Foldit

Both The Economist and Nature reported on a very different type of online gaming system - - called Foldit. Players score points by squeezing proteins into the most chemically stable configuration. Proteins, which are the building blocks of life, come in long chains of molecules that work properly only once they have been folded into their final, three-dimensional shape. Figuring out how they fold correctly is thus critical to understanding biochemical processes, and to creating new drugs.

The Nature article demonstrated that the top Foldit players can fold protein better than a computer. In addition, by collaborating, the top players often come up with entirely new folding strategies. Call it distributed thinking, utilizing the ideas behind distributed-computing, we are entering an era of computation between humans and machines being mixed. Humans were better than the machines at remodelling in Foldit, while the machines were better at starting from scratch. Both have their strengths and weaknesses - - a place for humans and the machines.

Some 57,000 individuals have been attracted to Foldit. Few of the best performers are biochemists. To entice the non-scientific, the game comes with upbeat arcade music, bleeps, pops, and colorful star confetti when you succeed. Players also get nifty tools like - - shake, wiggle, or rubber band - - where they tweak the basic structure into the optimal shape, though some players preferred to do that by hand. One such player is Scott "Boots" Zaccanelli, and was profiled in the Nature article:

A resident of McKinney, Texas, he splits his time between a day job as a buyer for a valve factory and a personal business - - Good For You Massage Therapy - - that takes him and his massage chair to rodeos, county fairs and flea markets. But he has also been hooked on Foldit since 2008. "I'm pretty much there every night," says Zaccanelli, who has used his undergraduate biology degree to help him rise to a number -6 global Foldit ranking. "I can look at something and see that it's not right."

Author Clay Shirky refers to this as a perfect example of our "cognitive surplus" - - the combination of intellect, energy, and time that allows individuals to ban together to solve complex problems. The pooling of our efforts at a vanishingly low cost - - the movement of consumers to collaborators - - a world driven by social production. A world of "Zaccanellis" with a passion for creativity and generosity in our increasingly connected age. Wikipedia may have been the first of the pioneers - - but look to distributed co-creation moving into the economic mainstream and being a force for creativity and innovation.

Check out more at - - http://fold.it/portal/