Personally, I see crowdsourcing as a mixed blessing. It opens the doors for a lot of people out there with good ideas and talent. It means you don’t have to be an “insider”—someone who has the right job/industry affiliations or client connections, etc.—in order to compete on certain projects. But the flip side of the coin is that it can serve to devalue the work that established professionals do, as Mark rightly points out.

As a writer, I’m confronted with this mixed blessing every time I go online. New media has opened up all kinds of exciting new opportunities for writers, unlimited ways to get your ideas out there—but it’s also devaluing what writers do, since most blogs and websites expect to get their content free, or dirt cheap. And Mark, you can implore designers and other creators not to undersell themselves, but we both know that the decisions these artists make often will be based on their own personal needs (e.g., how hungry am I for experience and exposure?)

So what’s the answer? Damned if I know—it’s a complex design challenge that hasn’t been solved yet: How do we embrace the best aspects of crowdsourcing without devaluing professionalism? If anyone has ideas I’d love to hear them—but I ain’t paying for ’em.

For an entire, thoughtful book on this topic, check out tech guru Jaron Lanier’s new book You Are Not a Gadget. His reasoned manifesto notes with alarm the rise of crowdsourcing and the devaluation of individual accomplishment, among many other topics.

When you take on speculative work, fun or not you devalue your profession, the discipline of design and the community as a whole.
.-= Mark Kaufman´s last blog ..Faces of Barcelona No. 3 =-.