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Never mind what women want, what does information want?
Funny what can happen with quotes. Reading Chris Anderson’s latest book Free: The Future of a Radical Price I came across his version of the now-famous line “the information wants to be free” – often used to define the digital era. The author of this line is Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalogue, author and, with Ken Kesey, one of the Merry Pranksters. What Brand apparently said was:
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand , information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
I interpret this as when info is a commodity and can be distributed at low cost it can be free and when it’s customized it’s expensive. I think it makes a lot more sense to look at the context and weigh both options.
It’s an intriguing paradox. For some reason we usually hear only the latter part of the quote and I think that’s missing the point!
Anderson’s book moves along at a good clip. I like his analysis of how the TED conferences manage to charge $6000 to attend yet stream all the content for free and how Yahoo dealt with the advent of gmail.
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