reCAPTCHA

I have always loved trying to decode the CAPTCHA blocks that are on the most popular user generated content websites. CAPTCHA is supposed to stop spammers from either (1) automatically creating accounts that are in turn used to send out spam or (2) automatically post spam related content. While some of the CAPTCHA algorithms have been broken (CAPTCHA is dead), I have recently seen "reCAPTCHA" being displayed on websites.




Some Googling revealed that reCAPTCHA takes complete advantage of the Web 2.0 world, in that it harnesses the human decoding knowledge/power used to key-in solutions for CAPTCHAs and collectively uses it to complete a socially good cause- completing the translation of books and other forms of print into a digitized format. The challenge with the digitizing process is that it is not 100% perfect requiring a human to enter in the actual translations. Enter in reCAPTCHA, where a human supplies the solution to the two displayed words.

reCAPTCHA is described in detail here and in more details in this published article which fully describe how reCAPTCHA can be about 99% accurate over time.


I was amazed that a group of people figured out how to take an existing technology used as a preventative measure and to capture the human computing power to use in a world-wide positive collective effort. It reminds me of the SETI project although reCAPTCHA is more at the micro level (a few seconds each of individual human time vs. leftover processing power of individual personal computers). Another similar comparison is Wikipedia. This type of individual collective effort to better the overall technical community, to me, illustrates one of the main tenets/characteristics of Web 2.0.

I got a small rush of excitement when I made my first entry into Wikipedia knowing that I was making the overall product better. Now, instead of being annoyed when presented with reCAPTCHA blocks, I will look at them in a new light and instead be more than willing to decode those two words.

I am interested to see how the reCAPTCHA effort plays out over the next few years. Will it last, or will the CAPTCHA technology that it's based on fall out of favor and thus thwart the reCAPTCHA effort?

On a more positive note, more Googling uncovered that the two paired words can be rather humorous:


More funny reCAPTCHAs can be found here.

There are even videos of funny reCAPTCHAs: