Citizen Science and Grid Computing

japonicus writes "The Economist has an article summarizing the current state of distributed computing (think SETI@home and its ilk), which suggests that distributed-human projects are going to be the next big thing. (We discussed one such project, the Galaxy Zoo, a few months back.) The distributed-computing platform BOINC is about to expand to human processing. Distributed proofreaders have been a longstanding success (yet inexplicably failed to get even a mention in the article); but there are a lot of other projects waiting in the wings."

Comments

Micropayments for human labor to prevent boredom?

[compumike]

Sure, there are tasks that computers can't do so well at the moment, where giving the work parcels to humans would make the most sense. But can you imagine what micropayments might allow? It would enable a consistent set of trained, motivated workers to be stable over time, and dependable enough to use this kind of network for important activities.

Ultimately, humans get bored and computers don't. But humans can be delayed from boredom quite a bit by financial compensation.

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Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Re:My problem with grid computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Say is costs 10 cents a kilowatt hour for energy, your PC draws 200 watts on average, and it's on eight hours per day.

That's 58 dollars a year, saving about 117 by turning if off at night.

The expansion and contraction from the heating and cooling cycles ruin hardware.

I imagine that by thermal cycling it every day it will cost more money (with a long enough time frame) in destroyed hardware than the electricity you saved by powering it down.

Re:SETI...

[OriginalArlen]

The summary's right - Distributed Proofreaders was well before SETI and, having contributed to both, I can confidently state the my mental cycles contribution to PGDP was FAR more personally satisfying than the hours spent staring at SETI@Home's admittedly hypnotic display chugging away.