In my previous post on revenue sharing, I claimed that the model would provide an income stream to the general public that has never previously been accessible before. The central idea behind this claim was that many common activities on the internet, such as posting links, and embedding videos, serve as distribution points for content. As this process replaces (at least in part) the traditional role of distribution, it provides real value to those that produce the content. Hence, there exists a natural rationale for the content producers to provide a monetary reward for this act of distribution. In this post, I want to examine some of the possible effects the involvement of the general public in this kind of process may have. While the benefits of this revolutionary change will be enormous, the potential cost will probably be just as profound. The language of the debate elevates quickly into that of hyperbole – where some are quick to claim that the very thing at stake is the human soul itself. What it certainly does point to is the very conflicted relationship we all have as individuals to the capitalistic system that determines the substances of our lives. The thesis I propose is this: that for the first time in the history of capitalism people will have the choice to either opt in, or out of one of the fundamental processes that drives it – resolving the conflict one way or the other for that individual. We will see how this will come about in the sections below.

First lets consider some of the basic mechanics of the revenue sharing process. Imagine the following web application. It will be a fairly innocuous looking widget on some blog or other. You’re a person reading the blog. You like the content and decide you want to alert people to it on a forum on which you regularly post. Now, posting a link to this blog on that forum is something you would naturally do – but this blog gives you a revenue sharing option. The above mentioned widget gives you a special link that only you can use – and should you post THIS link, a percentage of revenue generated from the traffic that the link sends (perhaps through advertising), will be deposited into your pay-pal account.

Now you can imagine who would feel particularly threatened by an application of this sort – Google. For them, the link is the fundamental measure of popularity. The chief insight of Sergey Brin and Larry Page was to see the link as a vote for that page. Irrespective of the now incredible complexity of search ranking algorithms, this idea still remains at the heart. And if for some reason it were to become invalid – the whole edifice of search rankings, as developed by Google would come crashing down. Why would revenue sharing be a threat to this concept? Because where money is involved, we can no longer be confident that a link was posted because the person posting it actually thought it worthy of sharing. And almost certainly, many people WOULD start linking because of the monetary value it generated.

In principle this process has already begun with the arrival of paid links. Well if the links at this stage of the game still need to be spotted manually, then Google will clearly be in trouble once revenue sharing for links ramps up.

Social bookmarking sites like digg, delicious, stumbleupon, reddit and the like would be similarly afflicted since they are simple link aggregators. They arose to provide another method by which people could find good content. But revenue sharing would throw their entire model into doubt. (notice however, that content aggregators that are not user-submitted would not be so afflicted. Think of Fark.com where the content is determined by one person only. So long as he could continue to find good content himself (which would admittedly be more difficult in a revenue sharing world), his income would increase enormously given he would be able to drive immense amounts of traffic to various revenue sharing sites).

One can even imagine the process extending beyond the internet and into our social, everyday lives – should the technology become available. Imagine that you are at a café with a good friend of yours. The conversation is proceeding normally until suddenly he begins to exclaim that his coke is extremely enjoyable. You think nothing of it until he begins to repeat himself a few too many times. At that moment sophisticated voice recognition software operating on a chip in his lapel, sends a signal through a wireless transmitter to a server which deposits and fifty cents into his account.

Should the scenario eventuate, marketers will crack their holy grail – that one sanctimonious channel to which they have previously only managed indirect access: word-of-mouth. Previously, a word-of-mouth campaign could only work because of a quality product. The product itself generated the word-of-mouth because people genuinely wanted to recommend it. This would no longer be an impediment to creating a word of mouth campaign. It could be for used for more than just products, but for political campaigns too – not to mention propaganda.

The question will be whether people in general will buy into it. On the one hand – why wouldn’t they? Over 450 billion dollars will be spent on advertising globally this year. Why wouldn’t we want at least a percentage of that to flow to individuals as opposed to corporations? A vast number of people could supplement their incomes through revenue sharing, reducing the need for full time employment, allowing greater casualisation and a more flexible workforce (if you see this as a good thing). A new class of people will have a greater proportion of their time available to pursue the things they want to pursue.

On the other hand – there is the concern that you might be selling your soul. This is the sort of hyperbole the elite bloggers like Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis use when describing sites like payperpost.com. While their expression may be hyperbolic, they still make a substantive point. Once you have put your opinion up for sale, is it really worth anything anymore? Shouldn’t our opinions and value judgements be free from monetization.

But there is a deeper concern than ‘the soul’, and more pragmatic. As Google will face the problem of maintaining the quality of its search results, so too will we find that it considerably more difficult to find quality content that is not backed by large marketing dollars – for we won’t even be able to trust the jury of public opinion. Political debates with our friends may in the end be determined by which political party was able to afford the most conversational support. Local restaurants might pay people to mention their great cuisine at nearby cafés and the like.

This is a long way in the future, but it will fully realize itself on the web soon enough – and is already doing so now.

Ultimately, people will be forced to make a choice – and it’s the kind of choice most people have never consciously had to make before. When it came to a person’s involvement in the general capitalistic machine – there has never been much choice besides the act of consumption itself. The entrepreneurial class has always been a vast minority. People could always stand back and loathe the marketers and their techniques, even while being continually seduced by them. But by choosing to sell your opinion, whether through a positive blog review, or a link on a forum, or a conversation in a café, you make a choice to participate in the positive machinery of the system for better or for worse. After that choice – one can no longer disassociate oneself from the mechanism.

The fundamental question will be this: to what degree will people feel alienated by this process – and if so, what reactionary force will arise to oppose it? If our ability to directly relate to one another on an interpersonal level is eroded so directly by the corporations with their advertising dollars, then might a truly oppositional force arise against the capitalist system?

Marcuse wrote in his controversial book “One Dimensional Man’ that capitalism, much to the surprise of the Marxists, was extremely successful in absorbing opposing ideologies into its core, without changing its underlying structure (he was thinking chiefly of its adoption of the welfare state). He gave a number of reasons for this (some of them as ordinary as the fact that the ordinary worker’s perks began to match those of the bosses; some are more far fetched, such as the prevalence of sexual imagery preventing libido being used as a revolutionary force.) One might postulate additionally that a genuine oppositional consciousness never arose because individuals didn’t directly need to make choices that determined (in such a direct way) the fact of their alienation.

This is what will change with the advent of revenue sharing. It’s a choice that you too will someday make. What will you choose?