The Power of One (Times 8 Billion)

Works of massive collaboration are the only things to set humans and other earthly primates apart. Collaboration has enabled the completion of every wonder in both the ancient and modern world. Millions upon billions of us gather and use a plethora of time on the internet, squandering with social activities and entertainment when we should be achieving greatness. All works of collaboration achieve their goals by taking small works of a large number of workers to achieve monumental progress, like ants building a hill or ancient Egyptians building the pyramids. By utilizing the internet’s full potential we could unlock the ability to quench social and entertainment thirsts along side achieving greatness.

Egypt is a popular place for tourists from around the globe to gather. One of its largest attractions is the Great Pyramid of Giza, otherwise referred to as Khufu’s Great Pyramid. This pyramid is over 4,500 years old and is the last-standing of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  There are an uncountable amount of people who will travel hundreds of miles just to ogle at this and other massive structures composed of nothing but aged and decaying limestone. All of them will be frozen in time pondering what is the only problem aforementioned structures. We must ask, how could have primitive humans erected such mass structure with the lack of modern technology and tools?  A small percentage of us won’t be able to comprehend the concept of humans creating such monumental structures and hide behind the speculation that the builders had assistance from an “other-worldly” force, namely extraterrestrials. The rest of us spectators will be able to logically deduce the more reasonable solution to such problem. The solution that is the underrated tool of massive collaboration.

A massive portion of our population is unaware of the importance of massive collaboration throughout history. To entertain the concept we can rewind and ask, what is collaboration? Collaboration is one of the most important factors defining humanity’s existence. This tool is a crutch for past and modern architecture, engineering, research, construction, and most other fields of growth. The pyramids weren’t built by a small group of workers overnight. Khufu’s Pyramid was constructed in a matter of thirty years with a workforce of over 100,000 oppressed slaves (Krystek). Although thirty years seems like a long time for even a force of 100,000 workers, we can break this down to put the construction into perspective. Initially, the workers weren’t paid and had little to no incentive or compensation, if anything their incentive was the promised “freedom” upon completion of the pyramid. By this we know the workers didn’t want to do this work. We can assume none of the workers woke up full of excitement and anticipation of being whipped in the desert and pushing literal tons of stone up a 45 degree slope. To the workers they were just creating an over-sized tombstone, not a wonder of the ancient world. But even this fact alone can’t justify the full thirty years for over 100,000 workers. Next we have to realize that each of the 2,300,000 limestone blocks weighed 2.5 tons each, which is approximately the weight of a large truck or SUV.  We also have to remember how the stones weren’t just built up from the ground where the pyramids are. Most of the stones were quarried off-site in places as far as 600-miles away! A 600-mile drive could take as long as 7.5 hours at 80 mph! Transporting then sculpting and finally stacking 2,300,000 SUVs hundreds of miles away from which they came without the use of any mechanical lifts or assists in a matter of 30 years is impressive. This is also considering that when the base was completed each layer after was more and more work; the same progression of work is why the cap, only the top-most portion of the pyramid, took 10 years alone to perfect.

If 100,000 workers with no incentive whatsoever could pull-off such feat then imagine what 3,000,000,000 incentive-driven workers could accomplish! 3 Billion sounds like a lot, like too many people for one project. Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup, right? Wrong! The number 3 billion comes from an estimated 3.091 billion users on the internet at any given time. Statisticians confirm that the number of users on the internet grow at a steady and linear rate or that it even follows a slow but sure exponential curve (Internet Live Stats). These numbers may seem irrelevant until it is revealed that collaboration doesn’t have to be on-site anymore. What if the Pharaoh Khnum-Khufu himself could have out-sourced his laborers, and had a workforce of 30 million (estimated population for circa 3000 BC)? The pyramids would have been completed in a matter of hours, provided it was physically possibly for 30 million people to work in such small space together without getting in the way of one another, or spoiling the soup for that matter. If only there were some way an absurdly large task-force could be set to a common goal without interfering with one-another. Oh wait, there is! It’s called the internet and as mentioned before it has approximately 3 billion users workers, a number that is rising fast.

