Culture & Multiculture 12: Indiscrimination

I’ve never bought the Toronto Star. Not even since the Star’s website started crashing each and all my browsers like nothing else on the World Wide Web. Anywhere. Fortunately, there’s heaping Toronto Star stacks piling up daily at York University. Like leaves off trees. Or, lacking trees, grains of desert sands. Drifting, blowing, piling all over campus. Free as wind.

That’s how I wound up reading Joey Slinger’s column this past Thursday. Titled “School issue is not black and white”. Just about an hour after posting on that very subject right here.

Now, I’ve read Joey before. Seeing as the Star’s always free at York -– not just this past Thursday. And, having read Joey before, I knew how funny he tries to be. To which I can totally relate. Since I too am funny despite almost nobody realizing it. However hard I try.

Except Joey totally let me down this past Thursday. Not only wasn’t he funny –- to which failing I completely relate. He gave up even trying.

He’d intended trying being funny. Intended trying real hard, originally. “[B]een working on a column,” he boasted, “.. about the need for Me-centric schools.” Thought it would have been “.. quite humorous.”

Who knows? Might have turned out adequate for chuckling. Might have turned out his best performance. If only he hadn’t given up on it. If only Joey hadn’t thrown in his funny towel and tried getting all serious, instead.

Shouldn’t have. Big mistake. Terrible misunderstanding. Not to cridicule too much -– but there’s more to being serious than not being funny.

Joey seriously tried persuading his Toronto audience that we’re not against race-based schooling. Despite how categorically against faith-based schooling we are. Despite the way we reject anyone –- such as the once legitimate public figure of John Tory –- daring to suggest or insinuate what a great idea faith-based schooling is. Regardless. Doesn’t matter how against faith-based schooling we are. Far as Joey’s concerned, we’re not against race-based schooling.

How come? Too simple –- on Joey’s view. Because race-based schooling is nothing like faith-based schooling. Since diversity of faith is elective whereas diversity of race is physically indelible. As Joey put it,

.. you can be born to a Jewish mother and a Jewish father and choose to be, say, Anglican. You cannot be born to a black mother and a black father and choose not to be black.

Our overwhelming repudiating faith-based schooling can have no bearing on race-based schooling. Not where Joey’s concerned.

But there really is more to being serious than not being funny. Like not being absurd, for instance.

With the arguable exception of identical twins, we are all physically diverse. Whether individually or collectively -– our physical diversity is endless. Infinitely too vast to enumerate.

How, then, can we determine when physical diversity makes us different –- and when it does not? We can’t. We do not determine difference on basis of physical diversity itself. Clearly not. Rightly or wrongly, we determine our differences by sorting some fraction of our diversity from the rest. We discriminate our differences only by distinguishing some diversity as particularly significant. Doesn’t matter if diversity be physical or otherwise. What matters in discriminating difference is which aspects of our diversity seem particularly significant. What selective elements of diversity mean to us. Difference is in the cultural meaning we assign to diversity –- never in diversity itself.

That’s why Joey’s view is so absurd. Rather than asking how meaningful -– and why –- aspects of diversity are, Joey chose to ask -– and answer -– just how entirely physical diversity is. As if physical diversity were just finite. As if we could ever discriminate or resolve our differences just physically. As if humans, like billiard balls, were caused in all actions –- and our reasons for acting outward ought get utterly dismissed from both minds and hands. It is this very (ideological) view sourcing discrimination -– and eventual segregation -– in the first place. Even though we ought rather speak of false-discrimination. For while we must discriminate allies from opponents, friends from enemies and whom we agree from whom we do not -– we certainly must not discriminate too shallowly and superficially. Like, concluding who people are by their physical pigmentation.

Definitely there’s more to being serious than not being funny. Also not absurd, ludicrous or preposterous. For instances. Better seriously help Joey out some. Better ask how and why pigmentation diversity has become so particularly significant to us.

Except it hasn’t. Not to all of us. Absolutely not world-wide. One would not likely encounter false-discriminating by pigmentation on pilgrimage to Islam’s holy places. One would be far more likely, on the other hand, to encounter false-discrimination and even potentially forcible segregation when it comes to gender and faith differences. And while this example might seem outlandish, it goes so far only to show how differently diversity gets culturally constructed world-wide.

