R2 Blog Response

            One form of crowdsourcing that I am particularly familiar with is crowdfunding. I am an entrepreneurship and innovation minor, so funding is one of the main focuses of the curriculum. Crowdfunding can be useful with projects of all sizes and goals. Every bit of capital made can help a business and project expand, but it is important to follow through with any promises made during the campaign. If this is not done, then the company appears unreliable and unprofessional. Crowdsourcing any artistic project makes for a unique and interesting end result because of the diversity of entries and contributors.

            Throughout high school and in most of my college courses, all of my teachers have told my classmates and I to never use Wikipedia. They claimed the information was unreliable and random people could write whatever they want on the articles. After watching this video…that is not so true. Although it is a crowdsourced online encyclopedia, it is aggressively monitored by editors. Every new post has to get approved, and it states on the website whether a source was provided or not for the information listed. Understandably, it is not a scholarly source; however, after watching this TED talk, it seems Wikipedia is actually a good place to at least begin research or to become familiar with a new topic.

            I found Aaron Koblin’s air traffic interactive map to be amazing. I have never thought much about all the airplanes that are flying around the country and world at any given time. According to Koblin, in the United States the number is 140,000 at all times. That is a lot of air traffic to keep up with. Seeing the time lapse of the map emphasizes the different time zones in the United States, and it also shows where the major cities are. New York City was the most active airport location for leaving the country on the east coast. On the west, Los Angeles had the most activity. This makes complete sense, since they are huge cities for business and tourism.