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Esther Dyson on the Value of Attention
Christian Ahlert writes "OpenBusiness talked to Esther Dyson about how business models are adapting to an internet environment that champions openness. Esther's upcoming PC Forum focuses on how users are transforming the internet and placing new demands on businesses. From Open Source to Open Content, new forms of organization, production and distribution are emerging. But how can these ventures produce a revenue and sustain themselves? For how long can we give content away for free?"
Why can't we sustain giving it away forever? Its an ideal we should be adopting. Human man hours are very valuable, and if we work together to create what we want we can improve the way we live with Zero cost... You scratch my back, and i'll scratch yours...
Keep giving it away 'til you go BUST! It's the internet way, comrade chairman.
What has Esther Dyson ever done, other than be born Freeman Dyson's daughter and screw up ICANN? I guess that resume does make her an expert on the value of attention.
--
make install -not war
Giving things away for free, in my experience, typically pays you back pretty quickly. And in more ways than just adding points to the great Karma tally in the sky.
If you make an open source project that gets any sort of attention, you typically find yourself bombarded with job offers and requests for consulting work, which can easily turn into a consulting company, etc, etc.
Just becuase you give away something for free doesn't mean people want to use it for free, they often will pay a good fee for support, customization, etc.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
See ".com era"
this seems more of a slashvertisment for her "PC forum" (as mentioned in the first paragraph) which i doubt is free, seems like another Open Source clinger-on trying to extract money for little contribution (except lip service and paying her speakers wages)
we all know that most of these "forums" (in the biz sense) are forgotton in 2weeks of visiting and at best are merely a day out for people that think they will have some benefit to their business but when it comes to the figures the Organisers are the only winners
More importantly: How did Scotty rig the transporter buffer to save his pattern for so long.
But not the content that's being given away... That content brings in the users/viewers. The content that makes the money is the meta-content. It's the communities that develop and the loyalties that are created around the free content which bring value to the advertising and site-themed t-shirts and coffee mugs. Take slashdot, for instance.. the real value of slashdot is more in the comments and the community that develops here for each new story than it is in the story itself - at least for those of you reading this comment right now. We could find out the news from tons of places - but the real reason to come here is either habit or for the entertainment found in reading and posting comments. People are valuable and we're seeing a relfection of that happen on the web.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
For how long can we give content away for free?
I hate this question. You might as well ask "For how long can we afford to have sex without charging each other?" or "For how long can we make idle chit chat with random strangers without getting their billing information first?"
Or how about "How long can the sun shine without protection of its intellectual property?"
I'm as capitalistic as the next guy, but capitalism is a specific mechanism to resolve a certain specific class of problems in an efficient manner. It is not some universal mandate, and there's no reason to suspect that it imposes any sorts of limits on conduct that isn't covered by the model.
--MarkusQ
P.S. Please respond with your credit card numbers so I can bill you for spouting off. I've gotta eat, you know.
Freedom and openness is good for almost everyone except maybe the middlemen (publishers, RIAA, etc.). The web has flourished under the free content paradigm. Could you imagine if you had to pay for everything (email, search, maps, news, and so on)? Who could afford it?
Many businesses have proven they can make money this way. Others may still have to prove themselves. But it works! There are many ways to generate cash flow - ad revenues, consulting, sale of related items. I think if you offer a service of value to people or valuable content, you can find a way to earn money.
I'm sorry but seriosly folks, /. is turning into a friggin advert "story" poster boy. Whats next, stories of Bradjelia's baby bump and the impact it has on the open source community?
"verts for nerds"
How timely: Jason on YouTube. How do they pay for bandwidth? Beats me!
Simpy
ED: "One of the key questions, however, is sustainability. If some content creation depends on patronage or philanthropy how can sustainability be achieved? Many of the models we see are such short-term focused and this is what needs to be tackled. In particular philanthropic giving in this area needs to think harder about sustainability."
[...]
ED: "Yes, I agree, but this might point to an old fashioned concept: state funding. In particular in areas of such strategic and social importance as education in a country like South Africa. I don't think the Internet is a good medium for education, though it is a good tool. Education is a process; it's not content. Even though involving the internet to produce and disseminate content sharply reduces costs, there is still the need for quality assurance and costs of maintaining such a service. And in many regards state funding might the most appropriate way for achieving that such a service can be maintained at low costs."
