When we think of the Great Depression, we imagine long lines of gaunt men, caps in hand, waiting for soup handouts. The equivalent photos of today's economic hard times -- displayed for free, of course, on Flickr -- may be represented by images of unemployed people in front of their computers cheerfully donating their labor to Wikipedia.
Unfortunately, there is no doubt that a lot of Americans are suddenly going to have a lot of extra time on their hands to donate their labor for free. Unemployment in America is already at a five-year high of 6.1 percent, with leading economists like 2008's Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman predicting that it will be "certain" to rise to 7 percent and "quite possibly" to 8 percent as the depressing economic implications of the Wall Street financial meltdown crawl up Main Street. As Krugman wrote, with unvarnished Hobbesian honesty, in The New York Times earlier this month, "All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish -- and long."
So much for the good news. Hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of newly redundant Americans will have nothing to do all day except contribute to wikis or become citizen journalists or "work" on their Facebook or MySpace pages. In an America where one in 10 adults are out of work, will Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's free economic model revolutionize the nature of work? Is $0.00 really the future of labor in an age of mass unemployment?
Of course not. One of the very few positive consequences of the current financial miasma will be a sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor. Mass unemployment and a deep economic recession comprise the most effective antidote to the utopian ideals of open-source radicals. The altruistic ideal of giving away one's labor for free appeared credible in the fat summer of the Web 2.0 boom when social-media startups hung from trees, Facebook was valued at $15 billion, and VCs queued up to fund revenue-less "businesses" like Twitter. But as we contemplate the world post-bailout, when economic reality once again bites, only Silicon Valley’s wealthiest technologists can even consider the luxury of donating their labor to the latest fashionable, online, open-source project.
In his best-selling book, Predictably Irrational, MIT behavorial economist Dan Ariely suggests that most of us are irrational when it comes to determining the value of our labor. I’m not sure. I may not have Ariely’s grasp of behavorial economics, but I’m pretty sure, if not certain, that the idea of free labor will suddenly become profoundly unpalatable to someone faced with their house being repossessed or their kids going hungry. Being paid to work is intuitive to the human condition; it represents our most elemental sense of justice.
So how will today's brutal economic climate change the Web 2.0
"free" economy? It will result in the rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash; it will mean the success of Knol over Wikipedia, Mahalo over Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), TheAtlantic.com over the HuffingtonPost.com, iTunes over MySpace, Hulu LLC over YouTube Inc. , Playboy.com over Voyeurweb.com, TechCrunch over the blogosphere, CNN’s professional journalism over CNN’s iReporter citizen-journalism... The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue. "Free" doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up.
When, in 50 years time, the definitive histories of the Web 2.0 epoch are written, historians will look back at the open-source mania between 2000 and 2008 with a mixture of incredulity and amusement. How could tens of thousands of people have donated their knowledge to Wikipedia or the blogosphere for free? What was it about the Internet that made so many of us irrational about our economic value? It was a "mania," these mid-21st-century historians will explain, like the Dutch Tulip mania of the 1630s or South Sea Bubble of 1720 -- a mania that ended with the great crash of October 2008.
— Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur
There was an article posted at Price Waterhouse and Cooper today... discussing the legislation where Senetor J. Rockefeller sponsored an amendment to the 20 Billion dollar economic stimulus bill calling for the government "to explore open-source technologies in the healthcare setting. The provision directs the Health and Human Services Department to conduct a report on the “availability of open-source health information technology systems.”
So maybe the economic thumping - and an open minded government - may be about to give open source technologies a real chance instead.
Why are you comparing today's economic conditions with the "Dutch Tulip mania of the 1630s or South Sea Bubble of 1720"? That is like comparing Facebook to the first Ford Motor Car because they both start with the letter 'f'.
Community driven sites, collective intelligence and crowdsourcing are:
1) Creating innovation and better products. People read information on wikipedia and buy t-shirts from threadless.com because these sites provide better information or a better product. You have completely ignored the buyer / user side of these services and marketplaces. There are key benefits which help the individual and the economy. A better educated public, a better logo design, a better photograph from istockphoto or a better snippet of software code from TopCoder. These things drive better businesses that can in-turn make more money.
