Sheep Market Thesis

Aaron Koblin, developer of The Sheep Market, has published his thesis as a Word document: The Sheep Market: Two Cents Worth. It is fun to read, with some very far-ranging references and some entertaining diversions. It is interesting to read about Aaron's hesitancy to be just a cog in a machine, then to see him use the Mechanical Turk to actually rotoscope a movie frame illustrating Charlie Chaplin as just such a cog, and finally to the use of the Turk to get 10,000 people to draw a sheep. I didn't know that some of the Turkers had actually taken issue with Aaron's decision to offer the sheep for sale.

After having given many, many AWS presentations in the last 4 years, I do have to say that The Sheep Market is one of those applications which always gets people to pay attention. The productivity factor of "11 sheep per hour" always gets a good laugh from the audience.

-- Jeff;

Comments

[Ed]

"I didn't know that some of the Turkers had actually taken issue with Aaron's decision to offer the sheep for sale."

A very few people, like three or four. They probably should have read the Mechanical Turk user agreement, which says explicitly that work done by Workers is not their property, but the Requester's, period.

This is pretty much what Amazon's book review guidelines also say (and Amazon surely profits from "owning" thoughtful reviews), as well as other "user-generated content" sites. The simple fact is, unless you see a big "delete this" button next to the stuff you put on various websites, you probably don't own it once it appears there. For instance, who "owns" this comment I'm writing? I can't delete it once it appears.