Free

What happens when advances in technology allow many things to be produced for more or less nothing? And what happens when those things are then made available to the consumer for free? In his groundbreaking new book, "The Long Tail" author Chris Anderson considers a brave new world where the old economic certainties are being undermined by a growing flood of free goods - newspapers, DVDs, T-shirts, phones, even holiday flights. He explains why this has become possible - why new technologies, particularly the Internet, have caused production and distribution costs in many sectors to plummet to an extent unthinkable even a decade ago. He shows how the flexibility provided by the online world allows producers to trade ever more creatively, offering items for free to make real or perceived gains elsewhere. He pinpoints the winners and the losers in the Free universe. And he demonstrates the ways in which, as an increasing number of things become available for free, our decisions to make use of them will be determined by two resources far more valuable than money: the popular reputation of what is on offer and the time we have available for it. In the future, he argues, when we talk of the 'money economy' we will talk of the 'reputation economy' and the 'time economy' in the same breath, and our world will never be the same again.

ISBN 190521149X   Pages 288 ISBN13 9781905211494 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 200 Publisher Cornerstone   Published in London Imprint Random House Books   Height (mm) 198 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 129 Publication date 06 May 2010   Spine width (mm) 18 DEWEY 338.43   Academic level General, Professional / Scholarly, Tertiary education DEWEY edition DC22

		Prologue		1
1		The Birth of Free		7
		What is Free?
2		Free 101		17
		A Short Course on a Most Misunderstood Word
3		The History of Free		34
		Zero, Lunch, and the Enemies of Capitalism
4		The Psychology of Free		55
		It Feels Good. Too Good?
		Digital Free
5		Too Cheap to Matter		75
		The Web's Lesson: When Something Halves in Price Each Year, Zero Is Inevitable
6		"Information Wants to be Free"		94
		The History of a Phrase That Defined the Digital Age
7		Competing with Free		101
		Microsoft Learned How to Do It Over Decades, but Yahoo Had Just Months
8		De-Monetization		119
		Google and the Birth of a Twenty-First-Century Economic Model
9		The New Media Models		135
		Free Media Is Nothing New. What Is New Is the Expansion of That Model to Everything Else Online
10		How Big is the Free Economy?		162
		There's More to It Than Just Dollars and Cents
		Freeconomics and the free world
11		Econ 000		171
		How a Century-old Joke Became the Law of Digital Economics
12		Nonmonetary Economies		180
		Where Money Doesn't Rule, What Does?
		More...

Turns traditional economics upside down Guardian

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