“Information Wants to be Free”
That’s the statement that sort of summarizes the philosophy of the Internet: “Information wants to be free.” But that’s a mis -quote! Rather, it’s just a part of what Stewart Brand said more than 25 years back: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.” Brand’s reaction to the misquote being so popular today that most people don’t even know the actual statements is quite interesting. He says it happens to memes : they propagate in their most efficient form, whether that was what was intended or not. I suspect that since most people want information to be free (who wants to pay for Britannica when you can get it for free on Wikipedia ?), so we’ ve just latched onto the part that suits us. Guess y...