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The Extended Mind 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences New frontiers for Crowdsourcing: the Extended Mind Roger M. Whitaker, Martin Chorley, Stuart M. Allen School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University 5 The Parade, Roath, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, UK {r.m.whitaker, m.j.chorley, s.m.allen}@cs.cardiff.ac.uk Abstract well-established form of collective intelligence, that has emerged through a number of successful commericial We introduce the concept of extended mind crowd- platforms and become a viable way to conduct survey- sourcing (EMC) which capitalises on the way in which based research [2]. humans naturally extend their cognition into the envi- As technology is developing, new opportunities and ronment, using external objects such as smartphones applications for crowdsourcing are emerging. In par- and applications to augment their mental capacity. ticular discovery of collective human behaviour and This phenomenon means that human computation is inherent culture is becoming possible. Recent exam- embedded in data and devices, representing a new way ples include the characterisation of international eat- through which human cognition can be accessed for col- ing habits [3], the grand vision of the FuturICT initia- lective discoveries. We relate EMC to existing socio- tive [4] and discovery of correlations between personal- logical and psychological concepts and argue that it lies ity and decisions in the places that we visit [5]. These at the intersection of human computation, social com- developments are occurring hand-in-hand with the pro- puting and crowdsourcing. gression of technologies capable of capturing more and EMC is a way in which new problems and discov- more of our individual activity and cognition. Collec- eries can be tackled, for example as necessitated by tively these represent sources of rich but complex data. “wicked” problems, ethnography and culture. We re- In this paper we argue that crowdsourcing is begin- late EMC to diverse disciplines and point to ways in ning to expand from task focussed “job orientation” to which the concept may develop in future. We exem- provide a means of discovery concerning societal be- plify EMC by presenting a case study where participa- haviour and culture. We postulate that this additional tion in location-based social networks is used to dis- form of crowdsourcing is capable of capitalising on the cover the correlation between mobility and human per- way in which humans extend their cognition by inte- sonality traits. This has involved participation from 43 grating patterns of the mind with objects in the ex- countries and resulted in analysis of over half a million ternal environment. This is described by the so called check-ins at street-level locations. “extended mind hypothesis” [6] where thinking extends beyond a private and internal space to use objects in the environment. A simple example of this includes ac- tively engaging with a note book to record a memory. 1 Introduction Subsequently the mind leans on this recollection and points to the note book where the memory is located. Crowdsourcing has emerged as an important and ef- The use of smartphones, apps and social media now ex- fective component for task-led problem solving, gener- emplify this theory in a digital form, where individuals ally defined as enlisting a crowd of humans to help solve that exploit technology become prosumers (e.g., [7]), a problem defined by the system owners [1]. Tradition- simultaneously being both consumers and producers ally this has involved an agent applying human compu- of social and environmental signals that augment the tation to the problem or sub-problem, with tasks dis- mind. tributed and responses mediated through a computer To capture this new development we formalise the interface. These tasks often occur for a short duration notion of extended mind crowdsourcing (EMC) and and have an explicit end-point. This is now a relatively demonstrate an example of this in detail. We contrast 1530-1605/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE 1635 DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2015.197 and characterise EMC using a framework for human computation systems [8] and argue that EMC falls at the intersection of crowdsourcing with human compu- tation and social computing, while being closely linked to participatory computing. Furthermore, we argue that this form of crowdsourcing opens up prospects for enhanced discovery, for example as a new way to chal- lenge wicked problems [9] in social, cultural and organ- isational areas. Figure 1. Overview of components and pro- cess for crowdsourcing. 