Sheep Market Thesis

Aaron Koblin, developer of The Sheep Market, has published his thesis as a Word document: The Sheep Market: Two Cents Worth. It is fun to read, with some very far-ranging references and some entertaining diversions. It is interesting to read about Aaron’s hesitancy to be just a cog in a machine, then to see him use the Mechanical Turk to actually rotoscope a movie frame illustrating Charlie Chaplin as just such a cog, and finally to the use of the Turk to get 10,000 people to draw a sheep. I didn’t know that some of the Turkers had actually taken issue with Aaron’s decision to offer the sheep for sale.

After having given many, many AWS presentations in the last 4 years, I do have to say that The Sheep Market is one of those applications which always gets people to pay attention. The productivity factor of “11 sheep per hour” always gets a good laugh from the audience.

— Jeff;