I heard the neatest story on NPR today:
You know how a bunch of secure websites now require you to type in a randomly generated code of letters and numbers to complete a transaction? (So you can prove you're a human instead of some mal-ware bot.) Well, some GENIUS decided to make that little exercise less random and harness that energy!
He noticed that there are tons of libraries all over the world busily scanning all of their archives into electronic databases, and occasionally the computers cataloguing the scans have a hard time recognizing words or symbols due to weird fonts, ink blots, misspellings, etc.
WELL, this guy managed to get a bunch of websites that use verification codes to agree to use the "mystery words" from the various libraries instead of (or in addition to) the random codes they've been using. They use the same mystery word several times, and if all the people typing in their interpretation of the word seem to be in agreement as to what the word should be, the cataloguing library computer substitutes the human interpretation for the mystery word, and that's one solved mystery for the day!
When you then multiply this by the twelvety billion times per day that people are on the web doing stuff that requires a code, these library projects are being accelerated by YEARS!
Cool huh?
2 comments:
That is super cool. I love the internets.
The internets are awesome, and so are the creative thinkers who figure out how to get people to cooperate on something worthwhile. Maybe your own blog providers will join the party (she says, typing xfsxh before posting)!
Post a Comment