So it seems that Amazon are expanding again & have launched their Mechanical Turk service. Which caught my eye largely because it reminded me of The_Turk, which is one of my all time favourite Wikipedia articles.

Amazon’s mechanical turk did grab my attention enough for me to take a look. Offering cash for tasks that can’t be automated in an online marketplace is an interesting idea. The sort of thing I might email to the recent graduates I know who complain that they can’t find a job. Except the remuneration for taking a HIT (Human Intelligence Task) is almost exclusively peanuts.

And you know the phrase - Only monkeys get out of bed for peanuts.

Which brings us to something that IS brilliant, The_Turk.

Which was a chess playing machine built in the late 18th century that claimed to be an automated chess machine but actually concealed a human chess master in a small cupboard. The Turk toured for the best part of a hundred years, and amongst other achievements, beat Bonaparte and was the subject of a Poe article.

A brilliant sense of imagination, wonder & showmanship at work in this story. Which reminds me of the Werner Herzog film Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Every man for himself and God against them all)

So thank you amazon for reminding me of these. And interesting that you might name your new venture after an infamous hoax. I hope it’s irony I’m appreciating there.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 12:59 pm and is filed under the internet, wishful thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.