The culture of free (and me)
So most everything I am looking at these days is being churned and burned by the internet and its culture of free which basically unraveled the music industry, and is about to chew its way through the publishing industry, let’s just not even get started with the media industry or the entertainment industry. So on the flight here to Orlando I had this radical thought (for me). I was reading my Real Boys book and listening to how schools don’t have the right curriculum for boys (instead they are diagnosing them as ADD by the bucket loads and prescribing them Ritalin – a really potent drug) and that’s not to say they are serving girls either but the attention has been placed there and since mothers do more with the schools and sympathize more with girls – that’s where the attention will be for the time being and anyway I had this thought of running out to the woods and just home schooling Tin to live on on the land and off the grid. And I thought WTF, maybe it is not such a bad thing that the internet is slowly but surely destroying all of our business models. Maybe you don’t need a real estate agent if you can just post your house and do a video walk through online and negotiate the legal documents from what you download? Maybe the fact that I’m in this sterile hotel room in Orlando (read: end of the world) but can Skype for free from my computer and see my partner and son and dogs and cats roaming around my dining room this evening and tell them I love them (and there is no conference company that has been able to even come close to the ease of use of Skype and it’s FREE) and maybe this is all not so bad.
Maybe we have all gotten so caught up with the idea of getting and spending that a life where things are free like communication and technology and words and history and medical information is not a bad thing.
Instead of resisting let’s all join the movement to free – we’re doing our part by giving away what we don’t use or need to charity, not selling it in a garage sale or on Craig’s list. Now we just have to figure out how to live for free – anyone know of a way to magically rid yourself of a mortgage?