Traditional economics operates under fundamental assumptions of scarcity. After all, there's only so much oil, iron, and gold in the world. But what if the fundamentals of an economy aren't governed by constraints?
The growing online economy is built upon three cornerstones: processing power, hard drive storage, and bandwidth. The costs of all these elements are trending toward zero at an incredible rate. Just think that in 1961, a single transistor cost $10, and now Intel's latest chip has two billion transistors and sells for $300 (or 0.000015 cents per transistor-effectively too cheap to price).
Never in the course of human history have the primary inputs to an industrial economy fallen in price so fast and for so long. This is the engine behind the new Free, the one that goes beyond a marketing gimmick or a cross-subsidy. In a world where prices always seem to go up, the cost of anything built on these three technologies will always go down. And keep going down, until they are as close to zero as possible.
In Free, Chris Anderson explores this radical idea for the new economy, and demonstrates how this revolutionary price can be harnessed for the benefit of both consumers and business alike.'
Very interesting book, however I found the first couple of chapters to be the most interesting as the further through the book I got the more the author seemed to focus on the internet and how it was responsible for the changing idea of free economies. It did however, explain some interesting facts about Google (and I'm considering abandoning my gmail account after reading this book, if it wasn't for the fact that its the only email provider that iphone supports!!) and I think Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything has now made it onto my reading list... some interesting facts however I would of liked to have seen the author explore a few more areas of his topic.... oh but thanks for the free download!!
