Introducing: Writer's Notebook

I think it's safe to say that journalism is changing faster than all but a few of us envisioned. The exhilarating (and terrifying) aspect to this is that everything—what we cover, how we cover it, how we distribute the coverage—is up for grabs. We must find what fails now so we can succeed later.

Well, so be it: I hereby anoint the Writer's Notebook, in which you the reader get to witness me blundering, flailing process that leads, when the stars align, to good journalism. Here's the thing: I really do believe the creed I preach. I think the crowd possesses immeasurable knowledge, creativity and experience, that it is, in short, smarter than I am. And I hope to profit by that fact.

Let's get down to it. As some of you know, I'm currently working on a book about crowdsourcing. I began in earnest a few weeks ago, and tonight I'm sitting down to begin writing. I'm starting with chapter provisionally titled "The Over-Education of the Middle Class." The basic argument is that the dramatic rise in the number of college educated Americans after World War II led to a labor force qualified to perform more varied (and meaningful) tasks than those at which they were employed.  This led to a rise in amateurism, which then fueled the growth of crowdsourcing when it emerged a few years ago.I've revised this thesis somewhat in the last two weeks, but I'll get to that later. After the jump I've pasted in a relevant passage from my book proposal to provide a departure point.

From the proposal:

There is a shadow labor force in America. They toil away cheerfully at tasks ranging from raising heirloom vegetables to making after-market “mods” for their cars to translating obscure 19th Century French novels into English. These are the amateurs, of course, the hobbyists and enthusiasts long judged to possess more passion than talent. For most of the 20th Century the amateur class neither received nor sought financial compensation for its efforts. And yet all along it continued to grow.

In the four decades between 1965 and 2005 the number of college-educated Americans has grown nearly 300 percent. This year a full 63 percent of high school graduates will go on to college, and this number pales against figures from Europe and Asia, in which even higher percentages of the population receive a college degree.

And this, of course, is a very good thing. Education is the engine that drives the information economy forward, filling an ever-increasing demand in fields like financial services and marketing. But the increasing degree of specialization required at most firms is at odds with the notion of a “liberal education,” which is essentially an artifact from the Renaissance period, representative of a time when the model citizen could wield the pen, the plough and the protractor with equal deftness.

How times change. Every year fewer and fewer graduates obtain jobs that reflect their course of study. The number of art degrees granted has grown even faster than the number of general undergraduate degrees, but only a fraction of these will make a living as a fine artist. A few will secure a precious teaching post at a university, though it will in all likelihood be an adjunct position offering scant wages and little security. A slightly larger minority will find work in applied arts like illustration and design, and consider themselves lucky. Nor is this scenario restricted to the arts. Few science majors will ever practice “pure science,” and a chemistry graduate is more likely to become an investment banker as he is a chemist, never mind the skills and knowledge he acquired in the classes outside his major.

But as this chapter will show, crowdsourcing taps this large-scale, global output. Through the use of vast networks of would-be scientists, Fortune 500 companies are discovering the worth of the patent lawyer with the garage laboratory. Newspapers now buy photographs from the marketing executive with a sharp eye and a professional-grade camera. The amateur labor force is emerging from the shadows, and it would be a grave error to underestimate its economic potential.

Since writing this I've spoken to a number of academics specializing in the history of higher education, as well as a sociologist in "serious leisure studies." I've also poured over Department of Education figures to see trends in majors. All this has confirmed my general thesis, but problematized it as well. Here's where I am now:

1) The tendency in higher education is not toward the liberal arts, but toward pragmatic fields like communications (a catch-all major if there ever was one), business and health fields. However, the vast majority of four-year institutions, and many two-years, require a significant proportion of coursework in "electives." And there has been a 560 percent rise since 1970 in the number of students majoring in "general studies," which basically means they never declared. This is like training to be an amateur (which aptly, was a synonym for dilettante in old French).

2) Internet Democratizes Knowledge: Higher education isn't the only, and may not be the primary, contributing factor to the rise of amateurism. As is becoming abundantly clear the more I dig into communities working in everything from open source software to photography, people don't just perform the labor for the joy of doing the job (though that's part of it). They do it to become better at it. We have, as a society, vastly underestimated the collective thirst for knowledge.

3) Increased Life Spans: People, as it has often been pointed out, are no longer retiring to spend a few years golfing in Florida before kicking the bucket. They're starting second careers, or more to the point, they're continuing their first careers through crowdsourcing networks like YourEncore.

Okay, so that's where I'm at. What do you people think?

