Another Net buzz – innocentive.com

I am a heartless cynic and, what’s more, I think that people who complain about others’ cynicism are either deluded fools or up to something. But there are occasions that make my heart and mind soar in unison.

I think the reason why I have ended up following the Internet so closely is because the Net has produced more of these feelings that anything else – certainly more so than PCs, but also more than music, film, science and the other areas I have covered as a professional journalist over the years. I had another of these buzzes today when I saw innocentive.com.

I found out about it through the Economist’s Innovation Awards which happened last night (although I was in a separate part of London at a PR bash). The Economist does seem to be pushing quite hard in technological areas recently. I may start changing my mind about the mag (I know a few people that have worked for it at various points and not that many are enamoured with it).

Anyway, Innocentive.com won the business-process innovation award for its website where people post descriptions of technical problems they have, complete with a reward (serious money too) for whoever solves it. I’ve had a look and I have to confess I don’t even know what most of the problems actually are (they’re all about biology and chemistry – subjects I have no more than a GCSE in). For example the challenge to synthesise “N,N`- ethylenbis[2-(2-hydroxyphenyl)-glycine (EDDHA)”.

Christ alone knows what that even is, but it was solved by Rex X. Ren, who has a PhD in this sort of thing, and is a Chinese citizen currently at a US university in Conneticut. Mr Ren has been having a good time with Innocentive.com and has so far solved four challenges. I strongly suspect he is working on more as we speak. I could call him and ask – the site lists his phone number.

Human knowledge and inspiration

Why do I find this so exciting? Because this really is what people are talking about when they discuss the sharing of knowledge, the rapid advance of mankind to solve problems faster because we are able to get the right minds on the job. The use of technology – the Internet – to overcome the simple physical barriers of our existence.

As a journalist, I constantly have questions occur to me and then set out on a hunt to find the person who has the answer – there is *always* someone out there somewhere. And then I write about it so that if the thought has ever occurred to anyone else, they can get to know about it without having to do the legwork themselves.

This simple job is why I do what I do – when I would have a damn sight more respect and money if I did something else. But the frustrating thing about the media is that alot of information gets lost in translation. The person telling you have to simplify it, and then you have to simplify it further. The hope is that the people at the other end that have a real interest in the subject will do their own follow-up.

With the Internet, this middleman role is no longer as important. Those with highly specialised knowledge and experience can discover one another with incredible ease. This can only be a good thing.

I am still pondering on the words of Nitin Desai at the IGF last week when he said that the use of the Internet *itself* had enabled and encouraged people that would never previously have collaborated to work together. The Net is allowing us to get to the real people underneath society’s labels, and the result is that we become less obstructive and protective of our areas – to everyone’s benefit.

Innocentive has $1.6m in potential rewards on its site at the moment. And while I already know that out of the thousands of challenges up on the site, I will not be able to solve a single one, very possibly one of the 80,000 people that have signed up as problem-solvers could do. There’s something magical about that prospect.