Strangely, it is North-America that’s outlandish. Where false-discriminating by pigmentation keeps going on and on to this day and age. I’ll never forget how boneless my jaw dropped when first arriving in Toronto from a couple other continents. When two seemingly sane and healthy young boys ceased whatever they’d been doing and turned on each other.

“You white bastard,” said one.

“You black bastard,” replied the other.

While I was left to decades wondering what sort of bizarre place this was -– where anything that superficial could conceivably matter.

It’s a tough question. How has skin pigmentation persisted meaning anything significant to this day and age in North America? Perhaps, at least in part, because we keep mistaking the material fact of pigmentative diversity for the cultural meanings from which we construct the significance of that diversity. Perhaps, like Joey, we’re all knee-jerks when it comes to skin pigmentation in North America.

One way or another, North-American culture has founded itself on and extended itself from certain principled ideals inherited from European Enlightenment. Not that North-American culture hasn’t inherited native and other ideals as well. But, should there be cultural foundation, if anywhere –- it’s in Enlightenment principles. American liberty, democracy and pursuit of happiness. The American dream. Canadian tolerance. Especially Toronto multiculture. And, unifying all: the expectation that arriving in North America is by the most heartfelt choice. Not only in coming to lands more promising. But also in escaping from the places where ideology yet fundamentally rules. Whether guised as god-given truths –- or as viable ideals regardless how false, absurd or damaging.

Culturally, that’s what makes us most North-American. Arriving here by such heartfelt choice. And that’s how the most intractable cultural differences emerge. Differences which can’t help being intractable due to the contradictions they entail to culture and discourse. Since not all arrived by choice. Some were already here by thousands of years’ priority. While others were brought in chains.

That’s what persists our least tractable cultural differences in North-America. And, if so, resolving North-American cultural contradictions must never be sought in separation or segregation. Not unless and until we get forced to conclude there’s no resolving our cultural contradictions. Only then, if and when we become societies too distinct for tolerance, can segregating make any sense. Since forcible separation does beat shooting. But, otherwise -– our focus has to remain on how superficial our differences in North-America are. And it remains entirely premature, especially in Toronto Canada, to conclude we can’t resolve the differences we’ve constructed culturally –- together.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[Black swan " title="image">image by idmaer saxon and used via Creative Commons license.]

Culture & Multiculture 11: Teaching Segregation

Premier Dalton McGuinty needs our help. Last week, according to the Star’s Robert Benzie, McGuinty asked that Torontonians pressure “school board trustees into over-turning a controversial decision to create a black-focused school.” McGuinty needs us to tell trustees how strongly “opposed to this proposal” we are.

How strongly opposed are we, though? Should we at all oppose school board trustees opening Africentric schools? Should we pressure the trustees to cease and desist -- or should we demand Dalton McGuinty back right off, cease interfering and desist tormenting trustees? That he better mind his own business and just let trustees perform their jobs? Fraught questions. Answering hinges pretty much entirely on whether or not trustees are instigating segregation in Toronto, Canada.

For sure trustees should help students stay in school. But any free, democratic, tolerant and multicultural society absolutely must resist segregation. Especially here in Toronto, Canada -- arguably the world’s best model city when it comes to tolerant multiculture.

One young man, speaking passionately at the trustees’ meeting, demanded that media stop lying. His argument: why does media keep broadcasting trustees are instigating segregation -- when any and all students will be welcomed to attend Africentric schools? He concluded, in strongest terms, by exhorting media to disclose how indiscriminately welcoming Africentric schools shall be to absolutely everyone.

Quite right. While there’s no telling the complete truth -- too many molecules in the universe -- not disclosing Africentric schools’ wide open doors policy is more like not mentioning all those proverbial babies in the bath-water. Selling extra sensational many papers can’t forgive such misleading reporting.

Wide open doors must be mentioned. However. Opening doors more widely hampers covert discrimination -- not overt broad-daylight segregation. Seating on buses never got de-segregated by widening passenger doors. Not once nor ever. However crucial to averting discrimination, indiscriminate accessibility provides no answer to questions of broad-daylight segregation.

