As a research type, I have noted with interest the most recent iteration of the "free information" concept. Back in the mid-1990s when subject experts were communicating via Listserv, it was a common phenomenon for people to sign up for these lists in order to ask questions like: "I am doing research on frogs -- which frogs are the biggest/smartest/best dancers?" I was always very irritated by these questions because I found them to be incredibly lazy, and because the people who provided these answers were reducing the value of their knowledge by handing it out (why buy the cow, etc.) freely. Eventually that died out as more and more information was contained on the Internet and even the most listless of information-seekers could type in a few words and find out a lot about their subject.
The newest wave of this is the "ask a question" model, where people ask a question and then wait for someone/anyone to answer it. This is seen in Yahoo! Answers, where sub-normal intelligence people ask questions like "How do I avoid foreclosure on my home?" and people with absolutely NO stated credentials answer and then the other readers vote on the best answer. The person whose answer is most popular gains some sort of credibility points.
Now I am seeing this same thing on LinkedIn, the professional networking site. The difference is that these are subject-area questions, so I only get the ones in the research area, and that the credentials of the people asking and responding are stated (although not verified). So, this morning I saw a question from a professor who was wondering if there was a market for caffeine-based face and shaving cream (he had come upon this idea when he went on a camping trip and ran out of water so he shaved with coffee). Well, buddy, a market research report on this subject would cost several thousand clams, and you get what you pay for. People just weighed in with their opinions -- "I wouldn't want to smell like coffee all day."
I know that I would never launch my two pet ideas, Trashbot 2000 and Sanitarium, without doing real research. There will be more on Sanitarium later.
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