Technology Quarterly | Monitor
Putting your money where your mouse is
Crowdfunding: Artists, musicians and writers are using the internet to aggregate lots of small donations to fund their work
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WIKIPEDIA, a giant online encyclopedia compiled by volunteers, is the product of the aggregation of lots of people's spare time. An example of “crowdsourcing”, it demonstrates that on the internet, as in the real world, many hands make light work. Can the same approach be applied to money as well as time? That is the idea behind “crowdfunding”, in which lots of small contributions are aggregated online to support artistic or creative ventures.
This article appeared in the Technology Quarterly section of the print edition under the headline "Putting your money where your mouse is"
From the September 4th 2010 edition
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