Tonight I’m going to hear Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, speak about his upcoming book, “Free.” In a previous post I presented my position on the culture of free, the gift economy and how I think it’s driving the quality of content and applications towards amateur hour. It will be interesting to hear Chris address web economics and I hope to engage him in a discussion about what this means for the future of web-based entertainment content.

I’m specifically interested in Google and how they’ve enabled the culture of free online. From my perspective, Google is bad for business. Let me qualify that, bad for business-as-usual (added). By offering everything you need on the web for free, Google has effectively put web-based business opportunities on life support. (more…)

My recent post “Economic Constipation and Digital Malnutrition” was an attempt to critically analyze Mark Cuban’s provocative May 4th post entitled “The Ala Carting of Video on the Net - Will it lead to disaster?”.

Incidentally, it was my most trafficked day and much to my surprise, I received a comment from one of my favorite bloggers, Hank Williams, who writes the influential whydoeseverythingsuck.com?”

Mark’s post has sparked a debate that has spilled over from the circle of web video bloggers into a broader conversation. Next week I’m in New York for the Advertising 2.0 event and plan to bring Mark’s position, and my rebuttal, to the panel on which I’m speaking. (more…)

Despite its cliche, the question of “what is the next version of the web” provokes as intense a debate as you’ll find within digital circles. Web 3.0 definitions vary wildly with any number of partisan descriptions coming from very smart, yet fundamentally biased people.

These descriptions are all forward thinking, yet intrinsically flawed. They neglect that versioning, or defining the next version of the web, isn’t just about software or hardware. It’s about culture.

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I admire Mark Cuban and not just because he helped me find God. He’s got chutzpah. His basketball team loses again in the first round of the playoffs, he fires his coach and then he goes out and writes a semi-apocalyptic blog post about the disastrous effects of web video distribution.

Cuban is working from Craig Moffett’s report for Bernstein Research entitled “And Now for the News…The Emperor has no Clothes,” which raises real questions about the economic viability of web based video entertainment content. It’s an important report because it highlights the stagnation in web economics that more people are becoming aware of and the future that this stagnation suggests. (more…)

The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones. - John Maynard Keynes

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today. - Ayn Rand

Do we have a vision for the digital future? Are we working towards a common goal? Who is leading us and are they doing so with the best interests of the many over the few? Is there such thing as failure in this vision? (more…)

There’s a story that when President Eisenhower was shown the first supercomputer, a monstrosity that took up an entire room, he asked the question, “Is there a God?” After some time, the computer, with lights flashing and bells ringing, replied: “There is now.” (more…)