“Recently it has become increasingly easy for people to participate in the media, whether in the form of reality TV, so-called participatory democracy, crowdsourcing, or social networks. Anybody who is connected to the networks can make media artefacts that can reach a vast audience, recombine other such artefacts almost limitlessly, share ideas, content and engage in debate all over the globe, and foster new forms of virtual community.

On the other hand, techniques such as ‘crowdsourcing’ treat people as ‘clickworkers’, the drone bees, working tirelessly on their small task, but without an audible voice or visible face among the multitude of others, and with no stake in the outcome, or necessarily even an awareness of the big picture – welcome to the userfarm!

‘Faces in the Cloud’ looks beyond crowdsourcing for ways to bring out or expose the traces of our singular individuality, and our innate creativity, and dignity, in the anonymity of the network.”

FutureEverything 2012 mission statement

A welcome move