Collaboration has been and always will be important in achieving any greater goals. Collaboration isn’t a trait unique to humans. Collaboration is a natural strategy of survival and is seen in all walks of the animal kingdom. I can reference mutually-beneficial living organisms who help each other survive (most commonly fish), or a pack of wild dogs who stalk and kill their prey together then share the spoils of hunt, or monkeys that have been observed working together in a laboratory environment to obtain food, or any other examples of teamwork in nature. It won’t matter where it is a reference to because collaboration is in nearly every biome, every kingdom, every genus. Collaboration is natural for a species, or a pack of said species, to survive and thrive. Humans are no exception to this rule.

A more recognizable instance of massive collaboration is one where the workers didn’t even know they were working. The project that is CAPTCHA was developed in 2000 by Luis von Ahn with three of his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University. Ahn speaks on TED Talks about his experience with CAPTCHA and its successor reCAPTCHA, released just a few short years later. During his TED Talks session Ahn discussed how successful the project was and how “humanity as a whole is wasting about 500,000 hours every day typing these annoying CAPTCHAs”. Ahn wanted to change CAPTCHA in such a way that it took all of the time-wasted and put it towards something for the good of humanity. After some brainstorming, the team came up with reCAPTCHA. This replaced the random pictures of squiggly text with pictures of squiggly text that had significance. They created reCAPTCHA to assist in the process of digitizing books. Ahn moves on to explain that “scanning a book is like taking a digital photograph of every page of the book. It gives you an image for every page of the book. This is an image with text for every page of the book. The next step in the process is that the computer needs to be able to decipher all of the words in this image. That’s using a technology called OCR, for optical character recognition, which takes a picture of text and tries to figure out what text is in there. Now the problem is that OCR is not perfect. Especially for older books where the ink has faded and the pages have turned yellow, OCR cannot recognize a lot of the words. For example, for things that were written more than 50 years ago, the computer cannot recognize about 30 percent of the words. So what we’re doing now is we’re taking all of the words that the computer cannot recognize and we’re getting people to read them for us while they’re typing a CAPTCHA on the Internet” (Ahn). Of course none of this seems to be too secure. What if the reader couldn’t correctly identify the word? Wouldn’t that just lead to books being digitized wrong? No! The ever-so-smart people who designed reCAPTCHA  have thought about this. This program makes certain that input is correct by giving the same prompt to hundreds of people. In this way reCAPTCHA can assume a response to any picture to be accurate when, say, 150 people respond the same way to it.

reCAPTCHA’s story doesn’t end there, and neither does Luis von Ahn’s. Luis von Ahn went further with his team and created the app we all know as Duolingo. Duolingo’s primary objective was to translate the web, specifically Wikipedia, into another language. During the segment on Duolingo Ahn made it clear that to translate 80% of Wikipedia to Spanish, “it would cost at least 50 million dollars — and this is at even the most exploited, outsourcing country out there” (Ahn). He goes on explaining how Duolingo works, stating that beginners would start off getting very easy examples which could be found many places on the Web. Then as the user becomes better, the app gives him more complex examples from the Web. And the same as reCAPTCHA, when enough people answer the same prompt the same way, it  assumes the translation is correct and it helps translate the Web.

ReCAPTCHA was eventually bought by Google thus starting a new chapter in its productivity for mankind. Google added a few more applications to reCAPTCHA, among them is the addition of Google Maps’ Street View pictures into the mix. Instead of a word from a book, an internet user might encounter a road-sign, or a building complex’s street-number, all of which automation couldn’t verify correctly. This helps make Google Maps more accurate and relevant to its rapidly growing user-base. Google even implements data from reCAPTCHA into researching Artificial Intelligence. Yes, Google builds a bot by defeating another bot. The applications of reCAPTCHA may never end, for all we know in five years it may be called REreCAPTCHA and it might help solve mathematical algorithms that mathematicians are pulling their hairs out for as we speak.

Massive collaboration has limitless applications in every field. Using the will-power, openly or subliminally, of hundreds of millions of people could benefit any cause. There are projects which use gamers’ addictions to puzzle-solving to map neurons of the brain. There’s an online strategy game where the user encounters a real-life problem which is poaching in the rain-forests. The gamer is then given the necessary tools, virtual of course, to defend the forests against poachers. Although these tools are virtual they are based off of real life tools and strategies and the most successful strategies used in-game would then be implemented in real-life to protect the actual rain-forests from poachers. If someone proposed a really big project there are two ways he could do it: he could befriend a millionaire philanthropist who would back and financially support his goals; or he could befriend a salesman. A salesman because they would be someone with a pitch who could sell his ideas and make them appealing to the average internet user who might just unknowingly be his next employee. The second option has recently become more readily available to the common person as there has been a recent increase in crowd-funding. Crowd-funding is a tool with a similar object to that of massive collaboration projects. In a nut-shell, people or organizations make a product or company proposition and they share their webpage and get “pledges”. Pledges are essentially donations, or funding, for their proposed projects. In return of these pledges, patrons receive compensation such as a refund or an opportunity to test the product, or receive the first line of working models. This compensation usually scales with how much the donor pledges.

