Crowdsourcing. When you read this word what do you think? Jeff Howe thinks that crowdsourcing is the new way of making business. And it is, in a way...
[Check out his YouTube video on Crowdsourcing]
With the Internet and all it has to offer, especially in terms of ideas and creative content, people might be less compelled to buy tangible objects, for example newspapers. Now, how many of you still buy newspapers? If you do you are part of extinct race. Most of the younger generations and some of the older ones are just checking for their news updates online. Why buy newspaper when we can do something ecological and money-saving by accessing a whole database of information online that is constantly being updated everyday? And it's totally free too! A newspaper journalist might have something to say to that, though. You see, internet to a person who creates things, like an article, is both good and bad.
If I wrote this article in Wikipedia (and it actually stayed there instead of being ripped off by some unidentified Wiki person), later on someone might come and modify it and that would mean that my idea is no longer mine but also someone else's. As Dan Woods said in his article The Myth of Crowdsourcing, the "crowd" is the one that now getting the praise for the work of the individual. In other words my idea is now everyone else's.
And just to leave you thinking, do you know how this affects business? Well, as John Perry Barlow said in his article Selling Wine without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net, what brought in the money was the tangible object, in other words you pay for the newspaper not the article within. Now with open source networks there is no newspaper - only articles and ideas.
Business based on materialism is now ceasing to be. So how are we going to make money now?
