Mechanical Turk and the New Economic Challenge

In a chilling and thought-provoking  Weekly Standard article, Jonathan V. Last examines the brave new world of micro-tasking. An excerpt:

I have no idea what function this job could possibly serve, except to help someone game, or learn to game, the Google search algorithm. But I wasn’t getting paid to think. I was paid to type, click, copy, and paste. I completed eight of these microtasks in less than two minutes. I was paid 16 cents. Or rather, I will be paid 16 cents at some later date—provided that CrowdSource turns out to be a legitimate operation that pays its bills. Which, in the world of microtasking, is not a guarantee.