Just in case Tim O'Reilly is running short on buzz phrases, I'm going to contribute another one suggested by the mix at eTech. In the early days of cybernetics, many applications were in the control of aerospace systems. Many of those control loops unavoidably involved the presence of homo sapiens in the cockpit, leading to the phrase Human in the Loop (HITL). As the linked article dryly observes "The adaptability of human operators made the basic approach of extracting equivalent transfer functions enormously challenging." (Translation: Under carefully controlled conditions, the experimental subject will do what he damn well pleases.)
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Or we can look at the Mechanical Turk, where humans can literally be put into a program loop. And not just a single human, a whole marketplace is the big vision. Which are known to get complex. I grew up writing EXTERNAL statements; will the next generation need to write 'EXTERNALITY' declarations on their jobs?