2 Crowdsourcing, Participation and Cognition tive intelligence [12] and with overlap to both social The notion of crowdsourcing in the literature dates computing [13] and human computation [14]. Across back to 2006 where it was introduced in the context of a these different forms of computational systems there is tool for problem solving by Howe [10] in a Wired maga- a dependency on humans to impart some form of ex- zine article. This was informally described as “taking a plicit reasoning, judgment or analysis that is reconciled job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usu- to create an overall finding that could not be deduced ally an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, from a single agent in isolation. This leaves scope for generally large group of people in the form of an open many different approaches and characterisations and call”. The original motivation behind crowdsourcing has led to the development of classification systems, was commercial, driven by the concept of outsourcing, such as proposed in [8] which concern participant mo- as a tool to undertake tasks for an organisation in a tivation, quality control, aggregation, human skill, pro- new manner. The utility that crowdsourcing offers has cess order and task request cardinality. Key compo- spread to other problem solving domains, including re- nents of crowdsourcing are shown in Figure 1. Here we search and quality assessment. see the independent flows of human-computer interac- A more formal definition of crowdsourcing is pro- tion, with individuals broadly shaping their views from posed in [2] as “the paid recruitment of an online in- their interaction with the world and society. dependent global workforce for the objective of working on a specifically defined task or set of tasks”.Thisisa 2.1 Participatory Computing contract driven perspective, such as for use of crowd- sourcing in survey based research, where worker re- Closely related to crowdsourcing is the concept of cruitment is self-selecting subject to prerequisites de- participatory computing, an umbrella term expressing fined by the task. However in [1] a more general defi- the idea that data and resources can be contributed by nition is given as “enlisting a crowd of humans to help devices and software for collective purposes [4]. The solve a problem defined by the system owners”.This data in these scenarios are often distributed and diffi- definition reinforces that payment need not be finan- cult to capture by conventional means. The focus of cial and the underlying issue is establishing a means participatory computing is largely technical and data to recruit and retain users which for example, can be driven, often concerning the volume, variety and ve- for social, competitive or altruistic reasons. Further locity of data. This often leads to the use of analysis fundamental issues highlighted in [1] include what the techniques from complexity science [15]. The origin of participants are specified to do, how to combine their participatory computing can be tracked back in this di- inputs and how to evaluate them. In [11] the diversity rection to Burke et al [16] which introduced the concept of crowdsourcing definitions is consolidated, resulting of participatory sensing, where through sensors embed- in the need for i) a clearly defined crowd, ii) a task ded in mobile devices, data could be collected from with a clear goal, iii) clear recompense received by the accompanying human activity in the physical world, crowd, iv) a clear owner of the crowdsource task; v) particularly the urban environment. This has gained clearly defined compensation for the participant; vi) significant traction in the academic community, partic- an online assigned process of participative type; vii) an ularly concerning the computing and engineering liter- open call of variable extent; viii) use of the Internet. ature, where significant challenges have rested on soft-, Due to reliance on extensive human participation, middle- and hard-ware design issues such as those sur- crowdsourcing has close relationships with other areas veyed in [17]. These involve a wide variety of applica- of computation [8], particularly as a sub-set of collec- tions including road surface monitoring [18] and traffic 1636 conditions [19]. Popular smartphone applications in that the human mind and its boundaries are not clear this area are surveyed in [20]. cut - the human’s environment and objectives within it effectively become part of human cognition. Clark and Chalmers describe this as “the general tendency of human reasoners to lean heavily on envi- ronmental support”, bringing the spotlight on physical instruments (pens, notepads, slides rules etc) and also how we may arrange things such as ScrabbleR pieces to prompt thoughts. While simplistic, they exemplify devolution and delegation leading to coupled systems, where cognition becomes a consequence of the way in which the pieces have become arranged, complemen- tary to internal cognitive processes. Figure 2. Overview of components and pro- When technology is brought into consideration, one cess for participatory computing. might argue that the concept of active externalism has come of age. Examples such as the smartphone, so- cial networks and their apps are relevant to this paper. In Figure 2 we show a simple schema that expresses Outsourcing of memory based tasks, knowledge acqui- the role of devices in accomplishing tasks. The de- sition and interaction with the environment are now vices are embedded in the world environment, which routinely devolved from the human to the smartphone may include people or objects.
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