Brand: Information Wants to be Free. It Also Wants to be Expensive.
Anyone who does anything with information these days should know this entire quote. Many people know the famous short version: “Information wants to be free.” but the rest of the quote makes those first five words sound naive and utopian. The rest of the quote is what industries from the obvious – media and publishing – to the not so obvious – almost everything else – are struggling with in equal measure these days.
Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.
Stewart Brand first said it in 1984 at the first Hackers’ Conference. It was first printed in the May 1985 Whole Earth Review, and again in 1987 in his book, “The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT.”
Dagonet says:
Oct 26th, 2009
See also Roger Clarke’s page on the slogan and its history:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/IWtbF.html
Graham says:
Oct 26th, 2009
There’s anextra in a URL in this post. The link should be:
http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/75_words/
Karl Foxley says:
Oct 27th, 2009
Very thought provoking and something that seems to be a emerging topic around the web especially in the changing roles of newspapers and their online counterparts.
Karl
Brynn Evans says:
Oct 28th, 2009
Thanks for sharing that whole quote. I’ve never heard the whole thing before! (Looks like your quote link is broken, though).
The thing that struck me from the entire quote is the tension part. Of course, that’s obvious, but still striking. We see this everywhere too — some companies charge for their services (cable TV) when others make it free (Hulu)…and we know where that has led.
I noticed this today even when I wanted to make my own passport photo. I found a service that helps you prepare one for “free”, only to learn at the end that you have to pay $6.95 to complete the request. There’s that tension between a fully free service and offering your exclusive knowledge to someone for a price.
Rotkapchen says:
Oct 31st, 2009
Thanks for the full context Stewart…that’s critical. You’ve also brought to light a key clue for the ‘sweet spot’. The optimal answer is always in the dichotomy.
The quote made me recall a whole series of related related/relevant quotes from “Information Anxiety” (Richard Saul Wurman, founder of TED conferences). But let me share just two:
“The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few but information in the hands of many” John Naisbitt, Megatrends
“Information has become the international currency upon which fortunes will rise and fall.” George Shultz, Secretary of State, Regan Administration