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Academic

: Conglomerate

Is "Free" the Future?

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

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If you are tired of hearing the saw about information wanting to be free, Malcolm Gladwell has a great book review in a recent New Yorker issue that sets about to debunk the myth.  The book itself, Free:  The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson of The Long Tail fame, makes the case that the scale economies brought about by technological progress are inexorably driving down the market price of ideas, and all things made of ideas, to zero.  Gladwell does a pretty nice job of picking this thesis apart, with nice tidbits like this one:

?Information wants to be free,? Anderson tells us, ?in the same way that life wants to spread and water wants to run downhill.? But information can?t actually want anything, can it? Amazon wants the information in the Dallas paper to be free, because that way Amazon makes more money. Why are the self-interested motives of powerful companies being elevated to a philosophical principle?

Worth a look.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on July 17, 2009 (boomark / email).

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