Virtuality

In the digital age with dropping costs for inventory storage and distribution, the traditional economy is (partially) transformed to a new economy where products which are part of the Long Tail suddenly become available almost for free. The articles linked to (from Wired magazine) for the most part refer to entertainment industry products like music, video, books etc.

Fig. 1 The Long tail “Power Law like” graph from Wikipedia

What’s interesting is that because of scarce (physical) resources in the traditional economy , only about 20% of the products, - the most popular ones -, are available to consumers. But with the digital economy it is feasable to deliver the other 80% of the products (like Amazon is doing). Even more remarkable, this 80% share amounts to a larger profit than the small 20% population because the costs of storage and distribution are almost the same for all digital products. Apparently Amazon makes most of its profit from the niche products.

I suppose the Long Tail could also apply to any other product or service which can be delivered through the Internet. Software and software development seem to follow these same rules (with the open source software movement). You could probably find the right software for any niche, with varying levels of quality. But isn’t that similar to finding niche music, where you’d find different levels of quality as well?

So maybe every product or service that can be transformed from physical to digital form can be delivered (almost) for free and still give consumers an almost unlimited choice.

Finally! “She” has tried to conceal it for a long time, but now we know the universe is about 13.73 billion (+/- 120 milion) years old. Although Christopher Columbus might not agree, the universe also appears to be flat. Also the stuff we are made of (called “matter”) apparently is less than 5% of the whole universe. The other stuff in the universe is 72.1% dark energy and 23.3% dark matter, which we can’t even see or sense in any way…

I’m glad I know these details now thanks to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe

So, I finally got rid of that Misty theme, and replaced it with the GlossyBlue theme. Had to do some hacking  and tweaking to loose the sponsoring part, because I do not want someone else to earn money from this blog Also upgraded the wordpress software to a newer version which supports tagging. So if you notice anything weird, let me know.

Check out these brilliant customer product reviews for this Bic pen!

You all knew this, of course, but the laws need to change to support the modern and digital ways of creativity. Larry Lessig is talking about the need to change (US) law, but it also applies to other countries, like the Netherlands. So go watch this TED talk from Mr. Lessig.

BTW. also check out his Free Culture book.