March 25th, 2011
The NYT carries a story on Microtask, a tech firm which slices really mundane data-entry style work into pieces that can be accomplished in about 2 seconds. The Big Brains at Microtask believe that soon they will partner with game designers to make this work less like a chore and more like a videogame. After which point they won’t even have to pay workers.
Ville Miettnen, Microtask’s CEO, says that “Pure monetary compensation is a 20th-century concept.”
I bet Clay Shirky would agree.
Steve Sailer March 25, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Re your “Induced Demand” article about adding highway capacity. I’ve been driving I-5, the Golden State freeway, through the heart of the LA basin for four years. They finally opened another lane and … it’s great!
The important thing about adding lanes is that it doesn’t work to expand the number of lanes for short distances. If you take a three lane freeway, add a 4th lane for a mile or two, then force everybody to squeeze back into three lanes, you just cause a big jam where the squeezedown occurs. On the other hand, if you can add a fourth lane all the way out into low density area, it’s great.