Recycled Time?

It is a self evident and commonly accepted truth that we live in a world with scarce resources. Much of humanity lacks access to potable water, sustainable sources of food and energy, etc. However with all of these physical resources in mind, the scarcest resource is not one of them. The scarcest resource is time itself. Due to the fact that time cannot be replaced or replenished, makes it the scarcest resource of all.
Copyright: Ed Gregory/ Pexels

But does not mean there is cause to cry over "lost time" whenever we consider the massive amounts of time that we spend doing regular mundane activities on the Internet for work or play.

By using reCAPTCHA, individuals are able to in essence, recycle time in the sense that the small amount of time spent on each reCAPTCHA. According to a TED Talk headed by Luis von Ahn, around 200 million CAPTCHA's are typed everyday on a global scale. In theory, this amounts to humanity collectively wasting roughly 500,000 hours daily on these annoying word sequences.

So What? 

The good news is that the time and unconscious massive collaborative effort put into CAPTCHA's is being utilized by companies such as Amazon and being recycled to digitize books via translation software and technologies. This is made possible by the phenomena that CAPTCHA's can almost exclusively be solved by humans. Although time is the scarcest resource, it is being used towards something of value in the long run, which is pretty ingenious if you ask me and makes complete and total sense.
Video link: https://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 25, 2017 at 8:50 PM

    Wow! Jacob, This is really insightful. I did not think of this perspective when I wrote about the same topic. It is nice to see someone using the same example as i did but with a new view. I did not think of ReCaptca as time management and its usefulness. You did a great job here and I really look forward to reading more of your blog posts in the future. Good luck with the rest of the semester pal.

    Best,
    William

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownAugust 25, 2017 at 9:21 PM

    Nice blog! Everything flowed very nicely and I very much enjoyed your personal perspective on the reCAPTCHA. I didn't think of reCAPTCHA as a way to recycle time and doing inches at a time. Can't wait to read more of your stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousAugust 26, 2017 at 9:35 PM

    After I watched that TEDx talk about CAPTCHAs, I realized that Duolingo, an app I've used to learn a language, probably started out as a PhD's project that morphed into not only a marketable product, but also a way to use other people's time to translate words into other languages via typing in a CAPTCHA. Personally I hate those things but I know they're necessary. Now I know that my time spent trying to figure out exactly what those letters and numbers are, is used for a great purpose. Jacob, you make a great point on time being a scarce commodity. How many times have any of us watched a movie and said "boy that's 2 hours I'll never get back"? Until they invent a time machine, we'll all have the same 24 hours/day. Try not to waste it.

    ReplyDelete

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