Information Wants to Be Shared
Описание книги
Stewart Brand famously declared, “Information wants to be free.” Except he didn’t (not really). And it doesn’t.Information is much more complicated than that. What information really wants—what makes it more valuable, useful, and immediate, Joshua Gans argues—is to be shared.Using the tools and logic of information economics, Gans shows how sharing enhances most information’s value. He also shows how the business models of traditional media companies, gatekeepers who have relied on scarcity and control, have collapsed in the face of new technologies. Equally important, he argues that sharing can revive moribund, threatened industries even as he examines platforms that have, almost accidentally, thrived in this new environment.Provocative, intriguing, and useful, Information Wants to Be Shared will change the way you think about your ideas and the media you use to consume and produce them.HBR Singles provide brief yet potent business ideas, in digital form, for today's thinking professional.
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Joshua Gans. Information Wants to Be Shared
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
All That Glitters
Outline of the Book
2. Free Information
Predicting the Price of Information
Copying and Pricing
Free and Business Models
Paying for the Medium, Not the Message
Is Free Enough?
3. What Information Really Wants
Sharing and Public Goods
Shared Funding
Stephen King’s Game of Horror
Agreeing to Share in Funding
Shared Use
Information That People Don’t Want to Share
Attention and Sharing
4. Opening the Book
Books and Copies
Books and Publishing
The Idea of a Book
Can Ownership Support Sharing?
Lending Is Right
5. Sharing the News
What’s Happening?
It’s the Advertising, Stupid
Getting Paid
Is Paul Krugman “Click-Worthy”?
Making Ads Work Again
Changing Content
Readership versus Reach
How We Read
6. Future Sharing
The Rise of the Content Platform
Shared Creation
7. Conclusion
About the Author
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Many in the publishing industry have felt compelled to turn to the written word to describe how digital technologies are affecting their lives. To me, an economist, the range of views seem to go from, “It will all go back to the good old days as people realize what they are missing,” to panic or celebration at the destruction of old institutions. All seem misplaced. This profound transformation is not something for either complacency or intense emotional reactions. The question to me is, have digital technologies really changed anything about supply and demand for writing? It’s become easier to produce (write) and easier to consume (read)—a combination that usually adds up to long-term health. The problem for the industry is that the new ease of reading and writing also eliminated the barriers that had protected it from competition.
What seems to be missing in all of this froth is perspective. There is no recent guidebook to show us how to look at information industries and work out what do to in the face of drastic technological change. As I wrote about these issues, [1] however, a theme kept on cropping up: the technologies seemed to afford opportunities for consumers and creators to share information and to do so without the permission of some gatekeeper. Gatekeepers used to facilitate sharing, but readers became frustrated when gatekeepers asserted rights that prevented sharing. Gatekeepers (in this case, publishers) in the meantime justified such actions as a means of preserving their position before the digital revolution. So, if new digital technology is enabling sharing, I began to wonder if perhaps that was the point all along. In the predigital world, sharing was costly, which obscured just how important it was.
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4. In expositing this view, I will rely on the tools of economic theory. And, for that reason, while I will frequently allude to examples that illustrate the theory’s implications, I cannot claim here to be providing proof. Nonetheless, if every theory required proof as it was exposited, there would be no progress. So there is important value in this exercise.
This notion of free has important implications for the business models of information goods. From a consumer perspective, putting restrictions on the use of information increases the cost or decreases its value. Effectively, the producers are increasing the price without gaining any revenue. Indirectly, producers may be making piracy more costly, but, at the same time, these restrictions give consumers an incentive to avoid monetary payment if only to also avoid the hassle.
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