Wired’s article on FREE!
“One of the old jokes from the late-‘90s bubble was that there are only two numbers on the Internet: infinity and zero.” I may be taking that slightly out of context - but I couldn’t agree more. You get EVERYTHING for free on the net, and it costs NOTHING. And if they’re charging for it today…someone will figure out a way to make it free tomorrow. Ever stopped and wondered how this works? I mean yeah, ads, etc…but…really??? Funny too, I’ve been having lots and lots of conversations with friends about the whole concept of all things digital being free. Music, TV/Movies, storage, maybe even software, etc. Seems like every argument I come up with to explain why something will still have a cost to the user…I can find a reason why it won’t in about 5 minutes. Arguing with myself, ha? Yikes. One of the more simple examples would be movies. Sure, they’re pirated now, but not as obviously as music…mostly because they take more than 30 seconds to download. But remember when songs took 5 minutes to download? And that was fast? Or software…what if Photoshop/Illustrator were online tools? Seems pretty hard to imagine a web app that could do that right? But it’s almost like an ‘imagine it, and it is’ kind of a thing you know? If you can dream it…bandwidth, clever kids, and venture cap will eventually make it happen…and by eventually I mean sooner than you think. And it’ll most likely be free. It’s so funny to me…a whole market can exist, all charging an ‘industry standard’ for a product/service. But if someone with a tiny bit of pull makes it free, the whole market collapses. Like…what the hell are they going to do with all that space where the CDs are in Best Buy??? Ha, right? So weird to stop and think about. Even weirder is that we’re, ages 20 and better, not the real internet generation. A whole new generation that sees ‘free’ as totally normal and completely expected is growing up now. Can we compare this to anything that has ever happened before in human history? Interesting stuff to just think about…this fantastic Wired article addresses all these things in great detail. Check it out..for free. ***I guess it’s important read the article and really think about industries that could become digital. That’s when it gets a bit more mind-numbing…to me at least. Also, thanks to Rick and Dennis for sending this link over.