So I already wrote about Andrew Keen’s ridiculously laughable assertion that the economic downturn would spell the end of all unpaid activity online — such as blogging, contributing to Wikipedia and developing open source software. The whole thing was so laughable, I asked Keen to put some money behind some of his predictions, though to date I have not heard from him. I’m guessing this means he really does not believe what he writes.
However, I have to bring this up again, because Jesse Walker over at Reason Magazine does such an amazing job demonstrating the basic logic fallacy in Keen’s thinking that it’s too good not to repeat:
Andrew Keen predicts an end to backyard gardens, playground basketball, basement jam sessions, amateur painting, and open mic nights for the duration of the economic hard times, because “the idea of free labor will suddenly become profoundly unpalatable to someone faced with their house being repossessed or their kids going hungry.”Oh, wait. Hold on. He only predicts an end to unpaid-but-pleasurable labor on the Internet
No one ever does anything that doesn’t result in immediately getting paid, apparently.
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