"Brains up ! Ideas, skills, time, life ! Put everythin' you have in the bag !"

     I'm just starting to wonder about something...

Why is it that every time an idea sounds new, innovative and full of positive potential, it has to be used in the wrong way - meaning, to exploit people?

  Really, when I read about crowdsourcing, I was fascinated at first, but then... 

Is it yet another way for companies to reduce their costs and increase profit-making by creating an online competition between people who will be paid like, nothing, to do the job? 

   There is already a throatcut competition in the real workplace because people are so afraid of loosing their jobs to somebody that lives in China... Now you will have to explain the employee that the person who is taking their job hasn't been interviewed for it, but is cheap and will do it almost as a volunteer as some kind of hobby...?

Are some internautes being enrolled into an online "reserve army of labor" without even knowing about it, to use Marx's expression?

Is technology the brand new tool to alienate people?

   Actually, the same problem is happening with open innovation... It sounds really promising if companies open themselves to ideas from the outside...

But since big companies' strategies are always about money, how much will you get for providing them with their next innovation?... Maybe nothing. 

Thanks to a form that was mentioned in one of the articles :

"The form says that any idea an independant inventor pitches can instantly be used by the big company if it wants to. For no money".

I thought we were heading to a world of greater cooperation, trust, interaction, sharing of skills and mutual benefits... Apparently NOT.

Photo credits to : 

www.journalistopia.com

www.cartoonstock.com

www.current.com