Chris Anderson’s Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business has drawn a lot of attention over the last month or so. If one wanted to make a joke on the topic, it would traditionally involve the line “make it up with volume!” somewhere, but Ted Rall has found a different take - it’s all going to be about T-shirts. While the (stating the obvious here) comic can’t be taken too seriously, it does manage to connect with that fear of the long tail / wikinomics future that a lot of people have - how are we all going to get paid?
At least it is for the countries that lose their dork sector… and don’t harness the other growth opportunities like plastic surgery for children. Or something like that. For those that don’t know Ted Rall’s comics, he’s from the Jeff Gordiner world that Dan Herman wrote about a month back. Jeff’s book is called “X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but still kept everything from Sucking.” Ted Rall’s take on Ted Rall is:
Ted Rall writes for a generation unjustly maligned as a pack of lazy slackers. He voices Generation X’s frustration and resentment at the excesses of the baby boomers who’ve left a spent America in their mammoth wake. Ted’s irreverent attitude and deft use of satire combine to make his work as fun to read as it is thought-provoking. And Ted’s ability to connect with current culture gives his writing an of-the-moment perspective that is edgy and sharp.
I’m not sure, but I think he also finds himself quite good looking. Just kidding - his comics are a lot of fun to go through. And they might even give you an idea for your own billion dollar t-shirt.
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As I read Wikinomics myself, the thought of how we are all going to get paid in the new world constantly crossed my mind. This is a question that stumped many upstarts in the dot-com era, so hopefully enterprise 2.0 will be able to solve this issue. This is an especially troubling fear for the majority of first world countries as they shift from traditional to “knowledge” economies. If only tangible things have value in the new world, how will knowledge economies fare? Will the world eventually creep towards something like a communist ideal? If the digital age has proven anything, it’s that there are motives in this world far greater than money.
As the Anderson article touched on, this issue becomes even more prevalent with the introduction of “free energy”. Conspiracy theorists around the world would have us believe that free energy has existed since the days of Nicola Telsa. With free energy, does everything in life eventually become free? If the widget factory is run using free energy, and is staffed using robots running on free energy, does the cost eventually go to zero and therefore free? As fusion power continues to be just around the corner, this may become a reality sooner than we think. Maybe I should start thinking of t-shirt ideas.
Comment by Ben L - April 1, 2008 12:47 am
Fusion may be closer than you think:
WB-7 First Plasma
Comment by M. Simon - April 1, 2008 3:51 pm
There were some which survive t-shirt with little smile only like me
Comment by charles - May 22, 2008 3:26 am
[...] book “X Saves the World.” We’ve mentioned it a couple of times on the blog (here and here), so as I set it down I thought, ‘well this was a pretty darn good book; maybe I should fashion a [...]
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