11th
NYT reviews FREE again, this time with feeling
Virginia Postrel, who is smart and both techno- and econo-literate, has a long review of FREE in the the Sunday NY Times Book Review section. She describes it as “stimulating but not uncomfortably challenging,” concluding: ““No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,” Samuel Johnson said, and that attitude has had a good two- century run. But the Web is full of blockheads, whether they’re rate-busting amateurs or professionals trawling for speaking gigs. All this free stuff raises the real standard of living, by making it ever easier for people to find entertainment, information and communication that pleases them.vBusiness strategy, however, seeks not only to create but to capture value. Free is about a phenomenon in which almost all the new value goes to consumers, not producers. It is false to assume that no price means no value. But it is equally false to argue that value implies profitability. “
