[MUSIC FADE} In the early days of the Internet, digital pioneers made bold predictions about our future interconnected world. The future was synonymous with “free.” Indeed, the idea that information wants to be free, says Michael Hirschorn in the current issue of Atlantic, has been the most powerful meme of the past 25 years. But, that meme, he argues, is now moderating. Hirschorn’s essay, Closing the Digital Frontier, is in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. Hey, welcome to the show.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: Thank you so much.
BOB GARFIELD: Before we go anywhere else, I want to ask you about the notion that, quote, “information wants to be free.”
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: Stewart Brand, who is a fairly significant and hugely influential pioneer in the digital world, was at a hacker conference in 1984 and said, “Information wants to be free,” but he also said that information wants to be expensive because it’s so valuable, and so there’s a tension between freedom and cost. What’s interesting is that the phrase just kind of turned into “Information wants to be free.”
[BOB LAUGHS] And then there was a kind of second level of confusion between the use of the word “free” as in freedom of expression, which is something we can all get behind, and “free” as in lack of cost, which is something that I think is a lot more controversial.
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, however, I guess if you followed the path of mass media of the ensuing 20 years, you could just forget that he was talking about a paradox and just glom onto the first part of his statement and say, well, I guess he was a visionary because traditional media started giving way their content for free online. What is happening to reverse the thinking about the free online universe?
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: Apple, as always, was very prescient, really making the case through their app-centric iPhones and iPads, that that’s a better place for people who create intellectual property to put their content. Advertisers are happier on there. It’s harder to steal content. As a result, content media companies are going to be removing their best and most timely content from the Internet, from the browser system, and the browser system is going to suffer as a result.
BOB GARFIELD: I've got to tell you, this sounds still a little bit squishy to me, so let's get down to a concrete example.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD: So [LAUGHS] let's talk about The Times. There is The Times Online, and its monetization problems, and then there is The New York Times app coming to the iPad. Tell me the difference.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: I think that The Times will be able to offer what is more a reading than a browsing experience through their apps. It'll be a more organic multimedia experience. It’s something that feels like you should pay for it. And they will stop putting that content on the Web. They haven't said that yet, but it’s pretty inevitable because otherwise what’s the point? And when that material starts being taken off the Web, because why would they start an app business if they are giving away the same information through other sources, the thing that’s interesting to me is where that leaves the rest of this Internet culture. That Internet culture, I think, will increasingly be something we look back on in a nostalgic fashion, because as pieces of premium content increasingly get walled off, the Internet might start feeling a little bit like a kind of red light district –
[BOB LAUGHS] - where you go to get illegal content and have illicit interactions, because the official Internet -
BOB GARFIELD: Potterville.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: Exactly. The official [LAUGHS] Internet is being spruced up and turned into a mall. There was a remarkable exchange between a writer from the Gizmodo blog and Steve Jobs, where they started e-mailing, and Steve Jobs referred to wanting to give the world a gift of, quote, unquote, “freedom from porn,” which has a kind of hilarious Orwellian ring to it. And, you know, I obviously think Steve Jobs is a genius and a god living among us, but he has a very specific vision of the world, and that is a clean, ordered experience in which technology is used as a facilitator for commerce.
BOB GARFIELD: But there’s still two warring ideologies, right? There’s the free ideology and then there’s the likes of Steve Jobs, who believes in commerce.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: Very broadly and a bit reductively, there is going to be a kind of battle royale between Apple and Google, and it’s going to be thrilling to watch because Google is built on free. Google is built on search. The app is threatening search. Google is relying on an almost infinitude of freeform travel through cyberspace that it can harness to sell contextual advertising. If we're casting about for metaphors, it’s going to be the digital version of the Cold War.
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah but, you know, the graphics will be better.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD: Michael, thank you very much.
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: Thank you, sir.
BOB GARFIELD: Michael Hirschorn is a contributing editor for Atlantic Magazine. His piece, Closing the Digital Frontier, appears in the July/August issue.
