Information Prostitution

If you are even a casual lurker on a newsgroup, or subscribe to a few mailing lists, or simply browse the web occasionally, it's likely that you've been struck by how helpful folks can be. Advice, technical support, moral support, shared experiences, and so on are easily to be had. People will spend a good deal of time walking you through a tricky install, or pointing you to the right book, or warning you about a bad deal.

(Indeed, recently, after receiving two answers to his question in under an hour on the Squeak list, a rather nice fellow exclaimed that the technical help he paid for was far inferior.)

Of course, a large chunk of the questions asked are by beginners who often don't even know how to ask the right sorts of questions. This is one reason for that hoary institution, the FAQ.

These phenomena are hardly new. The generous flow of information---between experts and newbies, amateurs and professionals, friends and acquaintances, coworkers, neighbors, teachers, librarians, public lecturers, and so on---is a binding part of civil society.

A key aspect of this flow is that it is not typically a succession of transactions, donated or otherwise. There are exceptions (I think of the bulletin boards of the 1980s which required you to upload a certain amount before you could download; but, of course, they conceptualized "downloadables" as tangible goods, which made them more like potlucks), and it is certainly possible for spoilers to demand or to provoke the demand that certain folks "give something back". But it is a mistake to take the pathological situation as central, as inevitable, or as the practical.

"Infomarkets" is a sad and repellant attempt to commercialize in the most objectionable way possible these phenomena. It makes each question and answer a brute, money based transaction---with auction style bidding, no less!

To the obvious, boring, oft-stated objection that people have to make livings, I respond thusly: Grow up. There are ample structures of information and wisdom transfer that allow for the earning of one's daily bread without making every aspect of one's interaction a sale. Hiring a tutor is fundamentally different from calling a technical support line for $5 a question. Teachers get paid, and students pay tuition, but teachers are not "employeed" by the students. The students are not their customers. Or, at least, they haven't been, and, I sincerely hope, they will not become such.

I will add that there could be such a system with a touch of class. Infomarkets, however, is as crass as it gets. Both the proprietors and the participents are cretins (though I have sympathy for the the "seekers").

Here's a little sample, which, from the amount of surveying I could stand, seems typical:

Question from "Darth Neon": Most people are aware of "sniping" software that will place a bid at the last possible second. But is there any software that will automatically retract a bid at a set time? I'd like to know where I can buy or download it, and if you're a programmer I might be interested in hiring you to write software that would do this. email me with any questions XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Pitch (for $5) from "knowitall": I am an EXPERT on eBay and I am related to a person eBay's customer support team. I can help!

It is at this point that I quickly retreat to my local public library, after answering a few questions, gratis, for friends and for strangers.