Announcing the Creation of the Rheingold Award

To paraphrase (and possibly offend) Gloria Steinem, a blog without an award to give away is like a fish without a bicycle. Undaunted by this fact, I've chosen to inaugurate a crowdsourcing award, which will be named the Rheingold, after the pioneering writer and techno-seer Howard Rheingold, who published the book Smart Mobs back when I thought collective intelligence* was an up-and-coming noise band. (Note: I've yet to hear Howard's reaction to this honor, for the excellent reason that hasn't been told he's been given it.) The award will be given intermittently, and according to my whim. The selection of crowdsourcing nominees will not, despite great irony, be crowdsourced.

Late-Breaking! Embargoed until 8 AM August 15! The winner of the Inaugural Rheingold will be awarded this Friday, August 15!

* I never actually thought collective intelligence was the name of a band. To my great delight, the panopticon informs me that a music label named Collective Intelligence does in fact exist. It may or may not be devoted to promoting bands within the noise genre. I choose to believe it does.

Comments

[Tony]

An un-crowdsourced crowdsourcing award? Sigh, someone please find me the next buzzword. Clearly, crowdsourcing has jumped the shark :)

[Howard Rheingold]

Excellent! First nice thing Wired has done for me since Katrina Herron was editor.

[Alan Booker]

Greetings Tony, crowdsourcing has not so clearly “jumped the shark.”

CS, as a term, is being referred to primarily as a web based phenomena. As more and more disparate initiatives have used the CS model one would suppose that its usage and the form it takes would still be in varying degrees of metamorphosis, I think the problem here is how ones defines CS.

Definitions have run the gamut from “sigh, buzzword,” slave labor, potential for inequity, exploitation or greed to a host of more positive points of view that focus on both personal motivation and questions of community building processes.

The declining use of the term CS might, or might not, be in the books but will most certainly have many more “happy days” to evolve!

So Jeff, what is this prestigious award going to look like? Couldn’t the award proper and the creation of it be crowdsourced?

Here is my suggestion: http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/images/news/fish.png

Regards, Alan

[Digidave]

Who won?

[kraloyun]

CS, as a term, is being referred to primarily as a web based phenomena. As more and more disparate initiatives have used the CS model one would suppose that its usage and the form it takes would still be in varying degrees of metamorphosis, I think the problem here is how ones defines CS.

Definitions have run the gamut from “sigh, buzzword,” slave labor, potential for inequity, exploitation or greed to a host of more positive points of view that focus on both personal motivation and questions of community building processes.

The declining use of the term CS might, or might not, be in the books but will most certainly have many more “happy days” to evolve!