Looking back at the ancient Egyptians, there is a plethora of those who believe the pyramids weren’t exactly built by humans. These people can’t comprehend the fact that humans, like any other creature of Earth, can pool their resources and energy to produce projects that would otherwise take centuries. Chris Skinner is just one of these people who doubts the power of humans who properly utilize massive collaboration. There is an article at this link written and published by Skinner. His sole belief is that Ancient Aliens assisted the Egyptians in building the Great Pyramid of Giza and others. We can tell through his provided “evidence” that his argument doesn’t sit on solid ground.

His first entry is:

You know those big stone structures out in Egypt?  The ones  which were supposedly built to house the remains of dead pharaohs???  The ones you thought were built by the Egyptians?Well, you are wrong!THEY WERE BUILT BY ALIENS!Let’s take a look at some undeniable evidence….

So far it is clear to anyone who reads this that Skinner is passionate in disproving the capabilities of humans. The next body of Skinner’s page is:

First, look at this diagram:

The pyramid is highlighted in red, and its two diagonals are extended beyond the end of the pyramid to the north-east and north-west.  The mass of squiggly lines above the pyramid is the Delta of the Nile River, and, as you can see the two diagonals encase the Nile neatly and entirely.  IS THAT A COINCIDENCE???

Yes,  I’m sure that the way the Egyptians did this was to have someone walk hundreds of miles to the end of the delta and hold a really, really long piece of string while someone walked all the way back to the site of the pyramid.  Then,  those two people stood there while two more people repeated the process on the other side of the Pyramid.  Just so that they could build a big building in such a way that its diagonals lie on those two lines.
NOW THAT IS LIKELY????

Here is what really happened: A couple of aliens, flying high enough over the earth to be able to see where the Nile Delta’s origin is, easily saw what orientation the pyramid would need to be in order to have its diagonals  lie on those two lines.

In response to the first paragraph, the only thing to be said is yes it is a coincidence. I’m not sure where the author is taking his argument, maybe this is building on something. But adding the first paragraph to his argument is a mistake, unless he later provides why the fact that the pyramids diagonals aligning with the delta proved to provide any kinda of benefit to the Egyptians or said “Aliens”.  This is like saying the sculptor of Mt Rushmore needed Aliens flying high above earth to find the cliff big enough for proposed sculpting. It just so happen that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built on the diagonals, that diagram looks to me like it proves that the Egyptians wanted the Pyramid to look-out on to the delta. Following that, the second half is now null and void because since it was a coincidence they wouldn’t have had to measure anything. Again, what would they have to gain by having the diagonals align with the delta?

Skinner then goes on to say:

Second piece of evidence:

The big dark shape on the upper left of this diagram is the great pyramid.  If you look at the compass rose in the bottom right, you can see that the pyramid is lined up exactly with the magnetic North Pole,  a difference of only 16 minutes, or some absurdly small number like that (there are 60 minutes in one degree).  COINCIDENCE?   How could the Egyptians possibly have built their pyramid facing the exact magnetic North Pole without even having a compass?  FYI, a compass was not invented for a few thousand years after the ancient Egyptians were long gone?  IS THAT LIKELY????

This is how it really worked:  Those aliens, abundant in their knowledge and drowning in technology, came along and using their compasses,  they landed on earth and found the actual magnetic north and south poles.  THEN THEY BUILT THE PYRAMIDS!

I don’t think the author has done much, if any, research on the ancient Egyptians. It is a known fact that Ancient Cultures were affixed to the night sky. Their whole lives, mythology, and religions often revolved around stars and astrology. It is easy to navigate at night using a star map with the night sky and an enlightened astrologist of course. The fact that the Pyramid aligns to the north is no surprise considering “the Egyptians were masters of aligning buildings, temples and especially the pyramids to fixed stars, apparently in an effort to bring about sympathy between terrestrial structures and the stars with which they were associated” (Hand, 7). In addition, Egyptians were never, nor are they now “long gone”. The authors evidence lacks solid and factual backing. These are all speculations made by the lack of research and knowledge of these peoples’ capabilities.

