Seems like one of my recent postings “Good Luck Trying to Copy a Snowflake” on the Long Slow Chat, resonated with many of you. The Long Slow Chat is a blog that Erik Duval and I are using to focus more on the Snowflake Effect. I got a lot of comments in particular about my note that:
“I think we are now in an era where there is an inverse correlation of ease of copying with value.“
I remember being struck by this idea when Kevin Kelly first published his article “New Rules for the New Economy” in Wired magazine back in September 1997. He talked about the “The Law of Plentitude: More gives More". When you couple this with the fact that value is directly related to scarcity, the uniqueness generated by the Snowflake Effect takes on a a very large and new value.
For example, I have often observed that content has little-to-no value in and of itself. In large part, this is because content has become so plentiful and abundant. In this context, I’m using the term content to describe anything recorded or captured, such as illustrations, drawings, text, video, audio, and music. Largely due to the Internet, content has become increasingly easy to copy and distribute, and therefore its value, based on scarcity, has been on the asymptote towards zero and getting closer by the minute.
But if there is an inverse relationship between value and the ease of copying, such that most content has no value, then where do we find value and in what? Well, I believe there is still a direct correlation between value and scarcity. So in the case of content, the value comes from the mantra of the Snowflake Effect; that is, getting it “just right”—just the right content to the right person at the right time and in the right way. Reflect upon this a moment and see what you think. Would you not find that your valuation of any piece of content is directly related to how useful it is to you at a specific time and in a specific context?
To my way of thinking then, the value proposition for content is transforming it from a “product” to a “service”, since the value comes not from the content itself but from when it is the right content for the right person at the right time. All this is very much in keeping with my noun/verb perspectives but I’ll leave that for a future posting.
I was therefore delighted to find that Kevin too has also been working more on this theme of copying and value, and he has recently published his thoughts in an intriguing article called “Better Than Free” on his blog The Technium, which is also the new book he is working on. But this same article has also just been published on the Change This site in PDF format.
I highly recommend that you check out this article from either source to get some new perspectives on where value comes from in this economy where “free” is increasingly predominant. Kevin addresses the challenge that most others seem to ignore or deny, which is "where will value come from and how will there be a fully functioning 'free economy'?" As Kevin succinctly said:
“How do you make money with the free?”
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
As you will read in his article, Kevin goes on to describe eight things which are “better than free” and are values that can't be copied, which he calls “generatives”:
“A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing cannot be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time.”
The eight generatives are:
- Immediacy
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Authenticity
- Embodiment
- Patronage
- Findability
As you can imagine, I was particularly interested to see "personalization" on this list. From my (no doubt biased) perspective, the whole list is part of the Snowflake Effect, where getting to a state of “just right” is key. And more so than characteristics, this list of generatives creates a list of qualities and competencies that will be increasingly important and valuable for all of us. More on that in some future postings.
I particularly liked a note Kevin makes at the end of the article:
“In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.”
Attention is about as personal a quality as I can imagine, and is one which I value especially since I suffer so acutely from a deficit of it.
I’ll have more on this whole theme of copying, originality, sources of value, new competencies, and attention in future postings. For now, I’d recommend that you give some of your very valuable attention to this topic and this article, and I look forward to hearing more about what you think about the sources of value in an economy of "free."
Not enough credit has been given to the role the high cost of fuel has played in our economy. This past year's historically high gas prices has directly resulted in a record number of jobs and homes being lost. Of all the many that have lost homes in my area none have been because of adjustable mortgages.Most families have gone broke this past year at the pump alone. Then the increased cost in fuel was passed on to the consumer through increased production and shipping costs of every single consumer product imaginable.The average family cut back this results in even more jobs being lost. And while we are doing the happy dance at the pumps OPEC is planning more production cuts. It would cost the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon to drive an electric car. The electric to charge could be generated by wind or solar power. Bail us out of our dependence on foreign oil. Use some of those billions to get some infrastructures set up, get some solar and wind projects going, Create clean , cheap energy, create badly needed new green collar jobs. It would be a win-win situation all the way around. I just read a book called The Manhattan Project of 2009 by Jeff Wilson. I suggest anyone concerned about these things read this book.
Posted by: Sherry | December 06, 2008 at 04:59 PM
Every time I see blogs as good as this I KNOW I should stop surfing and start working on mine!
Posted by: designer handbag imitation | April 20, 2011 at 08:58 AM