Technology and society: The old idea of human computers, who work together to perform tricky tasks, is making a comeback
The Economist December, 3, 2011 from the print edition
IT WAS late summer 1937, and the recovery from the Depression had stalled. American government officials had stimulus money to spend but, with winter looming, there were few construction projects to fund. So the officials created office posts instead. One project was assigned to a floor of a dusty old New York industrial building, not far from Times Square. It would eventually house 300 computers—humans, not machines.
The computers crunched through the calculations necessary to create mathematical tables, then an indispensable reference tool for many scientists. The calculations were complex and the computers, drawn largely from the ranks of New York’s poor, possessed only basic numeracy. So the mathematicians in charge of the project worked out how to break each calculation down into simple operations, the outcomes of which could be combined to give a final result.
It was a technique that had been employed for decades across America and Europe. The field of human computing even had its own journal and trade-union representation. Computing offices calculated ballistics trajectories, processed census statistics and charted the course of comets. They would continue to do so until the 1960s, when electronic computers became cheap enough to consign the profession to history.
Until recently, that is. Over the past few years, human computing has been reborn. The new generation of human computers carry out different tasks, but they mirror their predecessors in many other ways. They are being drafted in to perform tasks that computers cannot. They are employed in large numbers and are organised into streamlined workflows. And, as was the case in the age before electronic computers, their output is combined to generate results that could not easily be produced in any other way.
In one proof-of-principle experiment, published earlier this year, human computers were used to create encyclopedia entries. Like performing mathematical calculations, this is a skilled job, but one that can be broken down into simpler parts, such as initial research, writing and editing. Aniket Kittur and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania created software, known as CrowdForge, that manages the process. It hands out tasks to online workers, which it contacts via Mechanical Turk, an outsourcing website run by Amazon. The workers send their work back to CrowdForge, which combines their output to produce surprisingly readable results.
Several American start-ups are operating similar workflows. CastingWords breaks audio files down into five-minute segments and farms each out to a transcriber. Each transcription is automatically bounced back to other workers for checking and, once deemed good enough, an (electronic) computer combines the segments and returns the finished product to the customer. At CloudCrowd a similar system is used to co-ordinate teams of human translators. Others are combining human and artificial intelligences. An app called oMoby, produced by IQ Engines, can identify objects in images snapped by iPhone users. First it applies object-recognition software, which may not be able to cope if the lighting is poor or the image was captured from an unusual angle. When that happens, the image is sent to a human analyst. Either way, the user gets an answer in half a minute or so.
Much more is to come. In old-fashioned computing offices, workflows were co-ordinated by senior staff, often mathematicians, who had worked out how to deconstruct the complex calculations the computers were tackling. Now silicon foremen such as CrowdForge oversee human computers. These algorithms, which co-ordinate workers by plugging into Mechanical Turk and other online piecework platforms, are relatively new and are likely to get considerably more sophisticated. Researchers are, for example, creating software to make it easier to assign tasks to workers—or, to put it another way, to program humans.
Eric Horvitz, a researcher at Microsoft’s research labs in Redmond, Washington, has considered how such software could be put to use. He imagines a future in which algorithms co-ordinate an army of human workers, physical sensors and conventional computers. In the event of a child going missing, for example, an algorithm might assign some volunteers to search duties and ask others to examine CCTV footage for sightings. The system would also trawl local news reports for similar cases. These elements would be combined to create a cyborg detective.
This sounds terribly futuristic, and rather different to the pen-and-paper human computation of the 19th century. But David Alan Grier, a historian of computing at George Washington University in Washington, DC, thinks that the architects of the new systems could learn a lot by studying the old ones. He points out that Charles Babbage, the designer of an early mechanical computer, gave much thought to reducing the errors that human computers made. Babbage realised that duplicating tasks and comparing the results was not enough, because different workers tended to make the same mistakes. A better solution was to find different ways to perform the same calculation. If two methods produce the same answer, the result is much less likely to be flawed, Babbage reasoned.
There are many more such useful tips in the historical record, says Dr Grier. Human-computing pioneers also wrote a lot about how best to break a complex calculation into sub-tasks that are completely independent of each other, for example. “There are all sorts of hints in the old literature about what’s useful,” he says. He is often invited to human-computing conferences at which he likes to chide researchers for overlooking such lessons from this forgotten but intriguing early chapter of computer history.
More than just digital quilting
Technology and society: The “maker” movement could change how science is taught and boost innovation. It may even herald a new industrial revolution
Dec 3rd 2011 | from the print edition
THE scene in the park surrounding New York’s Hall of Science, on a sunny weekend in mid-September, resembles a futuristic craft fair. Booths displaying handmade clothes sit next to a pavilion full of electronics and another populated by toy robots. In one corner visitors can learn how to pick locks, in another how to use a soldering iron. All this and much more was on offer at an event called Maker Faire, which attracted more than 35,000 visitors. This show and an even bigger one in Silicon Valley, held every May, are the most visible manifestations of what has come to be called the “maker” movement. It started on America’s West Coast but is spreading around the globe: a Maker Faire was held in Cairo in October.
The maker movement is both a response to and an outgrowth of digital culture, made possible by the convergence of several trends. New tools and electronic components let people integrate the physical and digital worlds simply and cheaply. Online services and design software make it easy to develop and share digital blueprints.
