Jabes Twitter Musings [Special Edition] - April 7th
Chapter 2: Free and The Age of Abundance
Remember how the internet and software moved distribution and marginal costs to zero? An unintended consequence was the abundance of information that flowed directly to you and me.
The concept of information has different meanings in different contexts. What I am referring to is a catch all term for knowledge, data, communication and content.
In this lens, what a time to be alive when it comes to information. I can :
Google any seemingly random question and get a thoughtful answer
Pause a Fyre Festival documentary half way through to switch to another Fyre Festival documentary
Fire up a podcast with a dead philosopher for a midnight walk
In the past I would have had to go to the library to rent a book and page through it. I would have been stuck with whatever ABC decided to show Friday night at 9pm or whatever Blockbuster had left on the outside wall. I would have had to read lecture notes.
I’m not saying this wasn’t doable. What I’m saying is that it was harder to do. And when something is harder to do, fewer people are going to go through the effort to do it. We are lazy by nature.
Alex Danco defines abundance as
“the condition reached as the friction involved in consumption decisions approaches zero.”
If that doesn’t describe my decision for which Fyre Festival documentary to watch, I don’t know what would. We are living in a world of abundance.
Money was another factor that deterred people from doing things. Maybe I was fairly interested in something but only for a certain price. Price it too high and I’m out. Price it just right and you have my attention.
But now, if the costs move to zero, price is no longer a determining factor. I have the world of information at my fingertips. Nearly for free. It now becomes more about what I care about. What I’m willing to spend my attention on.
In the next post we will look at what happens if you aggregate that attention by making sense of the abundance.
Cheers,
Jabe Jableson