Free

I am a fan of Chris Anderson's writing. I really like his first book “The Long Tail”. This second book is good as well. The central idea is that fundamentally the price point of Free is changing the way that we interact. He believes that free is the common price on digital good, not because all digital good are free or should be free but that most digital goods will be free and the paid versions will support the free in inverse relationship to goods that have atoms. In other words, free goods in the physical world are supported by paid good in a relationship of around 5% or less free to 95% or more paid. In a digital world the percentages are reversed. He is not suggesting that businesses should no longer make money, like some have charged, but that businesses should find new ways to make money because we need to “waste bits” in order to find new models of business.

A longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/free-by-chris-anderson-a-post-about-the-church/ (The review is mostly about how I think about the church in regard to this book.)