The Efficient Revolution

Reading an interesting article today about how Gannett, publisher of USA Today, will start to Crowdsource in order to gather content for its news sources. Does this mean gone are the days of scooping journalists? Will this company pay its sources, or attempt to shuffle well paid reporters out, and bring in cheap, unreliable sources, and get their sleaze for free? Welcome to the dawning of corporate takeover. Not only does the media rip you off with the high costs of information access, but now they can rip off both the feeders and the fed, by getting their real-time information for next to nothing, and then sell it at 400% markup.
If people don't wake up in this country, they are going to lose not just their freedoms, but everything the USA stood for. I'm all for change, but I look at this kind of change in a very different way. Sure, some overpaid big wigs get to get fat and rich for restructuring their production infrastructure, but they will be taking advantage of people's desire to get the information out there. Most people, in my opinion, want to be heard, and a lot of people in our society like to snoop on everyone else. Hell, they'd do anything for free if it's to expose another human being. I also like to play the role of investigative journalist here and there, thus this blog. That's why there are thousands of blogs all over the Web.
Well, now to my point. This is what I mean by an Efficient Revolution. There is no need for fighting the system in forms of violence and disobedience. Instead, our generation needs to stop buying into this exploitation of the information society, and start reaping the benfits of technology at hand. It does not take much, and in thinking more conceptually about technology and how it fits into our everyday lives, every individual becomes a corporation, and productivity will sky rocket. Think about it.
Part 4 of Andy Kessler's blog on internet media, references a ton of good points in relation to my argument. Kessler gives us 4 examples of how internet media is serving a destructive combination punch to an old world economic market (i.e. packaging and shipping of music albums; avoidance of use of paid-for newspaper classified ads; the switch to using online voip programs in contrtast to using traditional phones for long-distance calls; and cursed blogs drawing away from traditional paper news media). Consumers are not stupid. If a farm decided to open its fields and orchards for free picking, do you think people would continue to go to the supermarket? Yet all of these points prove that the consumers have adapted to the technological revolution, but the suppliers are becoming an extinct species.
This post should not portray to you that I am anti-technology or anti-internet, but rather is meant to suggest to people of business, and people of technology to begin to explore the limits of our technological economy, and debate with yourselves how to break the boundaries, and create new opportunities, and employ for this new economy. If this does not happen on a large scale, I fear that our economy will face a frightening nose dive.