At the end of his article, Skinner shotguns more claims which can easily be debunked.

“What about the fact that the Egyptians had not even invented the wheel yet,  but the blocks that they had to carry to build the pyramids weighed about 2 tons each? 4,000 lbs.?  What did they do… use cement?   In fact, they used so much stone, that if you took all of the stone they used and cut it into 1 foot square blocks, it would extend 2/3 of the way around the earth!!!”

I’m not sure where to begin with this one. Even if the Egyptians had wheels or logs to roll the stones on, it would prove to be impractical due to the sand and dust covering the ground. Instead, the Egyptians used “sledges” as a sled, like pulling someone on a sled in snow, to transport the blocks. As for Skinner’s second statement here, the truth seems plausible, such that the stone cut into square-foot blocks would extend two-thirds the circumference of the earth. It’s uncertain how this further disproves anything, however.

“Did you know that the height of the pyramid (481 feet) is almost exactly 1/1,000,000,000 of the distance from the earth to the sun (480.6 billion feet)?”

Did you know that this argument is almost exactly irrelevant? This is almost as vague as the first argument of his article. What would any ancient Egyptian or Alien have gained from this “proof”? If it were common knowledge that all extraterrestrial life forms needed to build a structure one-billionth the distance from earth to the Sun, then this might strike as good evidence. Unfortunately, the distance of the building to the Sun would lead to a different conclusion, one not relating to Ancient Aliens’ involvement.

And finally, my favorite:

If you take the perimeter of the pyramid and divide it by two times the height,  you get a number that is exactly equivalent to the number pi (3.14159…) up to the fifteenth digit.  The chances of this phenomenon happening by sheer chance is remarkably small.  Did the ancient Egyptians know what the number pi was?  Not likely,  seeing as it was a number not calculated accurately to the fourth digit until the 6th century,  and the pyramids calculate it to the fifteenth.

No ancient Egyptian who designed the pyramid sat there in his hut and said “I want the perimeter of the pyramid divided by twice the height to equal x“. The author at this point is desperate for additional “evidence”. He is reading far too much into things that aren’t applicable. Pi was calculated because pi is a number found almost everywhere. In architecture, engineering, even Egyptian pottery contained pi. They didn’t know it, but it was there. Just like science was magic before we knew how to explain it. Even Albert Einstein pitched in on the topic. In her article, “What Makes Pi So Special?”,  Natalie Wolchover writes about how “He used fluid dynamics and chaos theory to show that rivers tend to bend into loops. The slightest curve in a river will generate faster currents on the outer side of the curve, which will cause erosion and a sharper bend. This process will gradually tighten the loop, until chaos causes the river to suddenly double back on itself, at which point it will begin forming a loop in the other direction” (Wolchover).  They didn’t calculate pi by building the pyramid, pi is there because the pyramid was built using the most convenient way to stack blocks. The same way the Mayans and Aztecs built all of their ‘pyramids’.

The author’s evidence supporting his claim that Aliens assisted the Ancient Egyptians in building the pyramids is vague, far-fetched, and almost as if he wanted to ignore the real evidence. The Ancient Egyptians were people capable of such building. It’s not like the Pyramids utilize keypad entry or titanium foundations and electrical lighting. The facts are all there, but Chris Skinner made-up his own abstruse facts to “prove” the Aliens’ involvement.

It is observed that the work force who finished the Khufu’s Pyramid were a select group of slaves. Among them are those slaves who were not healthy enough or too old for work. To add on to that they were oppressed. The only incentive for the workers was the promised freedom they would receive upon completion. Unfortunately their only freedom would ultimately be death. If 100,000 oppressed slaves could complete numerous and monumental Pyramids, what do you suppose 100,000 or even 100 million highly motivated workers could accomplish?

