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| Image Source; Tecnology Review |
The romance is the singular genius making some great breakthrough from shear effort and endowment with god-like intelligence that the rest of us mere mortals cannot possibly possess. In academia and industry, there's a lot of collaboration; cross-functional teams; cross-training, etc. Even the most monumental breakthrough that's affecting your life and mine right now - the transistor - was a collaborative effort that earned the Nobel Prize. Humans do a lot of collaboration; it's in our natures and we tend to do it with like-minded people (hence, Internet and other social networks). Sir Isaac Newton - the founder of physics - stated: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants," in a letter to Robert Hooke (Hooke's Law), though it was a metaphor originally attributed to John of Salisbury, meaning benifitting and building on the work of others before you. (Wikipedia)
There is a romanticism I think that originates with the oft-told story of the original "Eureka moment" (a dubious claim, probably more tall-tale than fact), along with Newton's apple and Einstein being, well...Einstein. So much so, my youngest son text messaged his older brother and me a picture of the latest album cover by the rapper Gucci Mane, seen here, knowing full well I'd laugh as he did: "I guess Gucci Mane is calling himself the Einstein of trapology...lol."
As I said, I laughed - literally "out loud"! I just sincerely hope Mr. Mane's lawyers have properly contacted the estate of Professor Einstein and likely Princeton University for the image rights...when you're making money WITH it, that's kinda important!
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The wisdom of the crowd has become so powerful and so accessible via the Internet that it has become a resource in its own right. Various services now tap into this rich supply of human cognition, such as Wikipedia, Duolingo, and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
So important is this resource that scientists have given it a name; they call it human computation. And a rapidly emerging and increasingly important question is how best to exploit it.
Today, we get an answer of sorts thanks to a group of computer scientists, crowdsourcing pioneers, and visionaries who have created a roadmap for research into human computation. The team, led by Pietro Michelucci at the Human Computation Institute, point out that human computation systems have been hugely successful at tackling complex problems from identifying spiral galaxies to organizing disaster relief.
But their potential is even greater still, provided that human cognition can be efficiently harnessed on a global scale. Last year, they met to discuss these issues and have now published the results of their debate.
Physics arXiv: A U.S. Research Roadmap for Human Computation
Pietro Michelucci, Lea Shanley, Janis Dickinson, Haym Hirsh
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