The recent news about the game FoldIt and the group of players that figured out the protein structure for a key enzyme related to the development of the AIDS virus is both thrilling and marvelous… and it is just the tip of the iceberg on how to leverage cognitive surplus to solve wicked problems with massive, distributed networks collaboratively.
Just about everyone who’s following online news has read about the University of Washington’s FoldIt game.
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Last Monday I posted about Adrien Truille and his games FoldIt and EteRNA. Today, FoldIt makes bigger news. http://fb.me/1fBClCWYc
Just a week before, the Association of Computing Machinery featured FoldIt and its creators — before there was any findings about the excitement over the AIDS enzyme.
The fact that FoldIt is a game should be noted. It need not be stressed necessarily, nor should it be overlooked. the MMOWGLI is more of a gamified collaboration portal than it is a “game.” My reason for including it is to provide another tangible example of how massively multiplayer problem solving works.
As noted above, I’m giving a presentation on a number of trends I see coming on the technical horizon, and massively multiplayer (also related is “massively distributed”) problem solving is one of the trends I see becoming more pronounced in the next year(s).
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