I wrote a piece for Elephant Journal this week about a Kickstarter project that funded a book on how to pick up chicks. Some of the techniques bordered on sexual assault, and some were definitely sexual battery.
If you've not heard of crowdsourcing or crowd-funding, here's a quick breakdown:
Online sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo offer a place for people to post projects for which they need cash. Sometimes it's big--making the first human-powered helicopter for instance. Sometimes it's small--cute emoticons for your correspondence. Sometimes it's heartbreaking--an astonishing number of people are turning to crowdsourcing to pay their medical bills.
Backers (people just like you and me) can read through the project's proposal, usually watch a short video, and then decide if they want to invest in the project. Most projects offer some kind of incentive for the backer--kind of like those NPR tote bags. Sometimes the project works out; sometimes not. It's an investment with no guarantee of return.
Living in the Valley, we tend to think any leap in technology is a terrific thing. We buzz around on our iPhones and iPads, play Ingress on our Androids, pay for our Starbucks with our phone (and sometimes with just our names, if we're using Square).
There are definitely amazing Kickstarter projects out there. I was an early funder in Pebble, and I love my high-tech smartwatch. A friend of mine funded his independent film project through Kickstarter, and now he is entering it into film festivals, all because a bunch of people gave a few bucks and believed in him.
But crowdsourcing, like any technology, can have a dark side, too. It's up to us, the users of this technology, to police who's trying to get funding and for what purpose. Otherwise, we're going to see a lot more projects like Above the Game get funded.
