Emerging Technology and the Challenge of “Free” to Business
In his blog, the Technium, Kevin Kelly has suggestions for any business that has to deal with the challenge of everything becoming free. Which businesses are those? Every business. Not just the music business, or the software business, but even manufacturers of things such as cell phones. Emerging technologies will continue to push this trend.
What’s the answer? Kelly talks about eight generatives:
“These generatives apply to all digital copies, but also to any kind of copy where the marginal cost of that copy approaches zero… Even material industries are finding that the costs of duplication near zero, so they too will behave like digital copies. Maps just crossed that threshold. Genetics is about to. Gadgets and small appliances (like cell phones) are sliding that way. Pharmaceuticals are already there, but they don’t want anyone to know. It costs nothing to make a pill. We pay for Authenticity and Immediacy in drugs. Someday we’ll pay for Personalization.”
The eight generatives are
- Immediacy
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Authenticity
- Accessibility
- Embodiment
- Patronage
- Findability
You competition will be reading about them on the WSJ.com or businessweek.com in a year or two from now. You can get the jump on them today. See here for the details: Kevin Kelly — The Technium