“Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn’t figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything.”- The Matrix
I got the first piece of the puzzle 6 months ago, when playing with Google Image Labeler; I felt the stupid need of blogging it – Once you label me you negate me – not knowing the amazing process that was going on behind the scenes. It all came together upon watching the Human Computation tech talk@Google (which, btw, I believe to be an excellent presentation that every uber geek should watch).
The machines learn from us. We teach them. We all build the collective AI. The Borg. This I believe to be the true meaning of the Semantic Web, the ultimate goal of folskonomy/tagging, xml/rss, social bookmarking and the rest of web2.0 flagships.
“Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony” – Morpheus
Welcome to the real world.