I don't have a problem with state funding per se, but I fail to see how a state funded project could in any way be deemed: FREE. Perhaps free speech, but certainly not free beer.
It should be obvious to all that the internet in its present form is simply unsustainable, as we are unable to provide free of charge any meaningful content, service, exchange, usefulness or appreciated interaction. Now that visitor demand and tastes is such that a website simply cannot function or be popular at all, or really hold any appeal, without large amounts of downloaded graphics and video content, the 'free through small-scale advertising and donation' model is obviously dead and zombified long ago.
I can only echo Esther Dyson in that as the revenue generated from today's websites gives a return on capital appreciately below its opportunity cost, people won't bother to keep them open any more.
Two years before ICANN was created word got to me that "If you guys don't straighten out this DNS mess the CIA is gonna send Ester in to fix this".
Darling Estie never kept any appointment with me and apparantly doesn't read email she responds to. She spammed me for two years before I blacklisted her domain.
I can't recall being more disappoined in any human I ever wanted to meet. Utterly vacuous. Whatever she says, do the opposite which you probably thought was the right thing to do in the first place.
Usenet has been providing free answers for a quarter century. What's she up to now? Whatever it is, I promise you she's "invested" in it.
Anon for a reason. Sorry. I've read Barris' book.
Yea, I think that was him.
I'm never surprised by how little I learn from reading her thoughts.
There was nothing there!
She gets paid for this?
Who learned anything that wasn't already obvious? Come on, lets hear it!
BWilde
Yeah, yeah. That's great and all .. but what does this have to do with vacuums?
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
They're gonna be in for a surprise if they try to start charging ME for content. I'm so cheap, I don't even pay attention.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
thinks outsourcing is good for America.
Sometimes, you have loony people.
Sometimes, you have intelligent people.
Sometimes, and far worse, you have intelligent people who can't understand consequences of loony ideas but are very good at pushing out enough frak that noone understands they're really loony people.
Sadly, Dyson's in the third category.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This is a good point. A friend of mine says that you know you've done "eBusiness" not just when you've put stuff online, but when you've changed who has the power. For example, before online car shopping, car dealers had all the power: they knew how much any specific new or used car was really worth on the market, but as a consumer you had no easy way to come up with that same information. eBusiness changed that: consumers now have that same power. Currently we can see that eBusiness is finally "happening" in the movies and music business, not because movies and music are available online, but because power is shifting away from the "middle men".
Maybe a similar argument applies to "open content". For any particular medium of expression, we can tell when "open content" has finally "happened" not by when stuff becomes available online, but by when "who has the power" has shifted.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
Clearly most people have no problems copying digital content. Consequently, digital content is quickly becoming worthless - you can't sell it if everyone can get it for free.
I think in the very near future people are going to give up trying to get people to pay for it, and instead use it as "bait" to get people to visit regular content outlets, where they can be exposed to advertisements for "real" (non-digitial) products.
Digital content will continue to be the "free coffee" from TFA.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
...to sell infinitely reproducible information at a profit?
Would it be worth making every piece of film, art, music, literature, and software available to every human being on Earth if it meant that there could no longer be a profitable industry in any of those fields?
It would mean no more MPAA, and no more Matrix. No more RIAA, and no more "getting discovered." No more $800 Photoshop, and no more app developer market. No more IP lawyers, and no more living off of your art. What if you could press a button and choose one or the other?
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Maddox has managed it for more than five years now because "giving away content" wasn't his source of income. Now he's set to make a boatload of cash from various ventures including a book and a comic.
See also every commercial webcomic. Some go for a pure related-merchandise-for-sale approach, such as ctrl alt del, others push a little harder, like questionablecontent selling clothes that appear in comics.
And if your site doesn't fit into an easy category for making money, but does have traffic, I have three words for you: Ads by Goooooooogle. I hate these ads, but they work.
As for corporations and such, and their continued profit from the internet, I have nothing but a big Fuck You for them. The only area this discussion is even relevant to big business is newspapers. The answer for them in most cases is advertising. Others try to lock in their content. These are the ones who miss the point. Screw them. The third case is the BBC - no need to profit from the internet. This is where I go for my news.
depending on your definition of what "America" is.
However, its obviously not good for American programmers who lose their jobs or at least face more salary pressure and the constant threat of losing their jobs.
