I am writing this blog post while sitting in a comfy chair in the basement of the Opera House in Camden, Maine. Minutes away from taking in Chris Anderson's (www.the presentation here at the amazing POPTECH2006 conference (www.poptech.com).
Carver Mead (caltech professor) - what happens when things get free? Especially transistors, technology? His answer is, "you should waste them." Then Alan Kay (PARC) said you should use the transistors on icons and animations and graphical user interfaces - and he was saying this back before GUI and led to the PC revolution. It was a move away from transistors being used just for computation, and towards what you would do if tech resources were abundant not scarce.
Same with storage. Google then thought about giving up 2GB of email storage via gmail. ("so you never have to see - your mailbox is full"). Google thought in terms of abundance, not scarcity, and thought - what would you do if storage is abundant/free and came up with a better idea for free webmail.
Television broadcast channel spectra is by definition expensive and scarce. Then cable television, then Internet, enables "free" channels.
3D printing from a computer to a physical item. Manufacturing and complexity then becomes free.
Two ways to SEE THE WORLD: Scarcity vs. Abundance
Examples: kitchenaid mixer color options (walmart=3, amazon.com=20); movie rentals (blockbuster titles vs. netflix); shelfspace is free as a concept allows for testing and micro-niche offerings that make sense and can be found for the first time; tower records vs. iTunes; audience is flocking to choice and variety and more; television vs. youtube (ray montagne vs. lonely girl 13 on youtube).
The vast majority of all types of media and products do not pass the historical traditional test of what makes economic sense to offer in a world of expensive "shelf space".
Long tail of media: you can rank media by "incoming links" (like Google's PageRank) to see what's the most "authoritative" and "popular" - Technorati ranks all of the media websites: NYTimes; CNN, WashPost, AP, BBC, etc, etc, Wired, then not to far down the road you get certain bloggers (post secret, gadget, etc) that rank ahead of Ford, MSNBC, CBS News, etc, etc.
!!!! Note!!! bloggers are one person vs. institutions with thousands of employees
Chris is pointing out that even his Wired magazine is an example of scarcity; limited shelfspace, one article knocks-out another; vs. how Wired just bought back their website (he said it's a long story about why they didn't own it)....now with the abundant model of the website, he can loosen and change the STANDARDS for articles and experiment and let the users designed.
With Wired Chris has to guess what people want. With Digg.com. Anyone can see what articles are being voted on as to what they want to read about (my point: knowledge of the masses idea like google; interestingness via Flickr). Let the marketplace decide what the audience really wants, as opposed to us guessing.
The old model is that you have to have a business case that is well written and signed off. New model is you just do it - it's now so easy to launch things for so cheap that you don't need a business plan. If it's so cheap to guess and guess wrong and then throw it away and start over, then it makes sense to do so (my note: ties back to first points of this presentation).
Social Model: In a scarcity model we guess and dictate(paternalism) vs. in an abundance model we let the market decide;
Business Model: old process is top down; new process or bottom up.
The youngest people in his organization are who Chris listens to for advice on what to do and experiment on (eg, doing a book signing in Second Life).
Management Style: Command and Control vs. Out of control.
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Bonus - presentation by the co-creator of Ask A Ninja: Kent Nichols.(www.askaninja.com)
Absolutely hilarious and smart.
New Rules: Tech is Communication; experiment and learn; honesty; gim em what they want, them em more; be there with your audience (can't just put it out there and expect them to love you and embrace you; you have to be there with them listening to feedback, etc)
not about the technology but what you do with the technology
You have to check out these askaninja spots on youtube!