You’ve seen them before. CAPTCHAs (short for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) are literally all over the internet. If you’ve done something as simple as register for an email or post an item on Craigslist, should already be familiar with this specific security system. However, you may not know that every time you complete a specific CAPTCHA system, reCAPTCHA, you’re actually helping in digitizing old books and articles.
Today, there are many ongoing projects to digitize and archive the huge mass of books and other written works produced before the digital era. Because of the complexity and sheer amount of work involved in these kinds of projects, most of the work is performed by machines. However, even machines tend to make quite a few mistakes during this process for reasons ranging from poor quality to an unusual use of font. To correct these mistakes, reCAPTCHA presents the wrongly identified words for the general public to decipher via the internet. It’s a process that’s actually quite brilliant. Not only can reCAPTCHA compact a decade’s worth of work into less than five seconds, it’s also great for preventing spambots and security threats. After all, if the initial word recognition program couldn’t recognize the word, it’s doubtful that most other similiar software can.
Currently, reCAPTCHA is working on archiving old copies of the New York Times and various documents from Goodle Books. For more information, you can visit their official website here.
Honestly, captcha is the least annoying system–the letters are actually readable compared to other systems. And it’s so great that reCAPTCHA is actually doing something else! Thanks for the share
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