Malcolm Gladwell Challenges the Idea of "Free" 206
An anonymous reader brings us another bump on the bumpy road of Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which we discussed a week ago. Now the Times (UK) is reporting on a dustup between Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Recently Gladwell reviewed, or rather deconstructed, Anderson's book in the New Yorker. Anderson has responded with a blog post that addresses some, but by no means all, of Gladwell's criticisms, and The Times is inclined to award the match to Gladwell on points. Although their reviewer didn't notice that Gladwell, in setting up the idea of "Free" as a straw man, omitted a critical half of Stewart Brand's seminal quote.
Summary?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Summary, n.: a comprehensive and usually brief abstract, recapitulation, or compendium of previously stated facts or statements.
That is exactly what this slashdot post isn't.
1 headline + 1 paragraph = nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Could anyone understand that mess? Is this a book review? If I didn't know that "outliers" was a book, I'd be clicking past.
Re:Summary?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Editor, n: a perl script used to push a slashdot article to the frontpage "as is" or with random perturbations.
kdawson.pl is widely acknowledged as the buggiest and least effective of these script.
Re:My Time Isn't Free (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate every operating system, each for its own special reasons.
Throwing your computer off the roof - Because your time isn't free
Business models need to change with the times. (Score:1, Insightful)
They're both a bit wrong. Info on the net isn't free. I pay for an internet connection. People pay for computers to connect to the internet, or pay the travel cost (which still takes time, although public transport, fuel costs or even food to power their legs/arms also have costs) to a library or other free location.
The reality is that the cost to access information and collect information has changed dramatically. This is true for the newspaper producers, their access to info from reporters etc. is less costly now. It's also true for the consumer. The information people used to be happy to buy from newspapers is easier to get in other ways now. That's just the way things are.
I can understand newspaper people who complain about their lost revenue and whine about people who think the information isn't worth as much as it used to be. The business model for manure haulers and buggy whip makers changed too. That's life. Propping up failed business models with taxpayer funds or new laws to keep prices high for something that just isn't worth the old price, seems like the wrong thing to do. It just encourages large corporations to not worry about being economically viable.
Not a book review (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The biggest point, in my opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
If I understand the nature of something that I accept for "free" then I have consciously made a decision to spend whatever personal effort is required to extract some value out of this "free" thing. Does my effort make the thing less "free"? Presumably, I know what I'm doing and still think its worth the price of my personal effort. This decision could be made for numerous reasons:
- I'm ignorant and naively think that "free" means no personal effort is required
- weighing the "personal effort" cost vs the cost of the non-free alternative
- weighing the "personal effort" cost vs future/indirect/other returns
- personal satisfaction/growth/principles/other emotional driver
Setting aside any possible naivete, the other reasons in my personal equation imply that despite a personal cost I still think "free" is worth it. This is irrespective of which side of the "free" offer I am on (provider/recipient).
"Freedom" is similar to "free" in that most people accept that there is an embedded cost somewhere that they are prepared to pay e.g. my freedom to flail my fists ends at the tip of your nose. My freedom to spout on about freedom is codependent on your freedom to spout on about subjects I may find personally abhorrent. Even with those "costs", I still think "Freedom" is worth it.
Your MBA friend is spot on - these are basic ideas. And the Times should be castigated for referring to these guys as "two of the world's leading thinkers".
YouTube does not have to make money (Score:3, Insightful)
It is common knowledge that has been confirmed by various higher-ups at Google over the past few years, that as far as Google is concerned, "What is good for The Web, is good for Google". Google spends hundreds of millions per year on various free giveaways that it will not now or probably ever recoup costs on - things like Chrome, supporting Firefox, YouTube, etc.
Why does it do this? Because the more people utilize the web, the more it becomes the center of their daily lives, they more they will rely on Google as the librarian of all of that knowledge - which means they will get more money from their ads.
Google does not have to make money any project it launches, as long as whatever it is doing is going to cause you to use the web more in one way or another, because they know if you are using the web, then you are probably going to be searching it with Google.com.
Re:Is the real story ego? (Score:5, Insightful)
My take is that Gladwell is post-peak and he knows it.
Give him a little bit of credit, at least try to address his arguments.
They're both rather accomplished bullshit-pop-sociology writers, but the real disagreement has a lot to do with their style. Anderson is like Tom Friedman and Ray Kurtzweil, in that he is a messianic This Is The Future pop philosopher-type, and tends to construct his argument around absolute, theoretical propositions, and asserts his case as if it were inescapable physical law. He writes like an Austrian Economist or a Straussian. He is a structuralist.
Gladwell is the skeptic. All of his books have mainly focused on picking-apart the assumptions of structuralists; you think entrepreneurs are the movers in an economy, he puts up 10 reasons why it isn't so simple. You think hockey teams always select the best roster of players? Outliers is about how social institutions are highly irrational in identifying the successful. You think people make rational decisions at all? He wrote a book called Blink where he calls it all into question.
I'm not saying he's right, it's just his MO. When he sees a book like Free, that makes Big Important Statements about How All Of Us Order Our Lives, it's bait to someone like him.
Re:Hack vs. the Void (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't admire gladwell, but tipping point was an interesting read. Not brilliant, but it felt like an interesting conversation with a friend who had one of those crazy but interesting ideas. It made interesting observations, but made a conclusions I didn't entirely agree with. However it made me think and look up things, people and ideas.
What bothers me about your post is that it says nothing. You have two paragraphs of cynicism, with typical array of cynical adjective: 'Mensa bottom feeder', 'Hack', 'Soft journalism'.... You know, being cynical doesn't make you wise.
I haven't read Anderson. However I don't understand people's problem with someone having an idea. Gladwell has ideas, he tries to put them together. Are they a bit dan brownish at times, yes. He is however doing something constructive and entertaining to read. And inspiring. He inspires people to write even if to prove him wrong. Progress in science and progress in general depends on going down the wrong paths as much as on going down the right ones. Gladwell helps the whole process of progress even if it's by writing things that turn out to be wrong.
Cynical people on other hand don't do much just stand on the sidelines screaming "You're stupid!". They offer no alternate answer or make effort to do anything, but glorify their passivity as wisdom.
In general I am bothered by people's binary opinions. Someone's either a genius or hack, without anything in between. In some people's minds apparently one wrong opinion makes all your other opinions and achievement worthless. I bet someone will find a grammatical error or typo in this post and use that as an argument that everything I sad is wrong.
Re:Extended Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Extended Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm surprised to seeso many college educated US slashdot readers act so aggressively to devalue the one thing their economic future really does depend upon.
I'm always surprised to see so many intelligent people talk about how the US economy is dependent on IP without seeing that as a problem. The devaluation of IP is a reality we're faced with, and insofar as we're relying on our ability to legislate artificially high prices and prop up obsolete business models to keep our economy afloat, we should all be terrified of what happens when all that fails.