Technology Thursday
Marginal cost: Zero! Are too many things "free" these days? The other day I listened to a Digital Planet podcast in which the host, Gareth Mitchell, interviewed Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of Wired magazine). Anderson has a new book out Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
Marginal cost: Zero! Are too many things "free" these days? The other day I listened to a Digital Planet podcast in which the host, Gareth Mitchell, interviewed Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of Wired magazine). Anderson has a new book out Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
(Love, love, love Digital Planet by the way. Mitchell is a real thoughtful journalist - even asked Anderson about the plagiarism controversy regarding this book.) Anyway, in the book (according to the interview and some reviews - I haven't had a chance to read it yet) he explores the notion of 'free'. How has it come to be that so much of what so many use online is 'free'? What does it mean for businesses and entrepreneurs in the future that consumer expectations are being set to expect things for free?
This week, the Kindle version of Free is available for ... free! If you don't have a Kindle, but do have an iPhone or iPodTouch you can download the Kindle app (for free!) and then download the book to read. There are definitely some subtle and important economic shifts taking place, all driven by the fact that the marginal cost of so many things is being collapsed to zero by technology. Clay Shirky has some interesting thoughts on what this means for institutions and for other kinds of groups and organizations in his book Here Comes Everybody (which I am in the middle of, but which is, alas, not available for free right now.)
Some of my favorite 'free' tools and services, apart from the biggies like gmail and Firefox include:
This week, the Kindle version of Free is available for ... free! If you don't have a Kindle, but do have an iPhone or iPodTouch you can download the Kindle app (for free!) and then download the book to read. There are definitely some subtle and important economic shifts taking place, all driven by the fact that the marginal cost of so many things is being collapsed to zero by technology. Clay Shirky has some interesting thoughts on what this means for institutions and for other kinds of groups and organizations in his book Here Comes Everybody (which I am in the middle of, but which is, alas, not available for free right now.)
Some of my favorite 'free' tools and services, apart from the biggies like gmail and Firefox include:
- Doodle - a quick and easy scheduling app for coordinating groups of people larger than 2
- Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) - bookmarking tool
- Flickr - I pay for the pro version, but the free version is great
- NetNewsWire Lite - a feed reader
- Evernote - a digital capture tool
Lynn,
Great post! I use a lot of "free stuff" especially on the Internet but I do understand that nothing is really free. Much of the "free" content on the Internet, of course, is subsidized by advertising, and there are even larger tradeoffs that are being made to achieve "free" such as the decline of the "old" media and the disappearance of jobs, resources for investigative reporting, etc. because of "free." Malcolm Gladwell had an interesting review of "Free" in The New Yorker earlier this month http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell) which pointed out some of the issues with free. And the Times' book review on Sunday had a review of an interesting book on a subject close to "Free" - "Cheap." See Ellen Rupell Shell, "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/books/review/Shapiro-t.html?_r=1
While Free and Cheap clearly appeal to me as a consumer, it's interesting to think about the implications.
Posted by: Stacy | Monday, July 20, 2009 at 01:04 PM
There are loads of issues - and Anderson (from what I've read so far) isn't quite as utopian as Gladwell, implies. I also found Gladwell's remark "Anderson’s reference to people who “prefer to buy their music online” carries the faint suggestion that refraining from theft should be considered a mere preference." to be utterly disingenuous (yes, Malcolm, people do actually purchase music online, not just steal it; sheesh) and it was on the first page and made it hard for me to take the rest of what he was saying as more than knee-jerk, but I tried.
I also think it's dangerous to assume that "the decline of the "old" media and the disappearance of jobs, resources for investigative reporting, etc." is "because of "free."" That is, I don't think one can correctly blame the availability of free and easily-accessible content on the internet for what's happened to journalism.
I think journalists should look to themselves for diminishing their own profession in countless ways first before blaming free stuff on the Internet. See Jay Rosen, Scott Rosenberg, and others, not to mention wonderfully trenchant media critics such as Digby and Sidney Blumenthal and Joe Conason for some analysis.
The Washington Post allows anti-science, anti-fact ideologue George Will to pollute its pages in direct conflict with its own science writers - that's pretty much enough said right there. It's definitely not "free" stuff on the Internet making them do that.
Posted by: Lyn | Monday, July 20, 2009 at 02:11 PM
John Gruber's post today is relevant to this thread: http://daringfireball.net/2009/07/charging_for_access_to_news_sites
Posted by: Lyn | Monday, July 20, 2009 at 03:41 PM
UK Kamagra can be useful to you...
Posted by: Kamagra info | Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 10:48 PM