Crowdsource Win

Crowdsourcing is an ancient tool. A trail through the wilderness represents crowdsourced information. As travelers contributed their individual imprints, a track became etched in the earth over time, creating a path through a “complex information landscape.” Google Instant operates according to the same principle. When Google predicts your search query before you’ve finished typing it, the search engine is signposting the most common path to the knowledge you seek, based on billions of previous searches. Pandora, Netflix and countless other services rely on crowd input to improve their offerings for all users.

Yet “these forms of crowdsourcing ...