My friend Tom DeMarco sent an email note this morning to a few of his colleagues, in which he made several eloquent points about History, Culture, Science, and the Nature of Man (at least as it pertains to the IT industry), as a preamble to recommending an article by Luis von Ahn in the June 2006 issue of IEEE Computer, entitled “Games with a Purpose.” Since his email message was private, it’s inappropriate for me to tell you what Tom thinks about all of this (though you’re welcome to contact him and ask, if you’re clever enough to figure out how to do so); but since the paper he recommended is indeed public, I think it’s okay to pass along his recommendation; I’ve read it now, too, and agree that it’s worthy of some attention.

Unfortunately, the June issue of IEEE Computer has now gotten buried in my pile of unread, half-read, and read-but-forgotten magazines, journals, and newspaper articles. The July issue of the magazine is sitting on top of the pile, so at least I could find the IEEE website without a lot of extra work (it’s printed prominently on the front cover of the magazine). But it turns out that the June issue is now almost as inaccessible in the IEEE website as its hard-copy version is in my cluttered office; I poked around for a while, saw that I would have to visit IEEE’s “portal” and cough up my IEEE membership number (which would take another few moments of distraction) before downloading it. And it’s only free if you’re an IEEE member; I am, but I can’t provide a simple, free, obvious link for the rest of the human race to access.

Things like this are happening millions of times a day, all over the planet, and my reaction was similar (if not identical) to what millions of other people would do under these circumstances: if it ain’t free, and if it ain’t immediately accessible, fuhgeddabout it — and move on. In my case, it was trivial: I simply typed “Luis von Ahn” into my Google search engine, found his web page on the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) site, and immediately had access — free — to all of von Ahn’s published work, not just the one article that started this whole adventure. You, obviously, can do the same.

As for von Ahn’s IEEE paper: to quote a couple of sentences from the introductory paragraphs, he says, “If we treat human brains as processors in a distributed system, each can perform a small part of a massive computation. Such a ‘human computation’ paradigm has enormous potential to address problems that computers can’t yet tackle on their own and eventually teach computers many of these human talents.” He illustrates this point by describing two research projects — the ESP Game and Peekaboom – currently underway at CMU. If you visit von Ahn’s web page, you’ll find links to more detailed papers about these two “games,” as well as other research he’s conducting. You’ll also find out that he’s from Guatemala, and that his nickname is “Big Lou.” If you’re sufficiently interested, you can even watch a QuickTime video of his thesis defense … something which I’ll have to postpone until a quieter time.

What strikes me as interesting about all of this is that it’s a new example of the “people power” or “user contribution” theme of Web 2.0. And it’s a “human” version of the grid-computing undertakings like SETI@Home. I don’t know whether it will actually work, and I’m not at all sure how profound all of this really is … but it’s definitely worth thinking about, and von Ahn’s paper is definitely worth reading. In fact, it may even be sufficient justification for members of the IT profession to cough up the required funds to join the IEEE, and then go through the hassle of finding the damn paper on their website.

Meanwhile, my thanks to Tom for initiating this intellectual pursuit this morning. It’s kept me from carrying out a few other serious, but mind-numbingly boring tasks that will have to get squeezed into some other part of an over-crowded day, but it was well worth the hassle.