infoarch

So, I’m on a roll now. As promised I would share my review of several books. This is the next one: Free by Chris Anderson. An article in Wired about Free triggered me to read this book. Free is a big deal nowadays. Many products and services are offered for free. And people are making lots of money charging nothing. “Not nothing for everything, but nothing for enough…” (p. 3) Free has always been around a long time, but it’s changing. The internet seems to be doing something interesting to what we pay for things. “Somewhere in the transition from atoms to bits, a phenomenon that we thought we understood was transformed. “Free” became Free.” (p. 4) This book is about this phenomenon. Chapter 1-3 dive into the fascinating history of free. And the different kinds of free: direct cross-subsidies, three-party market, freemium and nonmonetary markets. (p. 23) Free started out as a marketing method. Now free is an entirely new economic model. (p. 12) The old free was based on the econ...

There are lots of good bloggers and blogposts out there. But every now and then I run into a post that is just great. This is one of them: A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100 by Venkatesh Rao. It's a long post! So, make sure you have some time to read and process it. Why do I think this post is so interesting? Well, there's been lots of debate about what social media means for traditional business. Will it change or is it changing the way we do business? Is the traditional, hierarchical way of organizing companies sustainable? Is social media correcting the industrial revolution? Or should we say 'the industrial interruption', like 'The Cluetrain Manifesto'  says. Is this enterprise 2.0 or social business? Much has been and is being written about this topic. Just think of the books 'Wikinomics' , 'Macrowikinomics' and 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' itself. So, what is this post about. In it's own words: The Age ...

One of the podcasts I listen to is the HBR Ideacast. They have lots of interesting talks with people. Sometimes these talks are related to articles published in HBR. Recently they interviewed Sherry Turkle of the much-debated book 'Alone together'. You can find the podcast here: Productivity, Multitasking, and the Death of the Phone . It's an interesting podcast to listen to and think about. I understand the problem she is seeing and describing (although I still have to read the book). I understand she is worried about it too. But every time I read about her book and listen to what she's saying I think: Shouldn't this problem be addressed by helping young and old people understand the new web and using it in the 'right' way? For instance, help people filter the web, search the web, understand web privacy and build networks using the web. I see a huge need for this around me. And I don't see many schools (and parents) stepping up to this task. I liked Tur...