"Today, Microsoft lacks both the weaponry and the nimbleness to compete with Google. Its operating system monopoly gives it no advantages in this battle. People can use Microsoft's operating system and browser to get to the Internet - and to Google - or they can use Apple's. It truly doesn't matter. Meanwhile, with every new Internet fad, like the current frenzy over social networking, Microsoft is invariably caught flat-footed and has to race to just get a foot in the game. But that's always the way it is when companies get big - and it is why real innovation always comes from small companies that don't have a predetermined mind-set, or monopoly profits to protect."
http://www.nytimes.com/
Kevin Kelly: Better Than Free
One of the best descriptions of how to look at society's
transformation of one based on scarcity to abundance.
Better Than Free
Kevin Kelly Posted on January 31, 2008 at 6:21 PM
<http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php>
The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it
copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we
ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the
internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the
whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make
a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless
copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied
somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies.
Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these
copies are not just cheap, they are free.
Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies
flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so
freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system,
where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the
network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire. We
see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is
brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those
copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once
its flowed on the internet.
This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our
economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and
media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy,
particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries
where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very
large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.
Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling
precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine
the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free,
how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money
selling free copies?
I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes
scarce and valuable.
When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
Well, what can't be copied?
There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider
"trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be
earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited
(at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer
to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has
increasing value in a copy saturated world.
There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are
difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy.
I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the
producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user. We
can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for
anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of
something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?
From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories
of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could
be free.
In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free.
Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative
value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown,
cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned,
faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated
uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative
qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that
can be sold.
[snip]
Last February during a break at the
most recent TED conference I was speaking to Chris Anderson, current
editor in chief at Wired about his planned next book, called FREE.
(While we were talking, we were photographed
and posted on Flickr by the co-founder of Flickr himself! How cool is
that?) Nearly 10 years ago I had written a chapter in my thin New Rules
for the New Economy book that focused on the role of the free and the
economics of plentitude. I called that chapter “Follow the Free.”
Almost nothing I’ve written has been as misunderstood as this short
chapter. I’ve not had a Q+A session since then without this question
coming up: “You say we should embrace the free. How can everything be
free?”