People Teach People: what could be with Boot Strapping Databases

Year 2020, Kevin hurries back home from his soccer game at school to play his new networked music game: he hates to play it on his /companion/ (even though projecting the game on the wall is pretty neat), and prefers by far to play it at home with the 3d projector, and a sound amplifier with effects that could simulate three philarmonic orchestra in full formation. "Maestro, me voilà!"

Once in his bedroom he plugs his digital theremin in and logs to the /PTP/ ("People Teach People") server. There he is asked to evaluate three unes input, potentially from less experimented players or automatically generated to test the serious of his evaluation.

Kevins sighs a bit because he was hoping to play directly. He read somewhere that they kept the random factor to enhance an addiction feeling, he shrugs it off. He feels only midly annoyed: he knows that it won't be long, and it is really not too much work to provide, in exchange for all the data he gets in return, almost for free. He listens to the three midi inputs, validate two of them with a part quickly annotated in the second one, and refuse the third one: spam or computer generated, it is anyway a pretty clear cut.

This took Kevin less than five minutes, and now he can play. He checks the new tracks available at his current level, and choose one with a jazzy beat to start to play. The color of the light gives him feedback about how far he is from the tune, converging to an appeasing blue green with some flickr of orange on the most difficult passages, quickly reaching the all star mode: he is on his way to a high score!

In the next room, Kevin's sister tries to concetrate: she si learning Corean on the /CIME/ ("Computer In the Middle Education") server. She finished the previous level last weeck, where she was learning vocabulary and word pronunciation using indexed images, in exchange of indexing other images in English, recording her pronunciation in English and validating the similar work from other native speakers and from learners in a shuffle.

The level that Sarah is now playing is more complex: she must correct the English grammar of some foreign learner through a precise interface, so that her corrections can be compared to the past and future corrections of others, and hence evaluated. If her corrections are validated, she will gain access to this service in Korean, along with some time online with some certified Korean user who can correct her pronunciation. Sarah is eager to finish this level: with her friend Kathy they are planning to visit Korea next summer, and Kathy posted yesterday on her profile that she had reached the next level, where she plays video games with native Korean speakers: she has to catch up!