CYBERSPACE — The worldwide economic downturn’s layoffs, business closures and bank failures may make life difficult in the real world, but the real-life pain could cause a cyber-gain according to one journalist, author and self-styled internet expert.Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, is certain the financial crunch now manifesting itself in the death of businesses and banking institutions worldwide virtually guarantees the death of free content on the Web. According to Keen, the demise of the free model of internet content should not be mourned, because it’s part of what got everyone into such a mess in the first place.

“The altruistic ideal of giving away one’s labor for free appeared credible in the fat summer of the Web 2.0 boom when social-media startups hung from trees, Facebook was valued at $15 billion, and [venture capitalists] queued up to fund revenue-less ‘businesses’ like Twitter,” he wrote October 21st in his blog at InternetEvolution.com. “But as we contemplate the world post-bailout, when economic reality once again bites, only Silicon Valley’s wealthiest technologists can even consider the luxury of donating their labor to the latest fashionable online open-source project. I’m pretty sure, if not certain, that the idea of free labor will suddenly become profoundly unpalatable to someone faced with their house being repossessed or their kids going hungry.”

In other words, Web 2.0 with its egalitarian, arguably utopian approach to knowledge, information and entertainment was little more than a mass experiment in social engineering that shifted the balance of economic power into the hands of a very few at the expense of the common people the ideal was supposed to serve.

However, a good fiscal slap in the face should cause a widespread attitude adjustment, Keen argued.

“One of the very few positive consequences of the current financial miasma will be a sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor,” he wrote. “Mass unemployment and a deep economic recession comprise the most effective antidote to the utopian ideals of open-source radicals. Is $0.00 really the future of labor in an age of mass unemployment? Of course not. The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the internet in the speculative hope that they might get some ‘back end’ revenue. ‘Free’ doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up.”

Unstated but heavily implied in all of this is a shift away from free content for end-users, as well. If content costs its distributors, they can’t very well give it away with reckless abandon and hope to stay in business. Keen sees the matter as one of simple supply-side economics: Workers who are scrambling to find any job that will pay for their next meal will have little time to contribute free content in the vague hope that someday they’ll be financially rewarded. They’ll devote their time to more profitable pursuits. Even though the demand for free content may reach an all-time high due to unemployed end-users’ inability to pay, the reduced flow of new material will make it more intrinsically valuable and costly for everyone along the chain until “free” ceases to be an option.

Information may want to be free, but those who have it need to eat no matter how badly they desire to share their wealth.

As Keen pointed out, “Being paid to work is intuitive to the human condition; it represents our most elemental sense of justice.”

Consequently, if workers expect to be paid, they also must expect to pay for someone else’s work. Otherwise, the system falls apart.

All is not bleak, though. Keen noted in an interview with Wired magazine that “the great crash of October 2008” most likely will spawn new ideas and business models that will redefine how content contributors and distributors interact with each other and the world at large. After all, radical new ideas that grew out of the Great Depression changed the financial structure of society for the better in a number of ways. People can be remarkably resourceful when they’re forced to be.

“What’s happening is we’re in a twilight period right now between the old and the new world,” he told Wired, although he didn’t elaborate about how the brave new world might look.