Why the end of scarcity will change the economics of everything
mashable.com
mashable.com
It's still the wild west out there, so people approach the production of (commercial) digital content without enough economic realism. When this domain is more established, I don't believe (commercial) digital content will be such a commodity.
I mean, use common sense: aren't YOU suffering from an inability to differentiate between what is and is not worth paying attention to online? Wouldn't you "pay-to-play" if someone got it really, really, really right? I know I would.
This echoes the "Information wants to be free" mantra/movement/slogan/whatever. While this movement is quite old (relatively speaking) and widespread, I find that Wired is still one of the more on-the-ball publications with respect to this (they talk about it a lot, and generally cover it well).
I have personally always thought that argument to be entirely BS. A piece of software can be considered information; it's just bits in order. Therefore, it should be free. Music can be considered information for the same reasons. It's a convenient argument, because it gets us all the things we want, for free! But EVERYTHING is information. YOU, YOU are just information, and so is that computer in front of you, and the chair under you. Are you also free (as in beer)?
Information requires effort and/or investment to create, and personally I feel the "information wants to be free" folks like to simply wax over that to further their own interests.
The idea that information wants to be free stems from the market principles of supply and demand. Price is determined by supply and demand. Digital information can be duplicated at almost zero cost, so there is a pressure on it to become cheaper and cheaper until free.
The idea that information wants to be free is also contradicted by the idea that "Information is power" etc. The less people you can restrict information to the more it is worth. Also, timely information can be very valuable (like in insider trading) that information can have value (i.e. no free as in beer).
But just because information can be duplicated infinitely, it doesn't mean that it will be duplicated infinitely, meaning that the value of the information will be determined by the costs of production and demand. Will this value of the information be enough to cover the costs? This will be the determining factor as to whether people can continue to make a living from producing information. On the flipside, the costs of making quality information are rapidly decreasing, so it should be getting easier and easier to make a living from information.
In the end, I think that information will always have value. The key will be for the producers of that information to find a way to connect with people willing to pay for it.
You seem to be looking at this from a kind of moral point of view, but "information wan't to be free" is not meant to be a value statement. It's meant to be an observation about information.
Something about these types of clever sayings shortcuts our brains. People use that fact to take advantage.
It's talking about what information itself wants to be not be (as if it has agency), not what people want information to be.
"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."
Nothing to do with software or products.
Sure, anyone with a computer can start a blog..but only the people with quality, original, content will get continue to get the traffic.
What's changed is people's mindsets..which I predicted would happen back in '99. Piracy advocates claim there is no direct correlation between piracy and loss sales. This may be the case on a 1-1 case, but in the long-run, if you do nothing about pirated content, the value in people's minds slowly starts to approach $0. This is because all digital content is just like currency: it's value is only what people think it's worth. If know you can easily download something for free, why bother paying for it?
This is why I no longer write applications, only services. Any apps that I release are directly tied to a monthly service and are useless without it.
Cost is becoming less of an issue online though, with simpler payments, content priced appropriately, and an increased "lock you out" if you try to get stuff for free.
Yea, I know. I bet it is a fundamental flaw.
They hold Twitter as a model for the "end of scarcity" and yet Twitter has put the kibosh on new tweet clients?
If anything, scarcity is even more abundant with all this abundance. Scarcity of user attention/memory isn't going away. Scarcity of IP with an increasing patent minefield; We still might be looking at coming bandwidth restrictions as the ISPs lower their thresholds to tax the internet services and users.
This article reminds me of the original dot-com bubble and how Wired and other tech-saavy digests were crowing about DOW hitting 40k and the abundance economy, the long boom... that didn't end well.
1) Every trinket can be produced en masse with a precious mingling of magic, unicorns and nanotechnology
2) Consumerism ends. One could argue there are enough resources and means of production on the world for everyone. It's just that the "haves" want more and more, and then throw it away and want even more.
Otherwise -- A Star Trek replicator would just speed up the treadmill of consumerism. You can have any toy you want instantly. In our current society, this would probably mean that fashions change every three minutes, and the rich part of the population will use so much energy that the have-nots will still be deprived of even basic living conditions.
On the other hand, consumerism as we know it really only exists for about 100 years. It might be a passing fad.