Red Box Video

So I was thinking the other day (I know, I know, dangerous…) and it struck me that Amazon could take the red box video idea and merge it with Mechanical Turk for something really revolutionary. If you live in North America, I’m sure you’re familiar with the red box video service that you can find at McDonald’s, Walmart, etc. They’re all over now. Basically, it’s a vending machine for DVDs.

The idea of kiosks got me thinking, though. What if, instead of a retail machine, it was something entirely different from Amazon – a Mechanical Turk kiosk – a Green Box. Picture this. Worker comes to McDonald’s, answers a few simple questions and gets to choose money or menu. If menu is picked, depending on how many tasks he completed, pictures of food and drink comes up. Maybe 5 tasks for a Big Mac. The details would have to be worked out.

Amazon Mechanical Turk Kiosk?

Then, after choosing. Maybe McDonald’s asks him a bonus question in exchange for a small fry or a free super-size of the item picked. This would be a great way for McDonalds to get customer feedback at a low cost. Economies of scale. That’s what Mechanical Turk is all about, in my humble opinion. And this could kick Mechanical Turk to the next level.

I know some of you are probably moaning – there are already not enough tasks, you say. Well, I imagine if the numbers were huge (and this could scale really, really large on Amazon’s cloud, I imagine) then large corporations would probably be very, very interested at the discounted information/opinions/work. So, I say if Amazon Green Boxes (or whatever they’re called – Mechanical Turk Kiosks maybe) do come about, they’ll actually be beneficial to Turkers everywhere.

There are social benefits too. Think of a single mother who needs diapers and just doesn’t have the money. Instead of doing something illegal, it could be as simple as going down to Walmart and answering some tough art history questions in exchange for the diapers. Maybe they’re set-up at libraries so people can learn and be able to do more and more difficult and specialized tasks.

Of course it would still be available online, but this would really take Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to the next level, which could be a good thing for many people – Amazon included.

So, what do you think? Is there merit to the idea? Can you envision it? Should a letter writing campaign be started so Amazon implements the idea?

Talk to me, world.

Almost anyone who is at least 18 years old and has a computer connected to the Internet can perform Mechanical Turk tasks. On the other hand, anyone can submit a Human Intelligence Task (HIT) that can be done by utilizing an Internet-connected computer. For tasks that require special skills, the person applying to do the task can undergo some tests to ensure that he is qualified for the job. People who work for Mechanical Turk must have an Amazon.com account to take advantage of the security infrastructure used by Amazon for identity and payments. It is also easy to get paid using Mechanical Turk. The payment is automatically deposited into the Amazon.com account of the person who did a task after the completed work has been approved by a Requester.