undercover dogs.

We've probably all learned at least a little about Henry Ford's implementation of the assembly line and the huge impact it had on the automotive industry and on the process of manufacturing in general.  The whole idea behind the assembly line is that each worker involved has a specific task that he/she does repeatedly, thus increasing production speed.  It definitely worked for Henry; it was so successful that the biggest setback was that the paint didn't dry quickly enough!

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

That was almost a century ago.  Is there now something even better?

In his book Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe explains that the internet has allowed us as humans to get rid of the assumption that those who have experience or formal and specialized education are the only ones qualified to participate in a given field.  The cartoon to the right explains it wonderfully.  Howe states, 

"With crowdsourcing, nobody knows you don't hold a degree in organic chemistry or that you've never shot photographs professionally or that you've never taken a design class in your life.  Crowdsourcing has the capacity to form sort of perfect meritocracy.  Gone are pedigree, race, gender, age and qualification.  What remains is the quality of the work itself.  In stripping away all considerations outside quality, crowdsourcing operates under the most optimistic of assumptions: that each one of us possesses a far broader, more complex range of talents than we can currently express within current economic structures.  In this sense crowdsourcing is the antithesis of Fordism, the assembly-line mentality that dominated the industrial age."

Even more efficient than giving people a specific, monotonous task is giving people the chance to do what they love and are good at!  This concept is revolutionizing how humans interact with each other and even redefining "work" as we know it.