So it was never my intention for this to turn into a blog on globalization but more a blog about the ‘state of the internet’ itself.
The concept of time is something we have created and it drives many of our lives, time management is considered an important skill and despite the best efforts of many wanna be scientists no one has managed to create a working time-travel capable Delorean.
The internet however does offer potential for us to capture and harness other peoples ‘free time’ for our own productivity. There are millions of ‘Making money online’ schemes some are legitimate but most involve luring people to ads or a combination of pyramid type referral schemes that promise you’ll get rich if you recruit a certain amount of people.
Amazon.com’s Amazing Turk is a great online marketplace where you can essentially buy someone else’s spare time and have them work for you. Think about it you could theoretically contract out your homework, essays, presentations by creating Human Intelligence Tasks and have them available for competitive bidding. While the prospect of earning $2.00 might now appeal to a high browed American for those in developing countries $2.00 can be a lot of money.
So the question is, is it possible to copy this type of approach to the real world, think about the large proportion of people in the workforce who will soon be retiring, the value of their time will decrease significantly compared to those still working so if only we could recruit more of them to join Amazon Turk or a more practical offline version?
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