Matt of Wordpress refers to a Salon.com article about Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Apparently created back in 2005, it's an 'Artificial Artificial Intelligence' HIT (Human Intelligence Task) site that claims people are willing to pay you to compete in. It's a mad, mad, mad, world out there.
Amazon.com goes on to explain, "In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen's 'Turk' was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte."
Is this Amazon gadget (a turban-wearing Turk) another way to insult Turks and Turkishness, or does it actually elevate the purpose of the Turks, one of serving others' needs by performing per pay as instructed. More importantly, is it merely a circus act gone wild!
I wonder why Turkey has not banned Amazon.com? Or should Turkey ask for a percentage of the 10% Amazon collects from private parties who actually might fall for this thing?
From Business Week - The End Of Work As You Know It:"Techies aim to deconstruct the machinery of work even further into its component parts. Amazon.com (AMZN) is experimenting with a marketplace it created called Mechanical Turk. Companies parcel out small pieces of jobs online, such as transcribing podcasts and labeling photos, to people around the world. The workers, who often do it in lieu of watching TV or fooling around on MySpace, process the tasks for a few pennies per minute or photo. The work of all these 'Turkers' is reassembled into finished products, often within hours. In short, Amazon is creating an on-demand workforce for companies that can't afford to hire staff for such quick or ephemeral jobs."