Whereas discrimination hides its face in public, segregation carries banners and sings anthems in the streets. Segregation isn't shy. Segregation isn't bashful. It turns like rabid mobs against us throughout all public spaces. Better access? Not remotely called for. In event of segregation, best try getting away. Far away.

Yet, back at the trustees’ meeting, many repeatedly ridiculed segregation as any relevant legitimate concern whatsoever. An older fellow asked to know what the big deal was, anyhow. Since he’d had such great trouble finding white faces when traveling to parts of Toronto he himself considered less desireable. Toronto demographics have long-since become thoroughly racially segregated -- so why pick so particularly on race-based schooling? Must be some sort of racist witch-hunt -- such over-reacting to a little race-based schooling designed in students’ best interests. For students’ own good.

Many ridiculed segregation as any legitimate concern -- and they weren’t joking, either. Which, coming from even some trustees of our schools, is particularly frightening. We ought to know by now how communities seek to self-segregate for internal cultural homogeneity. Not against but certainly away from wider multiculture. Yet regardless how pervasive, the inclination to self-segregate must never mean public institutions ought blithely join in. Especially not the public schools of multicultural society like ours. To the absolute contrary. We entrust public schools to provide countervailing cultural integration measures. To champion for young minds against anything remotely resembling segregation. Whether we realize it or not -- whether we’ve even thought about it or not: we trust public schools to prevail against segregation and cultural dis-integration. And that’s a huge trust. Which is why we respond so definitively against what phrases like “faith-based schooling” and “race-based schooling” entail. Also why it’s so frightening when even some school trustees ridicule segregation as any relevant legitimate concern.

Let’s get honest. Far too much teaching is abysmal. Teaching so abysmal it doesn’t qualify as such. More like administrating than teaching. Keeping them kids off the streets. Warehousing them in schools.

Perhaps, more often than not, it’s the teachers failing to achieve. Not the students. And, if so, it will make no single difference how teachers segregate among students. Because students will increasingly consider achievement to mean escaping their teachers. Escaping the confinements of irrelevant schooling -- even if only to the freedom of the streets.

Can’t say just how much teaching is abysmal. But here’s how abysmal some teaching is. Way back as a University of Waterloo co-op student, I was once hired to teach remedial math at a very inner-city school. My job was to get some the stupidest kids passing -- since it was getting embarrassing to that school how many stupid kids were attending there. And, in event I got just some few more those stupid kids passing, I’d be considered some kind of hero. Because everyone had already tried with them -- but they were just too stupid. They were the stupidest.

Honestly. That was my job description. That’s how the job got described to me. But here’s the thing. I did not believe in stupidity. Since I was doing alright despite how stupid and useless I was -- and had been told I was most every day of my life. I’d understood at some point how effectively humans justify diminishing -- i.e. discriminating or even segregating -- other humans on basis of stupidity. Right? It’s only natural for stupidity and incompetence to disqualify achieving. In fact, disqualifying the stupid or incompetent from any authority and all responsibility requires no additional justification.

Well, I might not have believed in stupidity. But the teachers did. Worse -- my students did. How could they not -- having been segregated as stupidest of all? The brand of their stupidity had ceased being just external. It burned permanently and inextinguishably from within. And, given how stupid those kids thought they were -- no way could they or I expect them to learn stuff.

“Crap,” I told them. “You guys aren’t stupid. You just don’t give a shit about learning anything.”

They insisted on their own stupidity -- but admitted that if there were any way to care less about learning, they didn’t know what it was.

“People only say you’re stupid because you don’t learn,” I said. “But the reason you don’t learn is because you don’t give a shit.”

They conceded it might be so.

“Well,” I announced, “I don’t give a shit either.”

They stared like something had gone genetically wrong with me. Said it was my job to teach.

“Yeah,” I replied. “But I get paid anyway. Just so long as you guys don’t tell anyone. All you got’ta do is keep quiet and we can just sit around in here.”

And that’s what we did. For about a week. During which I kept regretfully telling them how much fun math could be -- if taught right. How much like games it was. The potential fun of it for them -- but not for me. Since I’d have to be the one teaching. Which -- teaching -- was too much like working. Hence my feeling so glad they didn’t demand it.

