When capabilities are democratized, handed over to anyone that wants to contribute, they become soon a commodity. This means that their price plummets (often close to zero), and this also means that institutions that were create to vouch for quality disappear.
A typical area is photography. It is now possible to produce great pictures with mobile phones. If you invest in a dedicated camera, all sorts of automatic settings will help produce pictures of professional quality. While press photography still exists in a more restricted sense, more and more amateur pictures are available and used.
Because amateurs don’t care so much about being compensated because they are having fun, the marginal price of photography is close to zero. Of course there is a lot more average pictures available but among the choice one can still find great pictures.
An ongoing area is education. With online Moocs the institutions that were created to vouch for course quality (universities) will have a hard time, while education will be more available to everybody. At the same time many courses may be more average, but who cares?
Hat tip to Christopher Penn
