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06年度第3回筆記
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Read each passage and' choose the lbest answer 1llrom among the 1110し'r oho'ces Iter each question.Then,on your answer sheet, find the numlber of ttle question andl mark yo1ur ansvνe,.
Crowdsourclng
A decade ago,the whole business world was talking about
outsourcing,the process whereby firms farm out projects to skilled professionals - usually abroad - in order to reduce production costs.The problem is that these labor pools have to be located, trained,and maintained,often across great geographical distances. Add up the costs,and there goes most of your budget.However,it turns out skilled professionals aren't the only workers available for outsourcing.Competitive companies are increasingly hiring skilled freelancers to help develop products and solve problems,and this labor pool is a mere mouse click away.
“Crowdsourcing”is the term commonly used to refer to the
issuing of an“open call'' job announcement to anyone accessing the website where it is posted.Assuming the site generates enough traffic,a qualified individual is likely to come along sooner or later, and the market will determine the price.The benefits of such a system include a quick turnaround time and a huge labor poo1.Some online firms use crowdsourcing to find web surfers willing to complete simple tasks that computers are not able to do,such as transcribing interviews.The ease of the tasks,most of which can be completed in a few minutes,combined with the large number of applicants able to do the work,causes the pay to range from a few cents to a few dollars -hardly enough to make a living.
But the real benefits of crowdsourcing come to the fore in tasks
requiring creativity or technicalexpertise.Computer coding is highly specialized work that can be done from anywhere,and sites such as Rent A Coder,which offer regular job postings to freelancers for software patches and web design,have recently popped up.Emp1oyees and employers rarely meet,as payment is made over the Internet,and the result is a fast turnaround time at a price far below standard corporate rates.Crowdsourcing has also helped industry ferret out reclusive inventors.InnoCentive,a site that posts pesky biological or chemical problems,was set up by the company Procter&Gamble to
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deal with difficulties in product development,such as getting fluoride powder into a toothpaste tube without having it dissipating into the air.These problems are then taken up by freelance“solvers,''who can earn anything from$10,000 to$100,000 per solution.
Ifcrowdsourcing is a boon to some,however,it may sound the
death knell for those who formerly did the work.Take professional stock photographers,who in days of yore could post their photos with stock agencies,which would then sell them to advertisers and magazines.With the advent of digital cameras,however,almost anyone can flood the Internet with high-quality photos.driving the average stock photo price down from over a hundred dollars a shot to less than five.Crowdsourcing promises better results from a larger brain pool,allowing clever entrepreneurs to get a piece of the action from home,but for those threatened by the new phenomenon,the choice is clear:stay competitive or get ready to join the crowd.
(32)In general,what advantage does crowdsourcing offer over
outsourcing?
(33)
l It increases the chance of companies finding skilled workers
by advertising on sites they are likely to access.
21t allows corporations to make long-term commitments to
workers without hiring them full-time.
31t targets workers in domestic markets,resulting in fewer job
losses to countries where wages are lower.
41t is more useful for training the unskilled labor force that