It’s not the wisdom of crowds but their knowledge. Oxford University astrophysicist Chris Lintott, cofounder of the Zooniverse website, has drawn on the knowledge (and spare time) of thousands of amateur astronomers from around the world to sift through the enormous online data dump provided by scans made by space telescopes. On a simple level, the amateurs are categorizing the millions of newly spotted galaxies according to their shape. Others are using image processing and other tools to detect planets orbiting distant stars. Lintott writes about the crowdsourcing of science in the casual, jocular tone of a 101 professor determined to keep the class entertained. The Crowd & the Cosmos is a reminder that the Internet has also given rise to networks of positive accomplishment and that human intuition can still exceed algorithms and artificial intelligence.
