{"id":127,"date":"2005-10-18T09:20:16","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T15:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=127"},"modified":"2005-10-18T09:20:16","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T15:20:16","slug":"the_age_of_expl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=127","title":{"rendered":"The age of exploitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a response to my amorality post, Om Malik offers some interesting, and troubling, thoughts about the so-called age of participation that many Web 2.0 pundits are heralding. Malik points out<\/a> that there can be a very fuzzy line between participation and exploitation. He wonders whether the culture of participation isn’t in the end just a way to:<\/p>\n

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build businesses on our collective backs. So if we tag, bookmark or share, and help del.icio.us or Technorati or Yahoo become better commercial entities, aren\u2019t we seemingly commoditizing our most valuable asset – time. We become the outsourced workforce, the collective, though it is still unclear what is the pay-off. While we may (or may not) gain something from the collective efforts, the odds are whatever \u201cthe collective efforts\u201d are, they are going to boost the economic value of those entities. Will they share in their upside? Not likely!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He quotes Yannick Laclau<\/a>, who points out how companies built on open communities, like eBay or Craigslist, will sell out those communities if it’s in their business interest to do so:<\/p>\n

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In the early days, when all is new and in beta and people are blind by the tech-love of seeing innovative stuff, these issues are for the most part ignored. But as we start to see sizable traffic and revenue patterns fluctuate, many existing players might feel that being \u201copen\u201d is rather little more than an invitation for a competitor to steal their lunch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Could it be that Web 2.0 is just a high-tech means of exploiting the work of the masses for the benefit of the few? I don’t know, but I agree with Malik when he says, “It is something we need to discuss.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a response to my amorality post, Om Malik offers some interesting, and troubling, thoughts about the so-called age of participation that many Web 2.0 pundits are heralding. Malik points out that there can be a very fuzzy line between participation and exploitation. He wonders whether the culture of participation isn’t in the end just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}