Aggregate action, complexity, and microwork
Aggregate action, in the form of microwork, has the potential to engage an unprecedented number of people to tackle complex global problems.
The aggregate action manifesto
All people have the potential within themselves to create a positive impact. Tiny, minuscule positive actions can create something large and beautiful. No person or moment needs to be wasted when it can be put into service. We can do anything, so let’s do something good!
Because every little bit counts.
The rates and volumes of change have been increasing – in technology, economics, and experience – heralding global challenges rooted in interconnected complexity. The predictability of our world has thus decreased, also causing potential solutions to become complex; at times yielding further challenges, and unexpected outcomes.
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile. Things That Gain From Disorder
The microwork revolution
The microwork model facilitates action. Tiny, approachable actions are undertaken and pieced together to form an impactful aggregate.
– Leila Janah
Samasource founder, Leila Janah describes the microwork revolution in her Ted Talk.
Wangari Maathai’s story
Aggregate action projects engage a large number of workers to perform a high volume of significant tasks. Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement is an inspiring story.
Wangari Maathai was born in 1940 in a village lush with farms, animals and rivers. By the time Wangari Maathai returned from a PhD abroad, Kenya had developed deep environmental challenges resulting in arid desert climates—a complex problem requiring a speedy solution.
According to Wangari, soil erosion and tree cutting triggered these changes. She could see how a decrease in usable farmland might cause greater disputes over resources while creating further social problems.
So, Wangari decided to plant trees and reverse soil erosion. Then, she organized a women-led movement to do it. At first, the movement lacked momentum. Yet the need for ecological change and shortage of outside help increased the volume of participants and trees planted.
Community participation and education happened because of autonomous planting groups. So the movement increased social cohesion with women while restoring ecological systems over time. It has also created other social impacts. Women gained an education, additional agency while increasing their autonomy and socio-economic standing.
As a result, 30,000 women planted over 30 million trees, and the environment became a lush, green setting. This enabled Wangari Maathai to enter Parliament and be the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The lasting impacts of aggregate action
Aggregate action in the digital sphere
You’ve heard of software-as-a-service. Well, this is human-as-a-service.
–Jeff Bezos, CEO and President, Amazon
Samasource, for example, learned that aggregate analogue actions can happen in the digital sphere. Samasource creates microwork projects for low-income workers in developing countries. They offer fair remuneration while enabling societal impact. The Harvard Business School Case Study states that “Samasource sought to use work, not aid, for economic development” (Reference: Gino, Francesca, and Bradley R. Staats. “Samasource: Give Work, Not Aid.” Harvard Business School Case 912-011, December 2011. Revised June 2012.)
The Samasource model is to take on data-driven projects of their tech clients, such as Google, eBay, Microsoft and others. Then, they process these data tasks into microtasks and create a distributed microwork force.
The social impacts that occur due to this mechanism are important. Individual workers gain training and personal wealth that can significantly alter their lives and the lives of their families. As each person is able to improve their own situation, they can collectively affect their social environment in a positive way by raising skills, knowledge and standards of living.
– Leila Janah, Founder, Samasource
Elements of gamification
Gamification mechanics have the potential to enable furthered play, and provide additional task meaning to microworkers and clients.
What happens when we make it fun?
Most microwork platforms focus on simple task execution and lack elements of fun, such as levels, points, or badges. Gaming Dynamics can create tasks that engender ‘fun play’ and quantified achievements and awards. Human emotions and needs can create and incite microworker action, enable task completion, and mechanize return activity.
– Tak Yeon Lee, Casey Dugan, Werner Geyer, Tristan Ratchford,
Jamie Rasmussen, N. Sadat Shami and Stela Lupushor
Experiments on Motivational Feedback for Crowdsourced Workers
The Foldit example
A salient example of these mechanisms in real-world, applied aggregate projects can be noted in FoldIt (beta). FoldIt is a gamified microwork puzzle game platform. It offers hundreds of protein matching puzzles for players to solve on a volunteer basis.
FoldIt was originally created by the University of Washington’s Centre for Game Science’s collaboration with the Department of Biochemistry. It has successfully engaged thousands of users to contribute to solving over 1300 protein puzzles and continues to expand its research of available games.
The example that is shown below features an AIDS-related enzyme research project. A portion of this project was solved via the FoldIt platform. Yet it had eluded researchers for over a decade.
Foldit protein alignment tool
Games, meaning and the behaviour economy
Finally, the last decade has heralded a disruptive change in the ways people engage with organizations, services, things, and each other. We’re moving toward the paradigm of the behaviour economy, a departure from commodified purchasing, towards seeking increased meaning and engagement with services that allow us to behave in memorable ways, and to participate in the community.
Thus, the potentiality of community-driven, participatory, and meaning-based impact is of interest. Especially within aggregate, user-engaging microwork approaches, and their potential impacts in areas of change.
Microwork 2.0
Therefore, what might Microwork 2.0 look like, in aggregate, gamified, impactful ways? And what might it do for us individually, and collectively?
The economic model promoted by the behaviour economy is a model where behaviour is the main goal of our actions, and where intrinsic motivation is the key to participation, engagement, and the satisfaction of multiple dimensions of value.
– Carl Hastrich, Five-Point Leaders Leading Innovation in the Behavior Economy
Photo at top: Karura Forest, Nairobi, Kenya by Harshil Gudka on Unsplash
Photo middle: Wangari Maathai, Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics.
Posted by Ana Matic
- Aggregate action, complexity, and microwork - February 23, 2020
- Scenario 1: Purpose-driven Conglomerates - December 21, 2019
- Persona 1: Robin Esposito - December 21, 2019
Publications
