The Technium: Better Than Free

24 Sep 09

Maria Tirone

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
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.
2 more annotations...
- These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.
- Beneath the frothy layer of advertising, these eight generatives will supply the value to ubiquitous free copies, and make them worth advertising for. These generatives apply to all digital copies, but also to any kind of copy where the marginal cost of that copy approaches zero. (See my essay on Technology Wants to Be Free.) Even material industries are finding that the costs of duplication near zero, so they too will behave like digital copies. Maps just crossed that threshold. Genetics is about to. Gadgets and small appliances (like cell phones) are sliding that way. Pharmaceuticals are already there, but they don't want anyone to know. It costs nothing to make a pill. We pay for Authenticity and Immediacy in drugs. Someday we'll pay for Personalization.

23 Sep 09

Joanna Zietara

Technium

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 it's flowed on the internet.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
10 more annotations...
- why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free?
- Eight Generatives Better Than Free
- Immediacy --
- Personalization -
- Interpretation
- Authenticity --
- Accessibility -
- Embodiment --
- Patronage
- Findability --

22 Sep 09

Martin Weigert

free business model gschäftsmodell kostenlos mehrwert

19 Sep 09

Guillermo Santamaria

Kevin Kelly copyright web2.0

20 Jul 09

Mario A Núñez

free

Immediacy
Immediacy
3 more annotations...
- Personalization
- You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents.
- Interpretation

06 Jul 09

greenup greenup

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.
Eight Generatives Better Than Free

Immediacy
14 more annotations...
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it
- Authenticity
- bug free, reliable, and warranted.
- Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity -- a signature
- Accessibility
- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions"
- Embodiment
- print
- music in a live performance
- Patronage
- audience paying simply because it feels good.
- Findability

25 Jun 09

Raffaele Giaffreda

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable
There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied.
7 more annotations...
- A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured.
- millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.
- The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon
- This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear.
- Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with.
- The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week.
- In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

11 Jun 09

Beth Given

free internet digital communication networks access economics web technology culture

The internet is a copy machine
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.
1 more annotations...
- Eight Generatives Better Than Free

02 May 09

Bill Hooker

<_tag> <_tag> import090501

23 Apr 09

Adriana Lukas

web advertising opensource media copyright information publishing delicious economics technology

18 Apr 09

tatanka

web application media culture monnaie economie

15 Apr 09

economics copyright web2.0 culture

31 Mar 09

Lyo Ma

n 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. I
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
9 more annotations...
- Immediacy
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Authenticity
- Accessibility
- Embodiment
- Patronage
- it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators.
- Findability

25 Mar 09

Kevin Kimberlin

Fans are brought into the generative process itself.
The free copy of a book can be custom edited by the publishers to reflect your own previous reading background
6 more annotations...
- becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance.
- You'll pay for authenticity
- The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love
- Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.
- Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits
- “There’s no shortage of content in the world—but there is a huge need for editing.”

26 Feb 09

Nicholas Black

03 Feb 09

Dr Baegga

web economy

08 Jan 09

John Kellden

Research

17 Dec 08

brrrr34 brrrr34

16 Dec 08

Tuija Aalto

"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."

luottamus trust

12 Dec 08

John Lucero

pretense tech articles

07 Dec 08

MaX MaX

06 Dec 08

graeme wood

Better than free - the copy machine

free technology publishing opensource media copy

06 Nov 08

Dave Duarte

attention free economics

30 Oct 08

Michelle Krill

"The internet is a copy machine."

copyright article its week10

Even a dog knows you can't erase something once it's flowed on the internet.
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?
2 more annotations...
- When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
  
  When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
- In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values.

24 Sep 08

eyal matsliah

economics free-economy kevin-kelly technology network-economy

how does one make money selling free copies?
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
14 more annotations...
- When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
- 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.
- Eight Generatives Better Than Free
- Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset.
- Personalization
- Interpretation -- As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000.
- Authenticity -- You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity.
- Accessibility -- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them. We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it, as well as any movie, photo (ours or other photographers)
- Embodiment -- At its core the digital copy is without a body.
- Patronage -- It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators.
- Findability
- A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen;
- Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.
- In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

17 Sep 08

Helen Nam

Kevin Kelly has an interesting discussion of eight BIG IDEAS,further expanding on selling things that cannot be copied.

