Read a great new book by Chris Anderson titled, “Free – The Past and Future of a Radical Price” .
For those wondering, Chris did put his money where his mouth is.. I downloaded the entire audio book… yes for free, from Audible.com.

Overall the book is a good read/listen. Goes through the history of free, as well as the psychological impact of the whole concept along side capitalism. But certainly one of the more interesting chapters was the one that covered The Attention and Reputation Economy.
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”. So as information of various forms (news, music, historic reference) becomes virtually free and money no longer rules, what does? As information is free and abundant, it requires our time or “attention” to give it value. The sources of information therefore also fight to build their “reputation” as worthy of our ongoing attention.
But what gauges the economy of Attention and Reputation? Hits on a webpage certainly represent how much attention an internet data source is receiving (similar to TV ratings), and page rank is possibly the ultimate gauge of reputation since its formula takes into consideration the number of links that point to a webpage and therefore recommend it, thereby raising its reputation. It’s then up to the owner of that attention and reputation to translate them into the monetary economy through some means, for example advertising.
There are also other micro social economies of this nature throughout the internet with their own social currency. For example, in Facebook you earn reputation through the number of friends you have, Twitter via followers, etc. I’m actually exploring one of these economies, Blip.fm, in a more detail. Immersing myself to analyze its nature and social dynamics. It’s quite fascinating. More to come in a follow up post.
With the streamlining of our lives by computers and the sacrifice of passive TV watching for the interactive, collaborative, and social internet, we work our way up Mazlow’s heirarchy of needs, and closer to the tip of the pyramid, namely Self Actualization. Thanks to the interactive social internet that allows are creativity to produce, collaborate, and share content, these attributes have never flourished as quickly and been so accessible.
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What I wonder however, if the internet is making the various levels of the pyramid more easily accessible (ie. shrinking the pyramid’s height). How will this effect the lower end of the of the hierarchy, in particular employment. In the past, the achievement of self-actualization was based primarily on the person’s contributions through their jobs, and what they achieved throughout their career. With the higher levels now more readily available to all via the internet, does this create a lesser dependency on employment for self-actualization? Is this the reason why kids these days are labeled with a sense of entitlement?
Stuck in my head…












