One of the greatest things about the interconnectivity of the world wide web is the access to (nearly) anything you want when you want it. Its all there and for the most part its free. But, I’ve started to wonder, is this a good thing?
Now I’m not talking about Murdochs desperate attempt to protect his empire, or record companies seeing their bloated price structures wither and die or even film companies desperately peddling 3-D to combat piracy. I’m much more concerned with the individuals I’ve met through Twitter, on blogs or just by stumbling across the internet. These talented bunch of writers, artists, cartoonists or musicians who share their passion, thoughts and talent free to the world.
If you dig below the skin of these individuals you will find, for the most part, what they do on here is not what they do for a living. They have careers (or atleast jobs) doing things just to pay the mortgage and support their families. And these are the ones we need to find a way of paying.
At the moment the only hope is these talented types are discovered by one of the media industries (TV, newspapers etc) and are given regular work; or have a brief moment in the sun where they promote a single idea until the inevitable back lash happens and they fade back into obscurity. This is also why, for the moment, old media outlets will survive and why they hold the balance of power. They still pay the wages.
Alternatively to earn some money there is advertising, a chance to scrape some pennies together if your visitors click through to what ever links are on your webpages. But even this isn’t ideal. I don’t tend to click advertised links. I know a lot of other people feel the same. And given the choice most people wouldn’t want advertising cluttering their pages.
The web is becoming more homogenised with our standardised social network pages and structured web2.0 experiences. So its great to spend time with those who swim against the flow and provide us with some genuinely exciting moments. I believe that this talent needs to be rewarded, that those using their brains should get the recognition they deserve and not just in additional followers. (remember the greater the traffic the higher the cost!). Surely if they are using the web so creatively they should have the opportunity to earn a wage from it and get away from the 9 to 5.
So how? Some form of micro-payment? How do we regulate a system which rewards individuals for page views and reading of their sites without be openly abused by organisations and individuals? Honestly, I don’t have the answer. One of the problems i perceive is how to we persuade surfers to pay for something they are used to getting for free?
That is the toughest question of all.
