Since I have first read about it the idea of Crowdsourcing amazes me. We have a lot of people everywhere with specific and interesting knowledge who - together and if organized well - can beat even the best expert. Could we used the same method in computing as well? Could it work?
For starters it's hardly true for hardware. Servers, PCs and mobile hardware can be best made in super efficient factories. It seems that even hardware desing is best done with a dedicated staff.
Internet - which is the most important part of any computing infrastructure - doesn't seem to be working without large service providers either. There were some initiatives, some of them quite successfull but for now their more or less disappered. Wireless networks enable the - at least partial - implementation of such networks. However till somebody cames up with a business modell which benefits both user ans ISVs and I don't expect a major change here.
Next there are servers, which are slowly but contoniously moving into the cloud. Cloud is served by the crowd but provided by large infrastructure vendors. I could imagina a public cloud. There could be a system which uses the spare capacíty of private computer. In fact torrents are exactly doint that. The same techology could be used to provide document or file storage, database functions or even complex applications or computer intensive computations. At the current level of security it's hard to imagine a corporation to move its core applications into a private cloud. However e.g a search engine could be good candidate for a crowdsourcing project. In fact there are some initiatives in this fiels but Google hasn't yet to be frighetened.
Moving to software the picture is slightly better. Slighthly because in spite of all the successes of Linux and other free initriatives which are big crowdsourdsing projects - use of free or open operating system at home or business is scarce. Linux was written by progammers for programmers so average users still have difficulties to use it and the interest is week. Ironically companies like Apple or IBM seem to make a good deal of money with free or open software. The free community should do something to empower non programmers (e.g. like designers, sociologists, artist, scientists) to take part in the development of open source projects.
For starters it's hardly true for hardware. Servers, PCs and mobile hardware can be best made in super efficient factories. It seems that even hardware desing is best done with a dedicated staff.
Internet - which is the most important part of any computing infrastructure - doesn't seem to be working without large service providers either. There were some initiatives, some of them quite successfull but for now their more or less disappered. Wireless networks enable the - at least partial - implementation of such networks. However till somebody cames up with a business modell which benefits both user ans ISVs and I don't expect a major change here.
Next there are servers, which are slowly but contoniously moving into the cloud. Cloud is served by the crowd but provided by large infrastructure vendors. I could imagina a public cloud. There could be a system which uses the spare capacíty of private computer. In fact torrents are exactly doint that. The same techology could be used to provide document or file storage, database functions or even complex applications or computer intensive computations. At the current level of security it's hard to imagine a corporation to move its core applications into a private cloud. However e.g a search engine could be good candidate for a crowdsourcing project. In fact there are some initiatives in this fiels but Google hasn't yet to be frighetened.
Moving to software the picture is slightly better. Slighthly because in spite of all the successes of Linux and other free initriatives which are big crowdsourdsing projects - use of free or open operating system at home or business is scarce. Linux was written by progammers for programmers so average users still have difficulties to use it and the interest is week. Ironically companies like Apple or IBM seem to make a good deal of money with free or open software. The free community should do something to empower non programmers (e.g. like designers, sociologists, artist, scientists) to take part in the development of open source projects.
No comments:
Post a Comment