Esther Dyson on the Value of Attention 93
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?"
Re:Giving away stuff for Free (Score:2)
"You scratch my back; I'll scratch yours" is exactly what a normal job is. The only difference between your "vision" and what already exists is that the "scratching" that you receive from a job is in the form of currency which can be readily exchanged for goods and services. Without currency, you have to scratch alot of backs individually. It's j
Re:Giving away stuff for Free (Score:1)
Re:Keep giving it away 'til you go BUST! (Score:3, Insightful)
What some people apparently don't realize is that the new internet distribution channels remove old restrictions on the supply of intellectual content. The big moneyed interests garnered an inflated share in the past based primarily on control over supply. So we're seeing their futile attempt to artificially restrict the supply, that restriction being the actual source of their wealth. Problem is, the various DRM methods don't really give you control over the independent supply, only of your own, unless
AttentionMonger (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:AttentionMonger (Score:1, Offtopic)
Estie Estie Estie... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Estie Estie Estie... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod me down if you care to.
Re:Estie Estie Estie... (Score:1)
Oblig (F) /. Ref (Score:2)
Re:Oblig (F) /. Ref (Score:1)
Re:AttentionMonger (Score:2)
Re:AttentionMonger (Score:1)
That one is amusing from someone who remembers all too-well E.Dyson's drooling and fawning rah-rah over the NeXT computer at the Davis Symphony Hall SF unveiling in 1988. Course the company and the computer bombed like Hiroshima (although the OS and dev-tools live on in a mutated form), but gosh wasn't her overpriced newsletter so on the money with that one? After that goose-egg, I still spent the next years scratching my head over what the hell she did for a living.
Or if you like Douglas Ada
Re:What she's done (Score:2)
Her career is "Miss Popularity". Perhaps techies can
Re:What she's done (Score:2)
It might be an interesting lesson for someone close to one of these projects to deconstruct her methods, so that we may learn from, and ultimately defend against them.
Re:What she's done (Score:2)
Re:AttentionMonger (Score:2, Informative)
And I believe she's something [theregister.co.uk] of a space cadet [theregister.co.uk].
If this Pauline Borsook profile [wired.com] was being written today, Esther wouldn't merit a 100-word sidebar. Old Esthie proves you can be a complete, ditzy bimbo and still get an adulatory press.
Re:AttentionMonger (Score:1)
Can we make this a cover-story here? Sure it's dated - but that never stopped Slashdot...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767900111/sr=8-1
Can't wait for her next book. The comments from those should be quite the hoot. The
Free == Money (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free == Money (Score:1)
There is an old parable about a guy who sat his refrigerator on his lawn with a "Take for Free" sign on it. After two weeks, he stuck a "For Sale: $50" sign on it. It was gone the next day.
Re:Free == Money (Score:2)
There is an old parable about a guy who sat his refrigerator on his lawn with a "Take for Free" sign on it.
The parable and the discussion don't really match up very well. In the parable, people don't take the fridge because there might be something wrong with it. After all why else would the guy want to give away his fridge for nothing, unless it was costing more (in terms of taking up space, etc.) to keep it rather than give it away? Once the guy demanded something in return for the fridge, people's
Re:Free == Money (Score:2)
Re:Free == Money (Score:1)
Re:who is Esther Dyson ? (Score:2)
Re:who is Esther Dyson ? (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, no! He got the idea after hearing little Esther saying her first word. You may credit him with genius; I prefer to call it foresight...
Who is Esther Dyson (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Who is Esther Dyson (Score:2)
It is made of win and good.
Content is king. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you imagine.. (Score:1)
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
For how long can we give content away for free? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:For how long can we give content away for free? (Score:1)
Re:For how long can we give content away for free? (Score:1)
See, and I thought that "typical slashdot fashion" was that there's always some jackass that thinks that they're the only one bucking the Hive Mind.
+5 Insightful means that four people thought the content was worthwhile. That's all. If the moderation causes you so much hand-wringing, turn it off.
Crybaby.
Re:For how long can we give content away for free? (Score:1)
Re:For how long can we give content away for free? (Score:3, Interesting)
they were discussing giving things away for free as a business model.
Well, given that just the other day I expressed my comparable views on the "business model" meme [slashdot.org] I can at least claim consistency. Trying to push it back into the "business model" frame completely misses my point because is exactly what I'm objecting to.
Not all organizations, or ventures, or whatever you want to call them are businesses, and not all of them need (or want) business models, profits, or whatever. Algebra has lasted for
Re:For how long can we give content away for free? (Score:1)
good for most (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Definition of eBusiness (Score:3, Insightful)
Ask Jason Calacanis (Score:2)
State funding makes it free!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
[...]
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.
Re:Obviously, we cannot (Score:1)
i never touch it anymore. who wants to touch an unsustainable failure!
this post isn't even happening, such is the degree of the catastrophic mismanagement and just plain uneconomic thinking!
goodbye!
Re:Obviously, we cannot (Score:2)
If you can produce content that is more desirable than other content, you can still make the system pay. And money can help you do that. What you can't do anymore is make the system pay you unfairly because your competition doesn't have the access to the marketplace that you have. That is all that is different with the internet, otherwise standard anarcho-capitalistic principles apply.
Quality is what it now requires to make money, not simple restraint of trade.
Worthless interview, who learned anything? (Score:1)
There was nothing there!
She gets paid for this?
Who learned anything that wasn't already obvious? Come on, lets hear it!
BWilde
It's gone from suck to blow (Score:2, Funny)
What's the matter Colonel Sanders? (Score:2)
Re:It's gone from suck to blow (Score:1)
Re:It's gone from suck to blow (Score:2)
Good luck. (Score:3, Funny)
Remember, Dyson is the same person who (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Hah. (Score:1)
Re:Hah. (Score:1)
No, Red State Red Commie Bushies. Most of us never voted for King George and his Red China Comrades.
Content has been relegated to bait... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
What if there's ultimately no way... (Score:2)
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 b
Re:What if there's ultimately no way... (Score:2)
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
Making profit in other ways... (Score:2)
But how many digital products are so complicated they require support? Not many. Updates can be copied just like the original content.
Pho
Re:What if there's ultimately no way... (Score:2)
It would not mean the end of the app developer market or the end of living off your art.
Ah, you have seen the light! (Score:2)
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 b
Hello Everybody (Score:2, Informative)
See also every commercial webcomic. Some go for a pure related-merchandise-for-sale approach, such as ctrl alt del [ctrlaltdel-online.com], others push a little harder, like questionablecontent [questionablecontent.net] 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 th
Not exactly philanthropy (Score:1)
A: (Score:1)
Actually, I do... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Sharing v.s. Ecconomy. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
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
You're 150 years too late. (Score:1)
Interesting? No. (Score:1)
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.
Simmer. . . (Score:2)
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.
Re:Sharing v.s. Ecconomy. . . (Score:1)
consider the fact that the lower classes were always useful in the past, either to harvest crops or do building work or fight in the military. because of this, they always received a certain minimum of respect and protection from the upper class. now we have a system where the working class is getting increasingly less important, due to outsourcing and globalisation. crops are harvested using large machines, workers at building projects ar
As Long as Collaboration Software Gets Better (Score:2)
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