Cog in the Machine

"Von Ahn observed that billions of hours of our time are sunk into games as minor as Windows solitaire. He then speculated that this wasted time could be put to practical use. In fact, Von Ahn calculated, more man-hours go into solitaire each month than were expended on building the entire Panama Canal between 1904 and 1914. If someone could come up with a methodology for harnessing these boundless intellectual energies, who knows what could be accomplished?"

Jim Rossignol explores the computational power of boredom.

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