And many people who spend all day manipulating bits on computer screens are rediscovering the pleasure of making physical objects and interacting with other enthusiasts in person, rather than online. Currently the preserve of hobbyists, the maker movement’s impact may be felt much farther afield.
Start with hardware. The heart of New York’s Maker Faire was a pavilion labelled with an obscure Italian name: “Arduino” (meaning “strong friend”). Inside, visitors were greeted by a dozen stands displaying credit-card-sized circuit boards. These are Arduino micro-controllers, simple computers that make it easy to build all kinds of strange things: plants that send Twitter messages when they need watering, a harp made of lasers, an etch-a-sketch clock, a microphone that serves as a breathalyser, or a vest that displays your speed when riding a bike.
Such projects are taking off because Arduino is affordable (basic boards cost $20), can easily be extended using add-ons called “shields” to add new functions and has a simple programming system that almost anyone can use. “Not knowing what you are doing is an advantage,” says Massimo Banzi, an Italian engineer and designer who started the Arduino project a decade ago to enable students to build all kinds of contraptions. Arduino has since become popular—selling around 200,000 units in 2011—because Mr Banzi made the board’s design “open source” (which means that anyone can download its blueprints and build their own versions), and because he has spent much time and effort getting engineers all over the world involved with the project.
This openness has prompted a sizeable ecosystem of add-ons. They include a touch-screen, an illuminated display and support for Wi-Fi networking. Other firms have built specialised variants of Arduino. SparkFun, for instance, has developed Lilypad, a flexible micro-controller that can be sewn into clothing (think blinking T-shirts), along with many other add-ons.
Applying the open-source approach to hardware has also driven the development of the maker movement’s other favourite piece of kit, which could be found everywhere at the Maker Faire in New York: 3D printers. These machines are another way to connect the digital and the physical realms: they take a digital model of an object and print it out by building it up, one layer at a time, using plastic extruded from a nozzle. The technique is not new, but in recent years 3D printers have become cheap enough for consumers. MakerBot Industries, a start-up based in New York, now sells its machines for $1,300. The output quality is rapidly improving thanks to regular upgrades, many of them suggested by users.
None of this action in hardware would have happened without a second set of powerful drivers: software, standards and online communities. Arduino, for instance, relies on open-source programs that turn simple code into a form that can be understood by the board’s brain. Similarly, MakerBot’s 3D printers depend on a standard way to describe physical objects, called STL, and affordable software to design them. Some basic modelling programs, such as Google SketchUp and Blender, can be downloaded free.
As for online communities, Arduino has an active forum on its website, while MakerBot runs a website called Thingiverse, which lets people share 3D designs. YouTube and other video-sharing sites offer how-to clips for almost everything. On Instructables, users post and discuss recipes to make and do all kinds of things. And then there is Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade goods, from hand-knitted scarves to 3D-printed jewellery.
The ease with which designs for physical things can be shared digitally goes a long way towards explaining why the maker movement has already developed a strong culture—its third driver. “If you are not sharing your designs, you are doing it wrong,” says Bre Pettis, the chief executive of MakerBot. Physical space and tools are being shared, too, in the form of common workshops. Some 400 such “hacker spaces” already operate worldwide, according to Hackerspaces.org. Many are organised like artists’ collectives. At Noisebridge, a hacker space in San Francisco, even non-members can come and tinker—as long as they comply with the group’s main rule: to be “excellent” to each other. “The internet is no substitute for a real community,” says Mitch Altman, a co-founder of Noisebridge.
This sort of thing makes the maker movement sound a lot like the digital equivalent of quilting bees. But it has already had a wider impact, mainly in schools in America. Many have discovered 3D printers and Arduino boards—and are using them to make their science and technology classes more hands-on again, and teach students to be producers as well as users of digital products.
All this will boost innovation, predicts Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make magazine, a central organ of the maker movement. Its tools and culture promote experimentation, collaboration and rapid improvement. Makers can play in niches that big firms ignore—though they are watching the maker movement and will borrow ideas from it, Mr Dougherty believes. The Maker Faire in New York was sponsored by technology companies including HP and Cognizant. Autodesk, which makes computer-aided design software, bought Instructables in August.
Firms may also copy some of the unusual business models that makers, often accidental entrepreneurs, have come up with. Arduino lets other firms copy its designs, for example, but charges them to use its logo. Quirky, an industrial design firm based in New York City, uses crowdsourcing to decide which products to make. MakieLab of London is developing a platform to allow toy shops or individuals to develop customised toys and have them printed. Venture capitalists are nosing around the field. In recent months Quirky raised $16m, MakerBot raised $10m and Shapeways, a firm that offers a 3D-printing service, received $5m.
The parallel with the hobbyist computer movement of the 1970s is striking. In both cases enthusiastic tinkerers, many on America’s West Coast, began playing with new technologies that had huge potential to disrupt business and society. Back then the machines manipulated bits; now the action is in atoms. This has prompted predictions of a new industrial revolution, in which more manufacturing is done by small firms or even by individuals. “The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit,” writes Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine.
It is easy to laugh at the idea that hobbyists with 3D printers will change the world. But the original industrial revolution grew out of piecework done at home, and look what became of the clunky computers of the 1970s. The maker movement is worth watching.
