September 2008
7 posts
Where attention flows, money will follow
Kevin Kelly on non-monetary markets: “The tight coupling between attention and money is dependable, bankable. Google made its billions because in addition to having a service that people wanted (the assumed minimum) it knew that sooner or later (and probably sooner than later) where attention flowed, money would follow. They won constant attention by providing slightly better performance...
Can freeconomics work in Africa?
A tale of two taxicab drivers. A nice exploration of free business models and how the psychology of payment varies from culture to culture.
How to compete with free
Two business professors from Harvard and Stanford have combined to publish ‘Divide and Conquer: Competing with Free Technology Under Network Effects,’ a research paper dedicated to helping business executives fight the onslaught of open source software. The Slashdot crowd goes medieval on them.
Why do some free bike programs work and some...
A good article in Treehugger: the free bike program in Bussels failed, while those in Paris, Barcelona, Lyon and elsewhere suceeded. Why? “Part of the reason appears to be the lack of commitment on the part of Brussels and JC Decaux (the advertiser and sponsor). There are very few (20) stations set up around town. There are also very few bikes provided: 250 for a million inhabitants,...
Kevin Kelly: Keep metering!
I riff a lot on the phrase “too cheap to meter”, which is what happens when the price of something gets close enough to zero to effectively treat as free. But Kevin Kelly points out that metering—or tracking actions and behavior—can create a lot of value itself. As long as that metering doesn’t involve money—the dreaded tick, tick of the taxicab meter—I...
Glimpse from my misbegotten past
From the blog of Eric Easter, the bass player in Brickhouse Burning, the art-funk band I played guitar in during my dropout 20s. I haven’t changed a bit:
“A typical conversation in band practice:
Chris: “So what’s this song about ? Is this rhythm meant to evoke passion or pathos? And should I create more tension by coming in on the anticipation of the “one” or should we build...
Plastic as a glimpse of modern abundance
Digital economics are about things like processing, storage and bandwidth becoming so cheap that the only smart thing is to waste them on profligate (but world-changing) things like YouTube. We’ve seen glimpses of generations learning how to waste before, with one of the best being the rise of disposible culture after the introduction of polystyrene and other plastics in the 1960s. A history...