We just sat around that week. By the middle of which they began believing I had no intent forcing their learning anything. By the end of which they’d grown so bored, they began demanding I teach some math.

“Alright,” I relented. Tentatively. “Just so you know -- I resent you guys making me work. But tell you what. It’s hard going from totally not giving a shit to me working at teaching math 50 minutes straight. I don’t feel like working that hard. So how about we do math for 25 minutes -- and then just talk about how weird life gets the rest of the time?”

They thought it was a grand idea. And that’s how it started. Motivation. Before long playing at math 50 minutes straight was no longer enough for them. They started hunting me down at lunch and after school for the better figuring of it. Which I did not altogether appreciate. Not entirely. But far better than me chasing after them.

Turned out some of them really were kind’a stupid. About as many as were rather gifted. Overall, just as intellectually regular a group of damaged city kids as anyone could have asked for. And it didn’t matter so much. Provided their motivation -- almost all started passing their math tests. Some went from getting F grades to getting C grades. Others went from F grades to A grades. Only very few remained sullen beyond reaching. A girl hiding pregnancy at 13. A broken-boned boy -- courtesy bullies parental or otherwise. It had never been stupidity.

It did not go over well. Of course not. I was young back then. Utterly naïve. Thought teaching was some sort of sacred trust -- due to the difference one singular teacher had made in my life. That’s why I believed it when initially told I’d be considered some kind of hero if I could get any those stupidest kids passing.

When I told the head of the math department -- same fellow that initially hired me -- how stupid those kids were not -- that’s when things got grim. That’s when he told me how it really was.

I’d been using inappropriate language with students, he said. Which was true enough from an administrative perspective and absurdly false from a better teaching perspective. I’d been using the exact same language as students. They would never have believed I was not there to force stuff on them otherwise.

My inappropriate language use was not the issue, though. It only meant the head of the math department had me over a large disciplinary barrel. The issue was how no way was some snot-nosed adolescent like me going to come into their school and make responsible professional family men been teaching 20, 30, 40 years look bad. As if they didn’t know their jobs.

The real issue was how I hadn’t done my job, of course. Since I’d been hired to get maybe a couple extra those stupidest kids passing. Not to get almost all of them passing. Not to refute the stupidity they’d been segregated for.

Not all teaching gets that abysmal. But, too often, that’s how abysmal teaching gets. Sometimes it gets yet far worse. But not in Toronto, Canada. Not until and unless we start practicing segregation, anyhow.

It totally doesn't matter what sort of difference gets used to justify segregation. Doesn't matter if it's race, gender, religion -- or lacking intelligence. It never, under any circumstances, benefits either culture or identity. It impoverishes both discourse and personal expression. It permanently tears at social fabric -- and severs every siblinghood of humanity. Let's not segregare populations to better disguise how pedagogical underachieving pertains to teaching in Toronto. Let's not segregate any students for that. Let's not even blame them. Damn right we ought to support Dalton McGuinty's call to pressure school board trustees -- to restore the trust we had put in them.

[Up next: Amy Lavender Harris responds with the argument that afro-centric schools can serve as a model for genuinely integrative, culturally relevant education in all schools.]

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[Rosa Parks bus image by Randy Stern and used via Creative Commons license.]

Techne-City IV: Better Ways

Guess it was alright for another laugh. Since my best friend hadn’t killed the cyclist he drove off the road thirty years ago.

We were joy riding that cube van it was his job to drive. Not much clue what we were laughing about in the first place. Most anything. You’re high off the ground in a cube van. Almost right up there with the truckers. Looking down on traffic. Feeling that the road is yours. Knowing what doesn’t belong had better get from your road. And fast.

“Watch this,” he said, swerving around the cyclist. Idiot cyclist riding like someone gave him charge of the right hand lane. Like the lane was his personal property or something. Then, slowing to approximate the cyclist’s velocity, my best friend swerved back in. All the way back in. I could feel the front right wheel kissing the curb.

And I could see, in rear-view, how flattened far up the curb the cyclist wound up. Still moving, though. