This is called "cognitive surplus" by Clay Shirky.[1][2] He has estimated that the time spent to create all of Wikipedia (circa 2008) (including all of the behind-the-scene drama and in every language edition), which is about 100 million hours, is about the same amount of time Americans spend just *one* weekend watching TV commercials.
So yes, all that hours people spend playing Farmville would do wonders when redirected to something "more worthy" like OSM. :-) But we are not really in a hurry, and Clay Shirky made me realize that there's a huge surplus of this cognitive resource. There's plenty of time to make OSM awesome. We just do it by convincing one passionate person to join OSM one at a time. [1] http://www.google.com/search?q=clay+shirky+cognitive+surplus [2] http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Jim Morgan <j...@datalude.com> wrote: > I was just thinking ... if only we could get all the people wasting time on > Farmville to direct their efforts towards OSM, we'd have an awesome map in > minutes. > > Just dreaming ... Have a good weekend all. > > Jim > > -- > datalude: information security > e: j...@datalude.com > Philippines: +63 2 403 1311 / mob: +63 920 912 5830 > Hong Kong: +852 6840 6693 > w: http://www.datalude.com/ >
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