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> In 1984 the writer Stewart Brand observed that "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it
by danso 7y ago
> In 1984 the writer Stewart Brand observed that "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." The result, he said, is a tension that "will not go away."
Information is so incredibly cheap to distribute and copy today that I forget it was still very cheap to do so even before the Internet.
- semiotagonal 7y agoBrand was prescient about the tension not going away. Thirty-five years on, we've got paywalls, news aggregation, streaming music, vinyl records, all fighting it out.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThe concept, if not the wording, pre-dates Brand, going back to Michael Polanyi, Norbert Wiener, and others (1940s - 1960s).