Free = No Value?
(This rant is brought on by comments on mobile apps, complaining about certain apps not being free, costing a whopping 3 bucks…)
These days, let’s call it the internet age, the value of some things seems to diminish to almost zero. Especially digital things, when I think about it. Mobile apps, themes, music, e-books. There’s a growing community that believes all this should be had for free or at very low cost. A mobile app costing $2.99? Waaaayyy too much. A Tumblr theme for $9? Come on, who pays for themes?
It makes me wonder. If you don’t want to pay for something, does that mean it has no added value to you? It used to mean that, but it seems the value system has changed. The sentiment seems to be that digital things should be free, no matter if they give you as much or even more value than a physical item. MP3s are much more convenient than cds, but are less ‘valuable’.
I think two factors play a role in this. First of all, we have learned to relate physical qualities to cost and value. A big screen TV is more expensive than a regular size one. A phone with a touch screen is more expensive than one with a simple LCD. We can imagine that some things are harder to make than others. In the digital world there’s a disconnect. We have less sense of what it costs to make a digital file. We don’t see how many hours went into one app versus another app, how many people were involved in creating that music, etc. On the net we’re surrounded by free, so that becomes the leading principle.
In a way this is good, because instead of looking at what went into making it, you can now look at what the value is to you. And that’s the second factor: we rarely seem to take that step. It’s more about having. Fill your iPod with 4000 songs, put one hundred apps on your phone. The fact that you only listen to 5% of those songs or use the majority of those apps only once, is a testament to the focus on having.
How great would it be if people had the same attitude about giving?
