Blaming technology isn't going to change the fact that journalism is still broken.
Folks like John Gruber and Matt Drudge make a ton of revenue by serving their readers. They have simpler technology than everything stated in this article.
The skills are critical for any front-end designer, not just the ones in startups. Companies that embrace skilled designers as their culture compete much better than others.
I've watched my friends work hard in basement for months when they were forming a band. All they got from that work was the chance to play for tips at a local bar.
There are a lot of designers who are passionate and have amazing potential, but no access any markets.
It can take months to build an app and startups can take a lifetime to build into a company.
The upside to all spec work is pretty bleak everywhere, but we do it out of passion and our audacity.
If it is too lousy of a deal, then 99design wouldn't even exist or be viable. There would be no startups, everyone would work at major established companies and Android and iOS would be terribly boring devices with only apps made by the platform manufacturers.
Building apps for the iOS marketplace is "spec" work. I'm working for free until someone decides to purchase my app.
Bootstrapping a startup is "spec" work. No one is paying founders anything.
It's a choice to do "spec" work, no one is forcing someone to work for free. 99design is building an amazing marketplace for customers and professionals on a global level. This will change the way the restrictive nature of supply and demand in design.
EDIT: When I graduated from college, I worked for free. I bootstrapped a startup with my savings that failed to support me and then I worked for free at a development agency doing random projects. From that experience, network, and portfolio I now am living very well doing contracting work and personal side projects.
I sometimes worry too about a substitute good for humans, but I believe that many entrepreneurs will exploit the abundance of unemployment to fuel their visions.
This reoccurring pattern of a labor market becoming liquid and transitioning has happened before. Hong Kong skyrocketed in unemployment when trade opened in China and most "algorithmic" jobs migrated across the border literally overnight. Education became a central part of the economy and the country moved forward.
Creative destruction is a sign of great progress. There was a time when America was almost all factory workers and a time before that when America was mostly farmers.
While it is scary to be in the middle of a shifting trend in with a massive decline of old jobs, there will be a future that will take us completely by surprise. It will be unimaginable.
If you told someone from the industrial revolution that one day that people would pretend to be real people and then displayed in tiny little boxes and become the wealthy and elite of the world, they would think you were insane. The same would hold true if you told them that one day we would be able to all send our kids to schools and that they would start working in their mid 20's because their parents and the government could support and fund their development.
I would like to see a survey on how many people actually WANT to be founders based on race/sex compared to the percentage of the population that ARE. This article assumes that every profession needs to match the distribution of the overall population