Those Who Searched for Fossett in Images Reflect

Wired looks back at the success and failure of the Internet-based effort to find Steve Fossett in the Nevada desert by thousands of untrained imagery analysts. You can tell it’s gotten to Mechanical Turk’s director, Peter Cohen, as he will no longer do interviews on the topic.

More valuable are thoughts of those who spent hours on the site. Some felt the time wasted with no feedback at all regarding their work. Others noted problems in the process, which slowed them down. I keep going back to comments of Civil Air Patrol Maj. Cynthia Ryan who during the search efforts and today notes the whole thing distracted from her team’s mission.

I for one think the process, despite two failures (Jim Gray, too), has potential. There’s much to be learned and the best article on that is from Ken Barbalace writing at EnvironmentalChemistry.com.