Tuesday 23 January 2001

Pic of the day: Yes, yes, the Sims are connected too!

The stupidity economy

This is the dawn of the age of the Internet. Even the old and respectable magazine The Economist has declared the "death of distance". I can certainly chat with people from Iceland to Australia for 50 cent an hour. So what has the death of distance meant for my economy?

Not a lot. I still get up and take the bus to work. You'd think that with the death of distance, I could work from home. If not in my current job, then in another. I've tentatively looked into what opportunities for income there exists on the Internet. The result is disheartening.

It is said that the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. But can you really construct a whole New Economy on the basis of global stupidity?

***

I'd be perfectly willing to do some simple office work from home, like for instance translate between Norwegian and English. (I do have a spelling checker, I just don't use it for my journal.) I could probably even translate into either English or Norwegian from Swedish, Danish or German, if all else failed. I may not be up to translating Holy Scriptures, but sci-fi and fantasy should be doable, since I actually write that kind of material in both English and New Norwegian.

I suspect that I also retain some of my COBOL skills. Of course, modern COBOL may be event-driven object oriented Windows programming; then again, it may not. Depends on the application, I guess. Oh well. Fat chance, anyway.

For that matter, I may write rejection letters to job applicants. I used to get a lot of those when I was young, and I like to think that I could do it better ...

But that's not how you earn money on the Internet. It's not about utilizing the vast untapped reservoir of human intellect out there. No, the Net economy is all about tapping the reservoir of human stupidity.

***

I've looked at my inbox, even the basket marked SPAM where my mail agent drops the more dubious load. I've clicked on banner ads. I've tried to find out what you can do with the Internet to earn money from home. And I've found that it's all about multi-level marketing (MLM). MLM is a pyramid scheme that has some token object to sell. You buy stuff from someone and sell it to someone else. They sell it to someone else and you get a cut of the profit, but of course your own dealer gets a cut of your profit too. Just like drugs, I suppose ... not that I would know firsthand. It's all about finding someone who is simple-minded enough to buy something you did not need, which you bought from someone else who did not need it either, and still convince your buyer that he or she needs it. Or even better, that he or she can sell it to someone else who needs it. Heh.

Even at my most humble, I'm vaguely aware that there must be billions of people more stupid than I. That's a big market, though of course there is some competition. But I just can't get myself to do something like that. It is icky. It's the economic equivalent to making out with a severely retarded or horribly drunk woman; only without the instant gratification. Let the retards do it with the retards, if it must be done. I will rather get some money off the state by clocking in at work and helping people with their computers, and actually eat my bread with only a moderate and bearable shame.

Looking at the sheer amount of spam mail, there must be a gold rush for stupidity going on. I find it hard to believe that there is so much to find. I mean, "a fool and his gold are easily parted", but that means the pickings are slim for the next trickster. People who are stupid enough to bite on that stuff, cannot possibly be rich enough to do it again and again. Probably the mass marketing comes from people who are themselves so stupid that they expect the world to consist of fools.

***

While the opportunities to earn money from the Net remain slim, the chances to spend money are expanding fast. In particular I'm drooling over the new wave of Internet-based distance learning. (I was actually about to link to the Norwegian institute NKI, but finding that their distance learning website is suddenly a blank page, I think not.) Colleges and universities are also moving further and further into cyberspace.

But the providers of distance learning have generally not understood that "information wants to be free". Or at least cheap. :) They seems to be geared towards those who already have plenty of money. I'm left wondering how much they really add over just reading the books and figuring things out for myself. That was, after all, often the way I did in school. At least the last years, where I would sometimes explain things better to my fellow students than the teachers did.

So ... if the New Economy of stupidity is replaced with a New New Economy based on human resources, I hope you know where to find me. In the meantime, if you are among the privileged who live in the USA, or if you are extremely productive, you may try to make a buck out of writing for Epinions. :)