Comments

[LukePDQ]

Jeff, you noted that many College graduates are over qualified for the jobs they are actually able to get. Arguably, it is this single issue that drives talented people to seek fulfilment outside their paid career.
Although I speak from a UK viewpoint. Even over here, the same situation pertains. And here's the result. I rarely hear people talk much about "job satisfaction" anymore.
Is it any wonder that smart or creative people seek to find satisfying moments in hobbies, amateur pastimes or part-time extra jobs.
I see this urge for "self satisfaction" as a key driver for crowdsourcing, since clearly the micro-dollar payments are not the incentive.
Sure, IT technology facilitates this crowdsourcing process, but the seeds germinated in minds once fertile but now laid fallow by dreary employment.

[Steve]

Jeff,

I think that education is only one factor in amateurism; interest also plays an important role. For instance, journalism is a career that I would like to pursue, but I studied International Relations instead. My current job isn't as a journalist, but part of me really wants to conduct serious journalism. Granted, my field of study could lend itself well to reporting, but if I attended culinary school, I would then start a food blog and report through that.

Further, I think that companies have changed how they cater to people's hobbies as cable/satellite TV and the Internet have blossomed. Has the emergence of the Food Network and HGTV altered how seriously amateur cooks and interior designers pursue their hobbies? How about on-line fantasy sports and sports fans?

Is big businesses cashing in on niche interests? Are hobbies lucrative? I would wager in many cases for both questions, yes.

[Mark]

Jeff,
Another reason why amateurism may be on the rise is that more and more of our basic needs are met. The majority of people in most Western societies does not have to worry about biological needs such as food and shelter. But the question then becomes "What do I do next?". Psychologically, this is a far more difficult question to answer. One way I suppose is and has been consumerism. Consumerism is not only about the use value of products but as much about the symbolic value as Baudrillard already noticed. People buy SUVs, iPods etc. not for the use value but the symbolic value. Another way, and one that is rising, is crowdsourcing. Somehow consumerism is not very meaningful. I think you are right in your general thesis. If more people have a higher education than ever before, they may easier
find themselves bored by consumerism as an activity. The same holds for their jobs. What I often wonder is whether this trend of co-creation, self-realization can turn out to become a real paradigm shift in the sense that it will transform modern capitalism as mass production once changed the way business and society were organized.

[Daren C. Brabham]

Speaking from the standpoint of that catch-all major called communication... (just giving you hell, Jeff)...

I think all of the comments are onto something here. As a media critic, I like Steve's claim that specialty media channels (like HGTV, Food TV, etc.) are working not only to further segment/demassify the public, but they're also working to empower us with a whole lot of know-how. Good insight.

Mark's comments resonate with some anthropologists (Phillip Diamond comes to mind most) when he argues that societies that have mastered basic needs, and then the needs of a robust industrial economy, must look to hobbies to fill time. I'm beginning to think Mark is right, too, when he points to symbolic value (or social capital or whatever) as the real reason people crowdsource--it isn't for the money.

I'll add to Jeff's writings by pointing out the work of Robert Putnam (see Bowling Alone). Putnam's many empirical studies about public participation lamented the decline in Americans' participation in fraternal orders, veterans organizations, and civic groups. He blamed increased media use as one of the factors that was leading to this decline in social capital.

Maybe what's happening is starting to fly in the face of Putnam, in that increased media use (increased Internet use, really) has now driven people to re-establish all of the fraternal lodges, veterans' halls, etc. online. I don't mean necessarily that people are forming social networks online that are as tightly woven as real-life ones (...but I'm sure someone is studying this). What I'm talking about is the spirit of civic participation. Where groups like the Masons, the VFW, and the Lions Club are engaged in community problem solving--helping others out, building playgrounds, developing leadership skills, and generally doing good while hanging out with like-minded people--so too is the crowd. The crowd (on Threadless, for example) is a group of like-minded people (who all design or like cool t-shirts) who are constantly cranking out design solutions, creating good products, occasionally supporting charities (Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina), all while basically killing some time. Crowdsourcing as the new fraternal lodge? skinnyCorp (Threadless' parent company) would certainly like to think so: they're motto is "skinnyCorp creates communities."

Communities aren't just groups of people hanging out (though that is part of it). Communities are groups of people united for common purpose, engaging in common goals, all pitching in to create a world that they collectively see as better (even if that means a world with cooler t-shirts). The trick is harnessing the crowd for environmental, political, and othe social justice causes. Then it is a community of hobbyists tinkering away at world peace, a cleaner world, and equality.

I love this stuff.