My "America" consists of the working people of the U.S.A., not its governments or large corporations or faceless economic statistics.
if they started a subscription-only business model for slashdot? Even if it was only a dollar a month.
Within a month all the idiots, trolls, losers, wannabes, time-rich clue-poor teenagers, bored employees, grammer nazis, crapflooders, karma whores, spammers, paranoids, extremists, fanboys and the unclassified braindead would have moved on to the next public forum. The only people left would be a polite community of intelligent and knowledgeable open-minded professionals.
They would probably all stop reading after about two more weeks, even though they were paid up for the rest of the quarter.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
I dont think the popularity of the open business model should be attributed to philanthropy. It is mostly being used by small companies to build a customer base ( which would be difficult otherwise due to presence of 'big' players ). So, in a way these are 'disruptive' technologies.
She's not even prepared to answer her own question. Her article is giving away free content. She's always done this (and I recall her ruminations from back in 1990). Must be time for another boat payment. The Dyson brand needs a little spiffing up. Get an article published, drum up some more business. When will she stop giving away free content? Ya. Right.
...to sell infinitely reproducible information at a profit?
Would it be worth making every piece of film, art, music, literature, and software available to every human being on Earth if it meant that there could no longer be a profitable industry in any of those fields?
It would mean no more MPAA, and no more Matrix. No more RIAA, and no more "getting discovered." No more $800 Photoshop, and no more app developer market. No more IP lawyers, and no more living off of your art. What if you could press a button and choose one or the other?
It is no longer profitable to sell an infinitely and instantly reproduceable product. Because producing one digital content piece is equivalent to producing an infinite number of them, the supply, for practical purposes, is infinite. Thus the demand, and the price that can be demanded, is practically zero.
We are heading into an era where content will be created to be used as "bait", where it will then be linked to physical products in an attempt to get you to purchase those instead.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Chicken?
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
You are blurring the lines a little here. Sure, the MPAA, RIAA and many high dollar entertainment values would dissappear. That does not mean that there would be no more Photoshop and no more app developer market. Software products can generate revenue from support and timely updates. Look at Red Hat or IBM. Their revenue stream is primarily support and consulting.
But how many digital products are so complicated they require support? Not many. Updates can be copied just like the original content.
Photoshop may not be $800 each, and sales may be lower, but Adobe can definitely leverage their product and still make money for it.
Photoshop may be one of those digital products that is so complicated that they could make money off of support and/or training. But the digital product itself - the software - is worthless.
Likewise, there will always be businesses that want custom apps developed. The market may decline, mostly because we won't have to redesign the wheel all the time, but there will still be a market.
I think the wheel will get re-invented more and more. If a business is now forced to commission a custom application made specifically for them, rather than an application that traditionally would have been made and sold to millions of people, that application is going to cost them a WHOLE lot more money. Once they do this, do you think they are going to release that custom commissioned software product to the world? I wouldn't. If I were a business and I commissioned a custom application for my business, I'd keep it closely guarded to aid in my competitiveness. Aside from the fact that I paid a crap-load of money for it and don't want my competitors to get their hands on it for free.
Musicians will still get paid for live shows, artists will still be needed to provide original content, writers will write online books and such.
I think the TFA was right on the money, though. Since you can't make any money selling the content digitally anymore, the only people who will be able to commission new works will be wealthy patrons, just like in the age before recorded music. And if this comes to pass, just like above, there is no guarantee that such patrons will share their well-paid-for comissions with the rest of the world for free. If you have to comission Stephen King to write you a novel, you may well decide to hold onto that sucker.
As for live shows, man I haven't been to one in over 10 years. Really, I have no desire to go to them. I guess if that is the only way to hear new music, that will be your only option.
Ultimately we don't NEED to sell the infinitely reproducible product and make a profit. Sell the peripheral items. Sell the connected products that are not infinitely reproducible.
This is exactly what I think will happen. Digital content will be worthless, and won't be sold - it will be used as "bait" to get you to a web site associated with "peripheral items" that are not infinitely and instantly reproducible.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Forever. So long as there are people there is art. Payment doesn't matter.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
From the article:
You don't go there because the beer tastes different than from in the bar next door, but because of the people who are there...
Actually, I do choose the bar based on the quality of the brew. I'm not about to drink some American Mega-Swill just so I can have a chat with the local drunks.
