I’ve been overwhelmed with the comments in support of my last post. Staggered actually. It prompted around 3x the usual Saturday traffic. 95% thumbs up, wishing a fool good luck or merely interested to see how it will pan out? I guess I must be doing something right, even if some think otherwise. Who knows?
When I look at all the posturing that goes on in the US about paid for shilling, it is hardly surprising that the knee jerk reaction is to push everyone down a road that requires us to state ‘I got paid for…’ I understand the paranoia around transparency in a world where trust and attention represent the real value of content in which you are expected to believe. But it makes for a horribly messy way of doing things. Even then can you be sure? That’s always going to be a question to which there can be no definitive answer. Instead, I prefer to think that people will read, ingest, think and come out the other side with a nuanced version of their own. Guess what? It happens anyway via comments and riffs on blog posts. Mostly. Sometimes it reverses an otherwise perceived truth although that usually takes a bit of time.
Many take the argument information wants to be free. Never had an issue with that per se but see later. Value is a whole different thing. There’s a reason why some content is valuable and others not so much. It’s part perception for sure. If you don’t know something and find someone who does then the information they provide might be of value to you. What will you give in exchange?
Check the story Frank Scavo told me in email:
I like to tell the story about the carpenter that was able to fix a creak in the floor after two other handymen had failed to fix the problem. He hands the homeowner a bill for $75. The customer says, what the hell—you only spent five minutes hammering!
The carpenter takes the invoice back, scratches out the $75 and writes, “Hammering: $5.00. Knowing where to hammer: $70”.
That’s taking information and turning into knowledge. That’s the bit that people really want. I can go buy (at low cost) or find (maybe) on the Internet something tax related about which I might need be aware. But taking the interpreted rule book alone isn’t going to get me very far unless there is understanding. That’s one of the central flaws in much thinking around social computing. The relentless pursuit and promotion of Twitter has failed to grasp its fundamental weaknesses. Look at what happened yesterday. But then just because Google can index something doesn’t mean it is right or appropriate. Look at how Andy McAfee has moved from what seemed a given ‘truth’ to something very different. Has he got it right even now? It would be presumptuous to say one way or another. All any of us can do is make our own discoveries based on experience and…knowledge, apply and move on. Hopefully with the help of others.
All of which brings me to the question of sustainable information. Cathy Davidson wrote what I think is an incisive piece on the topic where she says:
My own idea is that Information Wants to Be Free is about as supportable as the Free Lunch—as in “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” By that I mean that, as with the proverbial free lunch, free information is never really cost-free. On the most basic level, there are labor and environmental and opportunity costs–and other costs too–that go along with the inarguable and inestimable benefits of free-flowing information. More than that, anyone who thinks such things as a Google search of the Web is “free,” is, to put it bluntly, a fool. Any multibillion dollar global corporation that mines your data even as you supply more and more of it with every search is not supplying you with anything for free, no matter how much you may believe that to be the case.
That pretty much says it all for me. The illusion that somehow people can have it all for free serves no-one, least of all the producer of value. There has to be a better way that meaningfully yet fairly rewards endeavour. Hugh MacLeod found a model by ignoring everyone and trusting that those who like his work would find it valuable when repackaged and personalised. I’ve had no qualms in paying Hugh for some of his prints. They have an ongoing value for me. So I pay. The same theory goes for some of what I am about to embark upon.
The difference between what I am doing and how others go about the same thing comes in the way it will be organized. It will all be in one place so that it will be obvious and entirely choice driven. I will allow some limited re-use in the public domain. Why not? And oh yes…I’m calling it The Clubhouse. It will be like the place you go and buy a drink or pay to use the pool table. The service will be friendly, prices reasonable though I fear the decor might be boring. As the advert goes – simples.
OK – let’s get the show on the road…
