Felix Stalder’s article The Front-End and Back-End of the Social Web attempts to expose the current framework and operations of the social web. He addresses two very different sides of what we the users have come to know as a social cyberspace. One side is the front end. It’s the part of the social web most of us are familiar with, the interface or product. The back end is made up of everything that goes into constructing and running the programs that the average person uses. In other words, it’s the behind the scenes of the social web. Stalder provides examples of how the back end has, and is, shaping the way we use the internet. He uses the example of crowdsourcing to highlight how the back end of businesses may take advantage of user generated content, however it doesn’t always have to be a deceitful practice.
Life in a Day is one of my favorite documentaries. It’s an experimental film, compiled entirely of YouTube videos that were created and submitted on July 24th 2010,
by users from all over the world. The business model, or at least, how the film was organized, follows the model described by Stalder as crowdsourcing. The film was produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin MacDonald. They are the back end, responsible for providing the platform for the content, however, instead of using their powers to turn a profit they use them to create art (and probably somewhere along the line turn a profit).
Life in a Day is an incredibly powerful film and it’s crowdsourcing at it’s finest (if you haven’t seen it, you can watch the film for free on YouTube, just click on the link at the bottom). Web 2.0 has now made it possible for a single editor with a computer to make a successful feature film and it’s pretty incredible at that.
Everyone does a little and no one does a lot. The practice of crowdsourcing can have just as many (if not more) pros than it can cons, it all depends on the who, what, when, where and why.Large scale collaborative projects definitely have an ability to produce innovative and creative works of art or modes of communication that otherwise would be impossible. What are some of the other amazing things we can achieve using the social web and crowdsourcing?
I chose crowdsourcing as the topic for my final paper because it's such an interesting new development for getting the work of front-end users out into the world. When i first became familiar with crowd funding websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, I didn't think much of the real world ramifications of such things; I thought of them as great tools for filmmakers and musicians trying to raise money for the sake of creativity, but it's so much more than that. Crowdfunding has also amassed enormous contributions for disaster relief all over the world, but the term "crowdsourcing" has much deeper connotations than just raising money. The documentary you talk about is the result of crowdsourcing, as is the plethora of open-source software available to programmers today, thanks to operating systems like Linux. Even user-generated works, when complied to create something bigger, can be considered crowdsourcing thanks to the creative commons license.
ReplyDeleteJust as Rogan mentioned, I believe that platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are examples of how powerful crowdsourcing can be. I read an article (http://mashable.com/2013/10/23/equity-crowdfunding/) the other day about how crowdsource funding may influence the future of start up companies. If you think about it, crowdsource funding offers some benefits for startup companies that targeting investors do not. If a startup company is able to successfully raise money through crowdsource funding platforms, the startup company is able to both gauge the need and relevance of its idea AND raise funds to the pursue the idea. When startup companies target traditional investors, the need and relevance of the product is gauged by a few individuals or companies. In this way, crowdsource funding may improve the failure rate of startup companies by allowing them to measure how relevant a large population feels the product is before pursuing its development.
ReplyDeleteI think social networking is in itself a form of crowdsourcing. We have created this whole universe online. We have a life on these social networking sites. We have homes, we have links, and we have communication. We would not have any of this if we did not have other people to share it with. What would Pinterest be if we just uploaded our own pictures, or YouTube if we just only had our own videos. We have created these communities online. We have even created our own societies. Societies with rules and norms. These social networking sites would be pretty bland and boring if we did not subconsciously and consciously collaborate to make them. You kind find pictures from across the globe or status about revolutions going on in other parts of the country. You can also find someone’s ranting about the last episode of breaking bad to pictures from someone’s 21st birthday. Web 2.0 is crowdsourcing.
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