Explores how the meaning of the word "free," has changed in the early twenty-first century, and discusses the effect of the online economy on the global economy, and how businesses and corporations can use "free" to compete in the marketplace.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The birth of free -- Free 101 : a short course on a most misunderstood word -- The history of free : zero, lunch, and the enemies of capitalism -- The psychology of free : it feels good, too good? -- Too cheap to matter : the web's lesson : when something halves in price each year, zero is inevitable -- "Information wants to be free" : the history of a phrase that defined the digital age -- Competing with free : Microsoft learned how to do it over decades, but Yahoo had just months -- De-monitization : Google and the birth of a twenty-first-century economic model -- The new media models : free media is nothing new, what is new is the expansion of that model to everything else online -- How big is the free economy? : there's more to it than just dollars and cents -- Econ 000 : how a century-old joke became the law of digital economics -- Non-monetary economies : where money doesn't rule, what does? -- Waste is (sometimes) good : the best way to exploit abundance is to relinquish control -- Free world : China and Brazil are the frontiers of free, what can we learn from them? -- Imagining abundance : thought experiments in "post-scarcity" socities, from science fiction to religion -- "You get what you pay for" : and other doubts about free -- Coda -- Free rules.

Adult Follett Library Resources.

Adult.

MARK301 UOWD