched a project with OpenlDEO, an initiative to help working people cook more. But this was not one of the winning ideas. "People want to be thought of as something other than a source of money. They want to be thought of as creative, thinking people," said Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. "It’s not hard to contribute ideas, but the question is how helpful it is."
Crowdsourcing is also, of course, frequently used in journalism. Many media organizations now turn to readers for their experiences and for reporting help, but few do so as consistently and productively as ProPublica, a nonprofit group that produces investigative journalism that is published in media around the country, including in The Times. ProPublica’s Distributed Reporting Project has asked for information and tips from people affected by a variety of issues, including the Gulf oil spill and the mortgage and loan crisis. A request for information from people who had tried to modify their home loans brought some 3 000 responses, said Amanda Michel, ProPublica’s director of online engagement. Those contacted were asked to document their claims. ProPublica was aware its sample was far from random, but that wasn’t the aim. "We can take a much more subtle and granular (粒状的)look at complex processes by learning about the experiences of several thousand people," said Michel. "We’re not relying on a government official to tell us what is the average bad experience. "
Readers can not only provide information to reporters about their own experiences, they can be reporters. For example, for its Stimulus Spot Check, ProPublica recruited readers to "rummage (翻找)around on the state’s Department of Transportation Web site and make several follow-up calls over the next week" to see how some 500 road and bridge projects were doing. They were given instructions on how to find out whether projects had been started, which companies had the contracts and how many jobs were produced. Although the Obama adminstration touted the summer of 2009 as "the summer of stimulus", the resulting story, published on August 18, 2009, reported that two thirds of the projects would be starting in the fall instead, and that states with very high unemployment tended to be moving more slowly than others.
For all their novelty, crowdsourcing projects like these will only have a connection to a small numbers of readers’ lives. Many people’s impulse to better the world around them is usually satisfied by giving money. Crowdsourcing offers ways to do that, as well—but in ways that may offer donors more impact and a stronger connection to the social change happening on the ground.
The Swift River project combines the data Ushahidi received with data from other sources in order to
选项
A、display its data in various media
B、check the trustworthiness of the data
C、work together with other Web sites
D、make its data accessible to netizens
答案
B
解析
细节推断题。由定位句可知,Ushahidi正在尝试审查通过“众包”所得到的数据。它的Swift River方案聚集并绘制所收到的数据,而且将它与来自Twitter,YouTube和其他信息源的数据结合起来。结合首句可知,本段主要说明“众包”网站信息的可信度问题,由此可以推断出Swift River方案把自己收到的数据与来自其他信息源的数据结合起来的目的是检验数据的可靠性。故选B)。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/Wan7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
The2000decennialcensusaimsatobtainingtheexactnumberofpopulationaswellasabetterpictureoftheextentofintermar
The2000decennialcensusaimsatobtainingtheexactnumberofpopulationaswellasabetterpictureoftheextentofintermar
The2000decennialcensusaimsatobtainingtheexactnumberofpopulationaswellasabetterpictureoftheextentofintermar
The2000decennialcensusaimsatobtainingtheexactnumberofpopulationaswellasabetterpictureoftheextentofintermar
Theconceptofobtainingfreshwaterfromicebergsthataretowedtopopulatedareasandaridregionsoftheworldwasoncetrea
Theconceptofobtainingfreshwaterfromicebergsthataretowedtopopulatedareasandaridregionsoftheworldwasoncetrea
Theconceptofobtainingfreshwaterfromicebergsthataretowedtopopulatedareasandaridregionsoftheworldwasoncetrea
随机试题
(2012年第20题)关于共产主义理想实现的必然性,马克思主义除了从社会形态更替规律上作了一般性的历史观论证外,还通过对资本主义社会的深入实证的剖析,科学地论证了
患者,女,30岁。间断下腹痛伴腹泻2年,每日排便4-6次,为糊状便。偶见脓血,便后疼痛可自然缓解。无里急后重。结肠镜检查见肠黏膜血管纹理模糊、充血水肿,部分黏膜粗糙,呈细颗粒状。该患者腹泻的机制主要是
身热,微恶风,汗少。肢体痰重,头昏重胀痛,鼻流浊涕,胸闷,泛恶,小便短赤,舌苔薄白而腻,脉濡。其证候是
患者,女,45岁。厌食2年,腰背痛3年多,诊断双侧泌尿系结石2年。X线检查示全身多处骨骼密度减低,腰椎多发压缩骨折。患者经CT检查发现右侧甲状旁腺占位病变,同时右侧股骨远端稍膨胀,内见囊性骨质破坏.则右股骨远端改变最可能的诊断为
A.射干麻黄汤B.定喘汤C.六君子汤D.玉屏风散E.肾气丸哮喘5~6年,近日复发,症见气粗息涌,咳呛阵作,喉中哮鸣,胸高肋胀,烦闷不安,汗出,口渴喜饮,面赤口苦,咳痰色黄或色白,黏浊稠厚,咯吐不利,舌质红,苔黄腻,脉滑数。其治疗宜首选
按寸口脉分候脏腑,左关脉可候()
股份变动及上市公告,须在交易所对上市申请文件审查同意后,且所配股票上市前()个工作日内刊登。
下列关于代理政策性银行业务的说法,不正确的是()。
《中华人民共和国物权法》第179条规定:“为担保债务的履行,债务人或者第三人不转移财产的占有,将该财产抵押给债权人的,债务人不履行到期债务或者发生当事人约定的实现抵押权的情形,债权人有权就该财产优先受偿。前款规定的债务人或者第三人为抵押人,债权人为抵押权
A、Becausesheisill.B、Becauseshelostherjob.C、Becausesheisnotateacher.D、Becauseshegetsanotherjob.BM:Mary,have
最新回复
(
0
)