BIG GIG BITE
EVERYONE roots for the moment when David kills Goliath.
Watch Goliath, a slow, lumbering giant of a bloke, get outsmarted by a more agile champion.
His arrogance is palpable, face falling apart with laughter as David strides onto the battlefield, swinging his sling above his lithe, small body. Then, “thwang”. David’s victory is quick and absolute, his expertly timed pebble penetrating Goliath’s face armour and felling him on the battlefield like a big oak.
As little kids, we clung to the story’s tenet, that might was not always right and that being little didn’t condemn you to being downtrodden.
David’s optimism, gave us hope that we, too, could be heroes or kings.
What we couldn’t imagine was the meteoric rise of the nerd in our lifetime, like some bullied Marvel comic-book hero, felling the goliaths of business with relaxed impunity.
Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Page, Bryn, Bezos.
They’d all been smart, nerdy little guys.
Each one of them had started their businesses in a garage. (True!)
Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon.
As their fame grew, we cheered them on and starting tinkering in our own garages, making our own slingshots.
We thought these idyllic Davids would settle for killing Goliaths and be wiser for it.
Instead, they chose to become Goliaths themselves, lumbering across the globe, flagrantly hacking the lives of millions more little guys like us with their “break stuff” mentality.
They’ve grown too big, too fast and find themselves trapped in unfamiliar, uncaring exoskeletons. Monsters. The rise and revenge of the nerds has been supplanted by the spread of more cynical platforms or the “gig economy” where professional freelancing or contracting has had the inherent value stripped from it.
These are talent supermarkets where often unemployed professionals eke out subsistent lifestyles working for peanuts and a rating.
(Which is more than what they get paid for posting content on Facebook or Instagram.)
University students and graduates trying to build a portfolio are also easy fodder.
And, of course, professionals in developing countries where $20 might be a small fortune.
Australian start-up Speedlancer is a darling of the moment, promising clients a slick turnaround on creative services at dirt cheap rates.
You can get a 500 word blog post for $39 in under four hours, from the moment you submit your task.
Or a Facebook graphic post for $29.
Or some website research and data mining.
Speedlancer says it has creative directors, professional writers and designers ready to pounce on your brief and knock it out of the park. For a pittance. Because if it takes you four hours to earn $39 bashing out 500 words, it means you’re working for less than $80 a day.
(Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these stories are written by bots.) I don’t get it. This is a black economy hiding in plain sight.
There’s no regulation, no outrage from the union movement or our politicians.
They’re still stuck in the conventional warfare of more traditional industrial relations, unprepared for the hailstorm of pebbles smacking them in the head.
It’s true, governments are awakening to the threat posed by goliaths such as Facebook, Google and Amazon.
But the insidious spread of a broad-based platform economy — and its tendency to exploit the skills of the masses — could prove to be a greater challenge than chopping only the tall poppies we can see.