10 Sep 08

Andrew Murphie

free web2.0 opensource innovation

04 Sep 08

Sacha Arozarena

...or why once it's digital it needs to be free

economy business web2.0 marketing ideas future remix

31 Aug 08

Doobii X

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
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.
10 more annotations...
- 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.
- Eight Generatives Better Than Free
- Immediacy
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Authenticity
- Accessibility
- Embodiment
- Patronage
- Findability

29 Aug 08

Paul Sweeney

What's better than Free? Strategy !

free business models strategy web2.0

02 Jul 08

Steve Downey

philosophy

19 May 08

Arne van Elk

When everything that is digital can be freely copied how do you create value? An essay by Kevin Kelly. Interessant stuk over de dingen die het interessant maken om voor (de toegang tot) software, muziek, films etc te betalen: Immediacy (als eerste de beschikking hebben over de inhoud); Personalisation (op maat gemaakte inhoud); Interpretation (uitleg, handleiding, etc.); Accessibility (altijd overal eenvoudig bereikbaar); Embodiment (de verpakking, van luxe boxen tot concerten van artiesten); Patronage (een 1 op 1 relatie met de maker van de inhoud); Findability (doorzoekbaarheid, vindbaarheid).

gratis auteursrecht webdiensten internet muziekdiensten

16 May 08

Michael Roy

read OpenAccess

25 Apr 08

Karen Bosch

8 things that are better than free, with internet everything is free, so how do you make it better.

web article

Karl Fisch

Discussion of the value of things that can't be copied

free copyright the_shifts

23 Apr 08

Peter Shanks

Art, money and the internet. 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?

business free economics internet marketing art

11 Apr 08

Terry Beck

Course Related Sites 110 AWNM

Rob Crowther

Web2.0 Marketing Culture Economics Media BlogPost

Takuya Homma

structuring free information-flood valuable

trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.
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.
5 more annotations...
- 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?
- . They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free -- and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance
- hese new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.
- Ads are widely regarded as the solution, almost the ONLY solution, to the paradox of the free.
- I think ads are only one of the paths that attention takes, and in the long-run, they will only be part of the new ways money is made selling the free.

10 Apr 08

davide g.

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.

09 Apr 08

Elisabeth Nesheim

open business technology digital copy

07 Apr 08

Josh More

marketing inspiration business

06 Apr 08

jay yu

28 Mar 08

Armen Petrosjan

article content economy почитать

26 Mar 08

20 Mar 08

Dan Armano

business

Johann Richard

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.

2008 advertising advice art analysis articles article business free economics internet marketing technology copyright web

19 Mar 08

Bob Robertson-Boyd

content social

17 Mar 08

Kevin O'Gorman

Better Than Free

relevance web2.0

06 Mar 08

c smith

Immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage, findability

value selling business advice

05 Mar 08

miyama

internet business technology web toread

Raphael Rousseau

internet Economics free gratis web business marketing businessmodel web2.0 for:tbondolfi

03 Mar 08

Javed Alam

business internet economics free marketing technology web copyright attention

01 Mar 08

Rotkapchen .

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

economics InteractionCosts

28 Feb 08

marqpdx

content writing

27 Feb 08

Joshua Nunn

business

26 Feb 08

Derek Mahar

copyright law business strategy technology article read

katarina peovic

8 stvari koje se ne mogu zastititi copyrightom: trenutnost, personalizacija, interpretacija, autentičnost...

copyright

Carlos Santos

economy sharing social webservices copyright technology future publishing web business economics marketing

24 Feb 08

izumitelj

business economics internet free marketing strategy

21 Feb 08

Todd Suomela

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

internet culture economics free import-delicious

19 Feb 08

marc sobel

amy lundstrom

resources 21stcenturyskills

15 Feb 08

Chris Walsh

internet free marketing web business studyclub

12 Feb 08

Tom Sepp

Sandy Rotenberg

Piece on the other intangible values of things online once you give up on copies.