Another work of massive collaboration which could easily be called a defining moment for the human race is the Space Race. It was essentially the sequel to the Cold War and was between the United States and the Soviet Union during the years 1957 to 1975. Prior to this World War II had recently concluded and brought upon us the Nuclear Arms Race which is known as the Cold War. This race resulted in a lot of political drama and sanctions, and put nearly every nation on the brink of war. It also led to the realization of the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (later known as MAD). Basically, everyone at this point has manufactured nuclear weapons, so if one power nukes another, there will be a nuclear retaliation which would only lead to both the attacker and their opponent completely demolished. In essence it was a stalemate. After ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) were constructed to deliver the nuclear payloads, the world powers basically sat on their stockpiles of missiles and nuclear warheads and said “Well… now what?”. That’s when the Space Race began. If a nation couldn’t control the land or the skies, then they aimed their sights for space.

An accurate date to mark the start of the Space Race is October 4th 1957, the day the first artificial satellite was successfully launched into our orbit. The satellite that is Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union. Such a monumental event called for Presidential address, and a Presidential address is what we go when “President Dwight D. Eisenhower sounded calm at an October 9, 1957, news conference, five days after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik”. He answered many questions from the public about security and safety, and “when a reporter asked about national security concerns” with the Russian satellite whirling about the world, “Eisenhower tried to dispel any notion that the new object in the heavens should cause alarm. He insisted that a satellite represented a scientific development, not a military threat” (Mieczkowski, 1).

The Space Race is an interesting example of collaboration because it’s an example where something other than oppression pushed the workers to complete their task. This force,  among others present, was fear. Despite Eisenhower’s assurance the people were still skeptical. When Sputnik launched, there was a phenomenon that hit home all around the globe. During this time a man could be in his backyard and see a clear night sky full of stars and the moon with the occasional but rare airplane in the sky. When Sputnik reached orbit it became visible in the night-sky. It circled the Earth dozens of times a day. This became mysterious, inspirational, and frightening all at once to the masses. A man could now stand in his backyard and view with his naked eye a man-made spacecraft zipping across the sky. Was it watching him? Would it fall on him? Could it attack him? These are just some of the common questions asked and debated by the public of this era. Sputnik was a threat to our national security, we just had to compete. This ultimately led to the launch of Explorer I, America’s first satellite, which was a mere four months after Sputnik.

The Explorer I’s completion was a concoction of blank-checks supplied by the government, global panic and fear supplied by the Sputnik, and the resources and brain-power of thousands at NASA. Fear is the strongest driving force when it comes to collaboration. It is my sole belief that one day humanity as a whole will be confronted with a dire crisis, and extinction event. The crisis could be an asteroid whose course provides imminent annihilation, or an accelerated global warming, or any other natural (or supernatural) disaster. When this problem presents itself the only way to fix or ultimately survive the crisis would be a massive collaboration project driven by fear. This will be the bridge between humans now and the humans of the future.

Massive collaboration has always been and always will be the crutch of humanity’s prosperity. It has led to the completion of countless monumental projects including, but certainly not limited to, those mentioned in this essay. The power of massive collaboration will grow just as technology continues to prosper and become more relevant in the everyday life of humans. One day massive collaboration will lead to the next big thing, maybe even the next era of human history.

Works Cited

Hand, Robert. The History of Astrology — Another View. 1 Mar. 1996. Web. 29 Mar. 2015. <http://www.lightforcenetwork.com/sites/default/files/Copyright%201996%20robert%20hand.pdf>

Internet Live Stats. “Internet Users” Internet Live Stats. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.<http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/;.

Krystek, Lee. “Seven Wonder of the Ancient World: Khufu’s Great Pyramid.” Seven Wonder of the Ancient World: Khufu’s Great Pyramid. Web. 1 Mar. 2015. <http://www.unmuseum.org/kpyramid.htm&gt;.

Mieczkowski, Yanek. “Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment : The Race for Space and World Prestige.” <http://site.ebrary.com/lib/rowan/reader.action?docID=10656287 >Ebrary ProQuest Reader. Cornell University Press, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.

Skinner, Chris. “Aliens Built the Pyramids.” Aliens Built the Pyramids. 30 Jan. 1996. Web. 3 May 2015. <http://www.outerworlds.com/likeness/aliens/aliens.html>

Von Ahn, Luis. “Luis von Ahn – Massive-Scale Online Collaboration.” Genius. Web. 1 May 2015. <http://genius.com/Luis-von-ahn-massive-scale-online-collaboration-annotated>

Wolchover, Natalie. “What Makes Pi So Special?” LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 9 Aug. 2012. Web. 29 Apr. 2015. . <http://www.livescience.com/34132-what-makes-pi-special.html