An app called PlantNet is currently under development that will allow users to identify and learn about the plants they come across.

With the app you will be able to point your phone’s camera at a plant and a profile will appear--just like the apps that can identify a song playing around you.

There are more than 422,000 known plant species in the world and many more that have not been catalogued. When you factor in the variety of natural environments--the endless shapes, colors and settings--the premise of the app seems a tad outlandish.

How will it be able to accurately synthesize all this information?

Well, it relies partly on a crowdsourced database. Enthusiasts snap photos of plants and flowers and then upload them to the database along with information. The database then sorts and compiles this information to improve its algorithms.

Hypothetically, this crowdsourced and continually updated repository will be able to adapt to the variety of the natural world.

For anyone who has ever walked outside, this is a game changer. It has the potential to unlock vast scientific curiosity. Accurately identifying 10 plants is difficult for many people (myself included) and the old-fashioned way of improving plant knowledge--memorizing a textbook or joining the boy or girl scouts--doesn’t appeal to everyone.

So being able to casually learn about the surrounding natural world could spur a desire to learn more as knowledge is gained and connections form.

Plus, the community aspect of the app could help people feel a part of a broader endeavor to promote scientific and natural literacy.

All across the world, crowdsourcing projects are transforming scientific research.

The microbiome--the collection of bacteria in a person’s body--is being mapped with the help of crowdsourcing projects.

The human genome is similarly being fully discovered with insights from countless helpers.

Both of these cases are leading to breakthrough discoveries about human health and life in general because they represent an unprecedented scale of participation. Normally, scientific studies are limited by sample size, sample diversity, sample duration, etc, but with crowdsourcing the constraints of the past are vanishing. 

My favorite example is a reverse kind of crowdsourcing. Technology is making previously expensive equipment easy to obtain and this new availability is bringing out the inner scientist in a lot of people around the world.

Manu Prakash, a professor at MIT, designed a microscope called Foldscope that performs the same functions as a typical high school lab microscope, except it costs less than $1 USD and is made with basic materials. 50,000 volunteers in more than 130 countries signed up to receive the first prototypes and were introduced to the immense world of microbiology. From there, millions of microscopic bits of data came pouring into the Website Foldscope Explore.  

Projects like PlantNet and Foldscope are part of a new era of democratized science. The barriers to entry that once existed are being demolished and people all across the world are discovering that an Internet connection, a few basic tools and curiosity are enough to make discoveries and find solutions.

In the years ahead, this powerful force will be directed at many of the world’s most vexing problems. And through the efforts of millions of newly empowered minds, many of these problems can be solved.