2) Utilising people's spare time that they would've otherwise used in a less productive way (like playing Sudoku). They probably did not quit their jobs to become a professional blogger and if they did, someone else took their job and they started making money from the blogging.
Hey, isn't Andrew Keen the guy that wrote that horrible, silly, inaccurate piece of drivel called The Cult of The Amateur?
Ah yes, he sure is. It appears he hasn't learned his lesson and contunues to pollute the interweb with his own amateurish rantings. And somehow manages to maintain a consistent level of inaccuracy and silliness.
"although I wouldn't be surprised to see the open source economy
dramatically shrunk by the Wall Street meltdown. why will software
developers continue to work on projects like LINUX for free?"
The reason is quite simple when you take a look at who is using linux, these links should help:
Hmm... Lets see; the US Navy, the NSA, the FBI, NASA, State of Mississippi, LucusFilms, Dreamworks, 1&1 Internet Inc. I'm sure if I wanted to I could find alot more.
It is companies, governmnets, and orgranizations like these that will continue to work on projects like these, and vendos that are supplying these people and groups as well.
Also here's alittle something that you might want to consider the next time you jump on any airplane:
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/40633-1.html
The FAA is trusting linux to run it's servers of the air traffic control division.
There is a counter force; we may get a new wave of me-too open source projects.
Before people loose their job, they are useually unemployed in place for a year or more before the bean counters catch up to them.
During this period, many of these under-employed in our industry engage in what I call 'occupational hobbies'. The biggest occupational hobby out there is open source software. So they diddle and diddle for months and months on 'free' software to provide some new 'feature' on some non-value add me too CMS or something. And why they a done?
"Sounds to me like you all this itching is turning you into a digital utopian. I like to keep all my work in the closet and not share. I've yet to see much evidence that sharing my work makes me any wealthier..."
Here's the thing, judging by this post and your responses-- your work isn't worth any money in the first place. Please-- in the future, keep it in the closet.
Well, that's true but you are leaving some things behind.
2% increase in the unemployment rate, represents 6million people (and quite possibly their families, probably not entirely but will have an impact)
In more economic terms, there's number economists talk about, the natural rate of unemployment - which is a balance that holds the rest of the economy in place (mainly, inflation and interests rates). So it's not only that those unemployed won't receive income but the economy takes a toll from that person's ability to produce (not reacing the production potential).
And I agree, that Andrew's post was considering a more tragic effect. I don't develop any open-source software but I think that if I did, and saw that my income from my job aren't enough (or that I get fired) I would need to do something that brings the food to the table - the bottom line.
Or is a company that has a 100% customer service satisfaction but a negative economic profit, successful?
I believe you might be discounting the concept of "free" labor as investment.
There are a number of rationales for why people contribute free content to Web 2.0, not all of which are 100% altruistic.
Sure, we all like to contribute to the greater good, hoping that the knowledge we offer may be useful to others within the community. Whenever I post to an e-mail list, blog, etc., I get the satisfaction of knowing that the information I'm disseminating may very well have a positive impact on someone out there. It makes me feel good to know that I've helped someone...unsolicited "thank you's" really make my day.
But spending time generating information without direct compensation has benefits beyond the warm-and-fuzzy feelings one gets from thank-you notes. Name recognition is a valuable commodity. If you have good ideas, and express them well, people will remember your name. And name recognition will pay dividends. I've written a book, taught university courses, and done consulting work all due to the fact that people associate my name with thoughtful work. And I'm pretty sure that, were I in the market for another job, that name recognition would be a plus. I've been courted for other jobs, and I'm pretty sure these feelers wouldn't be there if it weren't for that name recognition.
I'm certainly not famous. But a lot of people in my field have heard of me. And in the long run name recognition is an asset. Laboring without compensation can be a very real investment in one's future.
Hi, after reading your post I felt empty, disparaged, slightly nauseaous and very gloomy. There were 678 words that failed to purvey any notion of passion, opportunity, freedom, potential, positivity or creativity.
I won't be reading any of that stuff anymore, it was very unhelpful.
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