The Future is Bespoke, The Future is Free

Okay, so the title of this article sounds like a bad mobile phone advert, but it seemed the only way to tie this random rant together cohesively. It may not seem at first glance like this is in keeping with the themes of the Biomatrix, but the Biomatrix is about keeping one eye on the future so that you can thrive in that future when it comes. This is exactly what the Biomatrix is about, and it is my personal view of where the future is headed.

I've been thinking of writing this post for a while now, but as usual it was annoyance and aggression that got me round to finally sitting down and writing it. You see I, like you, have recently been enjoying Spotify and all the free music that comes with it (only I've also been recording it using a program that lets you save sound from your computer as mp3 files... which kind of defeats the whole argument I'm about to launch into). Only then in Esquire magazine I read about some twat who calls himself 'The Internet Sherrif'. No one pays this guy, he's instead taken it upon himself to report what he believes to be cases of copyright infringement to authorities and record labels and gets the sites shut down (here's hoping he doesn't find a couple of the sections on my site - get downloading while you can!). Basically then he's no sherrif, but an 'internet busy body' or 'internet snitch'. Full of self importance. I'll find out his address then egg his house... This is the guy mostly responsible for the death of Pirate Bay and now he of course has his sights set on Spotify believing that the artists aren't getting the royalties they're due. 'The days of 'free internet' are coming to an end' is his battle cry.

The truth is however that he couldn't be more wrong. The days of free are in fact only just beginning and soon this will be the all-prevaling business model. Businesses have two choices - adapt or die.
The internet is so large you see that it's impossible to regulate the distribution of free material. Even if a company were to manage however, and stop people downloading their products for free, punters will just jump ship to those that do offer their products for free. We've had a taste of free now and we're going to resent paying for anything from this day onwards. Let's take Spotify as an example. We all have Spotify now, so when they take off the Westlife and the Eminem we're still going to have it. From this point on however we'll only be listening to the bands that are free (which we're constantly reminded about in the clever advertising) and that means that these are the bands that are going to start catching on and the concerts we're going to start going to. The big record labels will die out...
Just look at the Arctic Monkeys. Would they ever have gotten so famous if they charged people to listen to their MySpace page? And where are they now?

The true creative artists are going to carry on making free material which will make the large corporations extinct unless they buck up their ideas pretty quickly. And there's a lot of money to be made from free. I mean, just look at my website. Okay it's not making a lot of money as such, but it's making far more money than it would if I charged a membership fee and all that's from advertising. My mailing list has grown exponentially because I started giving away an e-book for free. Once you have a captive audience there's a lot of money to be made. Why do you think that Facebook hasn't started charging yet?

And this business model of 'free' is one that can be highly profitable for the organisations and individuals that embrace it. Neil Gaiman demonstrated this when he allowed readers to download free copies of his book 'American Gods'. As a result, sales of the book increased massively. I've seen this myself, and giving away free copies of Project Superman the e-book has proven one of the best ways to get people to buy the hard copy.

The thing is that you can only charge for things that are limited or in short demand. Information, music, art, ideas... they're bottomless resources and so to charge for them is really rather immoral. Now technology and websites allow us to share all these things for free or to make them ourselves exactly to specification and the middle man is being cut out more and more.

Look at a website like Shapeways.com, the tagline of this site is '3D printing for everyone'. Essentially, by submitting 3D designs from a programme like Autocad and specifying the materials, you can have your own metalic scuptures, jewelery, even basic mechanical devices and for barely more than the cost of printing. What this results in is a website full to the brim with inovative designs - literally billions of rings, ornaments, vases etc etc - and all far more creative and original than any design that would have to go through a whole bored of directors before it could get approval. Lulu.com - the site that publishes my book Project Superman, is yet another example of giving people the 'tools' of an industry rather than selling pre-made goods. Like Wikipedia has proven - give people the tools they need (and make them free) and they'll do a far more diverse, comprehensive and creative job than ever single organisation could ever do.

And not only do you have millions of unique designs to shop for, but you can also design your very own. Why give your girlfriend a ring you bought from Essentials, that a thousand other people own, when you can make her one from scratch that is entirely her own? This is what the first part of my title refers to - 'the future is bespoke'. Why would you ever buy something that someone else designed, and pay more for the priveledge, when you can have something entirely your own, perfectly designed for you, and at half the price? It's the equivalent of growing your own vegetables and making your own cheese (which as living 'green' becomes more and more popular is only going to increase as well). It's the equivalent of designed and making your own clothes. We no longer live in an age where creativity and industry is something only attainable by an elite few with the know-how; technology and society has evolved to the point where anyone can make practically anything they desire if they put in a little bit of time.

It's easy to see then that as these sites and technologies grow, the market for items that are of a fixed design sold at a high price is only going to dwindle. Of course this share of the market will always exist, but if companies don't start chaging their ways and becoming more flexible and less pricey there are going to be a lot of casualties. People are going to expect their products to be made to spec and largely free. Then they're going to spread them and alter them and unleash them into the open creative community. Everything is going open source which is only natural and reflects the way that we are at once more individual and more communal than current business models assume. It's the ultimate merger of communism and capitalism.

And this model of society and business has truly utopian potential as technology takes it to greater and greater extremes. Transhumanism and nanotechnology represent the future development of this kind of thinking; transhumanism showing how even our genetic code is going open source, how even our own bodies and minds will be bespoke; nanotechnology showing how everything will one day built entirely from scratch - particle by particle and with limitless supply. Both of these are genuine technologies - gene manipulation has already been demonstrated in mice and other animals, and nanotechnology promises to one day allow us to build any material out of the very particles in the atmosphere. In an age where we can alter our bodies, and an age where we can build anything at no expense with limitless supply, what place is there for traditional business and for traditional politics? Already the internet provides an almost limitless source of revenue if you know where to look, that's how I'm managing to work from home. Soon going to work and working for corporations 9-5 will be almost obsolete and it'll seem archaic that we ever did. But then when materials are infinitely available money will be obsolete too.

Of course this is only one possible futre, but I do think it's safe to say that the days of 'free' are not coming to an end. The days of Dinosaurs like the Internet Snitch are what is coming to an overdue end.