Amazon.com last month released a beta of its Mechanical Turk Web Services. In the past month, this has created a very interesting ecosystem of developers, users, and contract workers. And let’s not forget about the bloggers and commentators. The whole thing is a case study in how a simple but sophisticated programming interface can quickly grow into a life force. And BTW, empower some shut-in folks to earn a few bucks.

The idea is a simple but powerful one. Think what SETI @ home (which recently changed its own programming interfaces, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment) does. It takes a very complex task, searching for radio signal patterns in the hope of finding extra-terrestrial life, and distributes the computing and processing to complete this task amongst millions of PCs that otherwise would be idle. The software runs as a screensaver and sends the compute jobs back to the mother ship when done.

Now replace the PCs with people, yes actual real carbon life forms sitting in front of their PCs. Stir in a Web Services API that allows the people to do tiny, very tiny, bits of programming jobs when they are otherwise idle, and also compensates them with tiny, very tiny, bits of actual money when they accurately complete the task. That is what Turking is all about.

You can read more about this phenonmenon here.