[Shazz]

Hey Jeff and all,
A thought-provoking topic...
Let's look at this recipe suggested by the above discussion:
- an increasingly educated population
- an unsatisfying/unfulfilling worklife for many (the reasons for this are broad and deep, ranging from minimum wage service industry job growth to specialized knowledge worker requirements, funnelling high school kids into career paths, goal vs. process oriented societies, ever-extending working hours and commutes, dissatisfaction with the over-consumption lifestyle, etc., etc. etc.)
- internet-facilitated communities of interest & learning resources
- the resurgence of creative hobbies in popular media

A recipe for a growing desire to take hobbies to the next level indeed. I would add to this mix:

- Though some of us may disagree, Csikszentmihalyi says (I'm paraphrasing poorly here) that you're "successfully creative" when you've engaged in or been judged by the society you've lived in. (i.e. the artist has to take her secret paintings down from the studio and actually show them; the scientist has to bring his theories before his peers, etc.). The way capitalist society "judges" the value of most things is by putting a price tag on them. Whether we agree with this or not, the realization that a "pro" designation means you get paid; "amateur" means you don't (independent of actual skill level comparisons) ... so if you're an amateur, why not go for pro to get the recognition, if you have (or can gain) the skills? *** Here's the test: Take fabulous amateur photos for many years and your friends and family will appreciate them and enjoy your photo sharing page. Have some of those same pix purchased one day by a magazine and compare the (heightened) reaction of those same friends and family. :D

[Audall]

This will probably be a topic you get to later, but I think another interesting perspective to the issue is looking at the growth trend from a generational scope. I was born in '79, I come from the cusp of Gen X and Y, but I relate to Gen Y far more. Articles/studies about Gen Y in the workforce note our distinct qualities, both good and bad, compared to previous generations. A watered down description of this is that we are ambitious and we want to learn about and be included on important projects/decisions quickly. But, the negative side to this is that we can be egocentric, feel a sense of entitlement, and can be impatient when we don't get to immediately start on the work of our dreams straight out of college. Let's face it, aside from the lifestyle changes when one comes out of college, a fresh college grad has to transition from being able to study anything they want, writing papers about grandiose topics, and being told you can accomplish anything--to xeroxing, cold calling, or whatever other menial work that is carried out by entry level people. Those who have studied Gen Y note our desire to do something meaningful with ourselves and we're willing to take a paycut for that, perhaps more than previous generations. With crowdsourcing, we still have the chance to be the rockstar that mommy, daddy, MTV, and now Youtube, encourage us to be in some other way. I can't say whether this is the case any more for Gen Y than it is other generations (my hunch is that these characteristics are stronger in Gen Y). But I can confidently say that these things are very much alive and thriving in Gen Y and are ripe for harvesting by companies, causes, and whoever else has the means and desire.

[Daren C. Brabham]

I like the connection to Generation Y, Audall. I was born just shy of 1983, and I'm fully Gen Y. Until the last few years, as I've learned to shake them off my scent, I've had very active Helicopter Parents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent), too.

Gen Y-ers grew up in a world where everything, even coming in last (remember participation ribbons?) received some sort of recognition. Perhaps with Gen Y, (a generation fully immersed in the Internet by the way), we're constantly looking for a venue where we can be rewarded just for participating, where we can find glory among our peers for flexing our creative muscle. In the "real" world of cubicles and mortgages, which Gen Y-ers are suddenly now confronted with, we must go online to find a place where we'll be given participation ribbons.

Part of this notion of reward for mere participation can be seen in some of the case studies: Threadless will credit your account in a pretty significant way, I think, both for referring new customers and for simply sending in photos of yourself wearing Threadless shirts that they can post on the website.

Jeff--Maybe there's some research out there on Generation Y? I know CNN had a story yesterday (I think) about a recent study that found this generation to be far more narcissistic than other generations...maybe they're related too? People who study generational cohorts may have a lot to lend toward the book's theoretical base.

[Alan]

The educational process has a significant impact upon generational differences. As we slide further into a culture of memorization, retention and teaching to the test. Large portions of curricula once used are gone, does this matter?

The above process pushes hard upon conceptual development at the cost of atrophying muscles that once flexed in practicing the arts, music, social play/free time or just simple day dreaming, all critical building blocks for a balanced development.

Add to the above the pressure from very early on to achieve rank in readiness for the race, to where?

Good question Mark. Modern capitalism might become more ideological but to bust the balls of materialism/consumerism would be a Herculean task.
I suspect that change might primarily be individual rather than societal which takes us full circle. The present generation lives with hardware appendages and are technological beings to the core!

Are we describing manifestations of human/social creativity or physiological/antidotal behaviors?

[Jeff Matson]

Shazz brings up a good topic. I was also born in 1979. It seems now adays the business literature is all abuzz about generational differences as the Boomers give way to Gen Xers. I have read that perhaps the most prevailant and identifiable trait of Gen X is the desire to "keep options open" and not get pinned down into a commitment. I am curious how much of "crowdsourcing" and related "Anti-Organization" topics are popular because of the apeal to Gen Xers of free-lance work? After all, being able to make a living in your own time by contributing towards projects that are interesting and enjoyable is perhaps the dream come true for many Gen Xers.

Is anyone aware of any research or writing on this aspect?