LR12 business culture free internet library reference

10 Feb 08

Gonzalo Martin

Explicación de los modelos de negocio gratuitos, destinados para generar escasez, bienes no replicables. Interesante como el mundo físico se acerca al coste marginal cero en bienes industriales.

de digitales economy free modelos negocio

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?
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable
15 more annotations...
- When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
  
  Well, what can't be copied?
- A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured.
- As a sellable quality, immediacy has many levels, including access to beta versions. Fans are brought into the generative process itself. Beta versions are often de-valued because they are incomplete, but they also possess generative qualities that can be sold. Immediacy is a relative term, which is why it is generative.
- Personalization
- You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that "stickiness" because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over
- Interpretation
- Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it -- the manual for your genes so to speak -- will be expensive
- Authenticity
- Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity -- a signature -- to raise the price of the copy
- But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators. This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet machine does that). Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works
- rom an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with. Other intermediates such as critics and reviewers also channel attention. Fans rely on this multi-level apparatus of findability to discover the works of worth out of the zillions produced. There is money to be made (indirectly for the creatives) by finding talent. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week.
- There is little doubt that besides the mega-aggregators, in the world of the free many PDLs will make money selling findability -- in addition to the other generative qualities.
- Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.
- Ads are widely regarded as the solution, almost the ONLY solution, to the paradox of the free. Most of the suggested solutions I've seen for overcoming the free involve some measure of advertising. I think ads are only one of the paths that attention takes, and in the long-run, they will only be part of the new ways money is made selling the free.
- It costs nothing to make a pill. We pay for Authenticity and Immediacy in drugs. Someday we'll pay for Personalization

09 Feb 08

Mike Nall

strategy 21st_century_business

08 Feb 08

Michael Dila

business economics internet free technology strategy value trust OpenSource intellectualproperty

m cassimatis

via prvs-kottke/ The internet is a copy machine. copies every action. to send mssg, protocols reqs copied along th way svrl tms. super-distributn economy //basically ppl will pay to hv sth now (first) & to without any work of finding, maintaining

z0802 item-archv web

Bruno Martins

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 dem

business copy economics free internet marketing sci-fi technology web

yenayer Sami

adapiran

Imported Bookmarks copyright

Vegard McFadzean

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
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?
1 more annotations...
- 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.

07 Feb 08

Deborah Fitchett

customerservice free trust

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."
Another generative that can be charged for is Community. You can give away content for free, then charge users to be in the "fan club"
2 more annotations...
- I think I've identified another leg to the table of generative values: Optimization.
  
  It's related to personalization and interpretation, but slightly different to them. Optimization takes a process already used by the client, and sells a better version that achieves the same goals with more efficiency.
- I mean really our whole culture is based on it. If you look around the room you'll be hard-pushed to find anything that isn't in some way a copy.
  
  Copy, mutate, test... copy, mutate, test... copy, mutate, test... it's what we do. I think we should be incubating this process, not bottlenecking it.

edtechtalk

jason: A nice essay on the realities of economies (and learning) in the Internet Age. Money quote: "When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied."

20080210 economy internet

Jennifer Maddrell

jason: A nice essay on the realities of economies (and learning) in the Internet Age. Money quote: "When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied."

internet economy 20080210

Steve Wolf

ToRead business

Luther Huffman

free marketing internet business

gilbert dave

economy interneteconomy networking

The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies.
how does one make money selling free copies?
11 more annotations...
- 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.
- In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.
- Immediacy
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Authenticity
- Accessibility
- Embodiment
- Patronage
- Findability
- In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

Michael Becker

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...

copyright internet web digital media

06 Feb 08

Thomas Buyle

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.

inspiration economy blog

Christopher Arnold

Article discussing 'value' in a digital world... "When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied."

article business blog experience_design *** theory imported

Fred Dingledy

technology marketing

Mal Burns

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives."

article business design internet

Thomas Vander Wal

Kevin Kelly lays out the problems of abundance and free copies, but also points to where there is value in a marketplace of free.

economics value business commerce web distribution digital content media knowledge ip trust personalization pricing social kevinkelly

Peter Bromberg

FruFru FourOne

read this; looks interesting

business economics free marketing advertising fablog freedom

rampion

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.

free copying economics internet technology articles

Sander van Zoest

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

business insightful economy copyright marketing pricing sharing kevin kelly

KO -

copyright internet

05 Feb 08

Armando Alves

Marketing

Armando Alves

Marketing

Bill Thompson

toread

Ruth Parlin

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,

technology web2.0

Amy

Eight things that are valuable in a digital culture where copies are free.

General Technology library

Wilson Chan

Stanton Teters

"When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied." An essay by the author of 10 Rules for the New Economy.

business economics entrepreneurship futurism culture society delicious-import

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