Matt weighs in on DIY fruit harvesting:

Kay Steiger, who went on the apple-picking trip Sara (pictured above, at the orchard) organized last weekend and that I attended under the time-honored principle "go apple-picking when your girlfriend tells you to," retorts that apple picking's not inefficient, it's "a form of entertainment." This would be a lot more convincing were agricultural labor entertaining. In reality, these are the jobs Americans won't do.

But while Matt (and, one suspects, professional apple pickers) thinks it's silly to pay to perform this sort of labor — even if just with time — he's guilty of doing the same thing. Sure, he's a professional pundit now. But for a long time Matt belonged to the class of folks offering electronic ruminations for free — a practice that leaves a lot of professional writers scratching their heads. It's still not unusual to read a curmudgeonly journalist complaining about these damn kids writing without compensation. And while Matt may have done it as an investment in his future, not everyone does.

But writing and gardening are both at least conceivable as leisure activities. An even more astounding example of the reach of this phenomenon comes from Penny Arcade, via Quantum of a Wantum.

There are a bunch of people in their basements playing Flight Simulator, and a bunch of people in their basements pretending to be air traffic controllers, running an application that simulates a radarscope. All wearing USB headsets, they are connected to a big network called VATSIM where they talk to each other and simulate realistic air traffic procedures as accurately as possible.

It's strange but true! These people labor over hour-long preflight checklists, pore over FAA manuals and file flight plans before launching their virtual jumbo jets into the virtual sky and then sitting patiently as autopilot sends them across the virtual Atlantic. They create imaginary airlines and imaginary regulatory agencies. It sounds incredibly tedious to me, but I'm sure they genuinely love it.

Of course, crowdsourced air traffic control is probably a somewhat less practical idea than user-generated fruit harvests. But it's not hard to conceive of situations where that sort of energy and enthusiasm for tedium could be harnessed. And it's undeniable that a lot of people are expending considerable effort online creating genuine wealth without direct compensation. Some of this is being harnessed and even occasionally rewarded — open source software's sponsorship by big businesses like IBM and Novell is a good example. And various ventures are now trying to capitalize on the potential of crowdsourcing and UGC, with varying levels of success. But in many more cases it seems to be enough for authors to simply be allowed to create — so long as they continue to receive a sort of involuntary patronage from their regular employers.

In the past you could prove your mettle and gain entry to an industry via skillful amateur efforts, freely offered. The internet now makes it possible for those amateur efforts to actually compete with the industry they're emulating. One can't help but wonder if it's a race to the bottom: do your real job less efficiently to free up time for your fake job. Meanwhile, your willingness to do your fake job for free reduces the compensation available for doing that sort of work, making it harder to actually become a professional. The first movers will be fine, but eventually their fields will be bled dry.

But this is a pretty depressing perspective, and not at all in keeping with my general internet triumphalism. Explanations why I'm wrong will be welcomed with open arms.

OH YEAH! I nearly forgot: I wrote about related issues in somewhat rosier terms a while ago.