TOC 2011: Kevin Kelly, "Better than Free: How Value Is Generated in a Free Copy World"

"Better than Free: How Value Is Generated in a Free Copy World"

Kevin Kelly

Wired

For 25 years Kevin Kelly has been a participant in, and reporter on, the culture of technology. Based in his studio in Pacifica, California, he immerses himself in the long-term trends and social consequences of technology. Kevin Kelly is currently Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. During Kelly's tenure as editor at Wired, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards (the industry's equivalent of two Oscars). He is currently editor and publisher of the popular Cool Tools, True Film, and Street Use websites. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. A few years ago he started a scientific campaign to catalog all the living species of life on earth. This project has morphed into developing a web page for every species in an Encyclopedia of Life.

Kevin Kelly has authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy, and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control (called "required reading for all executives" by Fortune). In addition he writes for prominent publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Time, Harpers, Science, GQ, and Esquire. Earlier in life he was a photographer in remote parts of Asia (instead of going to college), publishing his photographs in national magazines and recently in the photo art book Asia Grace. Currently he is a charter board member of the Long Now Foundation which is building a monumental clock that will tick for 10,000 years.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[MaribelDelos]

that is the fact, and everything he say I do agree...

[dylanhoggyt]

"The only value is that which cannot be copied easily." #21:40.

KK descibes the attributes we are willing to pay for as immediacy, personalisation, authenticity, attention, interpretation, accessibility, emodiment and findability.

I think some of these attributes offer more value than others, in particular personalisation, attention and embodiment which really by definition cannot be copied or pirated.

[Cjay858]

@evbogue & @gwenbell like this...

[neuristic]

Awesome.

Appropriately, I read Kelly's What Technology Wants on my iPod touch.

[Eric Wang]

Great!

[sachamm]

This guy gets it. About time we see the IP industries looking at the new reality we live in instead of trying to force the old world model and suing everyone in sight when it doesn't work.