Book description
What happens when advances in technology allow many things to be
produced for more or less nothing? And what happens when those things
are then made available to the consumer for free?
In his groundbreaking new book, The Long Tail author Chris
Anderson considers a brave new world where the old economic
certainties are being undermined by a growing flood of free goods -
newspapers, DVDs, T shirts, phones, even holiday flights. He explains
why this has become possible - why new technologies, particularly the
Internet, have caused production and distribution costs in many
sectors to plummet to an extent unthinkable even a decade ago. He
shows how the flexibility provided by the online world allows
producers to trade ever more creatively, offering items for free to
make real or perceived gains elsewhere. He pinpoints the winners and
the losers in the Free universe. And he demonstrates the ways
in which, as an increasing number of things become available for free,
our decisions to make use of them will be determined by two resources
far more valuable than money: the popular reputation of what is on
offer and the time we have available for it. In the future, he argues,
when we talk of the 'money economy' we will talk of the 'reputation
economy' and the 'time economy' in the same breath, and our world will
never be the same again.
Chris Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of
Wired
magazine, a position he took in 2001. Since then he has led the magazine
to nine National Magazine Award nominations, winning the top prize for
General Excellence in 2005, 2007 and 2009.
AdAge
magazine named him Editor of the Year in 2005. Previously he was at
The Economist
, and
Nature
and
Science
magazines. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed
The Long Tail
, which was shortlisted for the
Financial Times
and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2006 and won the
Loeb Award for best business book in 2007. He lives in Northern
California with his wife and five children.