But, given the writing, it is clear the author thinks us just a bunch of drunken idiots anyway. Anyone who thinks everything worthwhile can be - or has to be - bought has nothing worth anything.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Guess what? It's NOT sustainable. The economy is a top-heavy joke which does not respect Mamma Nature, and as a result, has no choice but to fail spectacularly. --And while it is the engine of greed and control which is speeding this destruction along, some of the unraveling is partly due to the fact that communities have come together to share stuff openly for, oooh, F*R*E*E.
Sure, when the economy crashes, we won't be able to buy things with dollars. (Or rather, with plastic credit/debit cards.) We won't be able to pay rent or buy gas for our cars or go to the grocery store. Horrors! We'll all be broke and the whole world will look like it's crashing down, and it will be.
But. . . When the dust settles, if you want to eat or have somewhere to live, you'll only manage it if you have strong ties to your community. People will have to learn how to take care of each other without the 'aid' of being plugged into the economy. The economy is doomed regardless of how many copies of GIMP are given away. There are larger forces at work than open sourcers and video pirates. But while those larger forces will crumble and fall without their artificial money structure, the communities which learned how to share will survive and thrive.
Interesting, no?
-FL
As long as software for communicating, collaborating, organizing data, and organizing ourselves gets better, we're going to see more and more things go "free."
Think this way: Wikipedia couldn't exist, before you had the wiki basis software. Theoretically, you could do it by emailing documents back and forth, over and over again. But practically? Not going to happen.
So it's the wiki software that makes Wikipedia plausible.
The thing is, we're continuing to make more and more software the likes of Wiki. We're getting better at collaborating, we're getting better at organizing ourselves, we're developing more fluid communications technology, yadda yadda yadda.
So, the natural end of this line of thought is: More and more high quality free content.
teh troof
captcha: perfumes
Among other things, Esther put together some humanitarian investments into Eastern Europe that helped a lot of people. She also has particularly good instincts for what is going on in business.
Her real strength is that she knows everyone, and so is a conduit for introductions and ideas. She's always on the road talking to people and listening to what's going on.
So, no, she's not a techie, but she's found a good role that she's the best at. We techies could learn from her example - knowing people and being open to meeting with them is itself a valuable thing.
That's the McDonald's Principle -- make crap and sell it. Those that don't want even that level head for the dumpster out back. Don't try and tell me "give it away" stuff is even McDonald's level -- it's dumpster level. Give it away, or throw it away, and there will be many who dive in. Realize that half of the internet is in a third-, or second-, world. economy Free is all there is. To not quite as many, McDonald's dumpster is all there is, too. Those living in the first-world, at least those with disposable $, go for the good stuff.
intelligent people who can't understand consequences of loony ideas but are very good at pushing out enough frak that noone understands they're really loony people---eg, Americans.
Marx thought of all that way back in the age of the steam engine.
esther Dyson (note the capitalization) - can we get a claim as to her ever having accomplished *anything* ?
who is she, the Paris Hilton (note the capitalization) of the Internet ? Can she just start plaguing some *other* sector that she does not understand and leave us all alone ?
The idea that people sharing content is going to lead to noone being able to pay their rent is stupid.
The only way the economy will "crumble" into a cloud of dust is for everyone to burn all their money all at once and decide that everything is going to be given away.
Yeah, that'll happen.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
Responsive? They sure are! --And the collapse of the 20's was one helluva response. It can 'respond' again with similar verve.
The only way the economy will "crumble" into a cloud of dust is for everyone to burn all their money all at once and decide that everything is going to be given away.
Or. . , all of Europe and Asia might switch their reserve currencies; dumping their dollars in favor of the Euro. And if oil prices continue to rise, with everything seeming to live on oil these days, (it governs the cost of transport and heating and farming, which uses enormous amounts of oil in fertilizer), the cost of living and debt maintenence might be pushed beyond the range of most citizens. We're already seeing this pot simmering.
Please bear in mind that I'm not saying the economy will vanish, people will always trade for goods, but I am saying the existing structure is un-sustainable.
Crashing the economy is a deliberate action on the part of the powers that be, effectively making the Government the sole employer, (largely via the military), but it doesn't mean one cannot survive if you build strong ties with your community.
-FL
That is the picture of Paris Hilton of Geekdom? ...damn.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?