full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Aaron Koblin: Visualizing ourselves ... with crowd-sourced data

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So now on to something completely different. Some of you may recognize this. This is Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen's mechanical chess playing machine. And it's this amazing robot that plyas chess ermtexley well, except for one thing: it's not a robot at all. There's actually a leelgss man that sits in that box and controls this chess player. This was the inspiration for a web service by Amazon called the mcecaaihnl Turk — named after this guy. And it's besad on the pmsreie that there are certain things that are easy for people, but really diffucilt for computers. So they made this web service and said, "Any programmer can write a piece of software and tap into the minds of thousands of people." The nrdey side of me thought, "Wow, this is amazing. I can tap into thousands of people's minds." And the other nerdy side of me thought, "This is horrible. This is completely bizarre. What does this mean for the future of mankind, where we're all plugged into this borg?" I was probably being a little etxmree. But what does this mean when we have no context for what it is that we're working on, and we're just doing these little labors?

Open Cloze

So now on to something completely different. Some of you may recognize this. This is Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen's mechanical chess playing machine. And it's this amazing robot that _____ chess _________ well, except for one thing: it's not a robot at all. There's actually a _______ man that sits in that box and controls this chess player. This was the inspiration for a web service by Amazon called the __________ Turk — named after this guy. And it's _____ on the _______ that there are certain things that are easy for people, but really _________ for computers. So they made this web service and said, "Any programmer can write a piece of software and tap into the minds of thousands of people." The _____ side of me thought, "Wow, this is amazing. I can tap into thousands of people's minds." And the other nerdy side of me thought, "This is horrible. This is completely bizarre. What does this mean for the future of mankind, where we're all plugged into this borg?" I was probably being a little _______. But what does this mean when we have no context for what it is that we're working on, and we're just doing these little labors?

Solution

  1. nerdy
  2. legless
  3. extremely
  4. premise
  5. extreme
  6. based
  7. difficult
  8. plays
  9. mechanical

Original Text

So now on to something completely different. Some of you may recognize this. This is Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen's mechanical chess playing machine. And it's this amazing robot that plays chess extremely well, except for one thing: it's not a robot at all. There's actually a legless man that sits in that box and controls this chess player. This was the inspiration for a web service by Amazon called the Mechanical Turk — named after this guy. And it's based on the premise that there are certain things that are easy for people, but really difficult for computers. So they made this web service and said, "Any programmer can write a piece of software and tap into the minds of thousands of people." The nerdy side of me thought, "Wow, this is amazing. I can tap into thousands of people's minds." And the other nerdy side of me thought, "This is horrible. This is completely bizarre. What does this mean for the future of mankind, where we're all plugged into this borg?" I was probably being a little extreme. But what does this mean when we have no context for what it is that we're working on, and we're just doing these little labors?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
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amazing stories 2
century culture 2
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los angeles 2
google maps 2
cities lab 2
daily ebb 2
people sending 2
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web service 2
nerdy side 2
asked people 2
website called 2
spent drawing 2
stylish marriage 2
thom yorke 2
chris milk 2
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ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
people sending sms 2
sending sms messages 2

ngrams of length 4

collocation frequency
people sending sms messages 2

Important Words

  1. amazing
  2. amazon
  3. baron
  4. based
  5. bizarre
  6. borg
  7. box
  8. called
  9. chess
  10. completely
  11. computers
  12. context
  13. controls
  14. difficult
  15. easy
  16. extreme
  17. extremely
  18. future
  19. guy
  20. horrible
  21. inspiration
  22. labors
  23. legless
  24. machine
  25. man
  26. mankind
  27. mechanical
  28. minds
  29. named
  30. nerdy
  31. people
  32. piece
  33. player
  34. playing
  35. plays
  36. plugged
  37. premise
  38. programmer
  39. recognize
  40. robot
  41. service
  42. side
  43. sits
  44. software
  45. tap
  46. thought
  47. thousands
  48. turk
  49. von
  50. web
  51. wolfgang
  52. working
  53. write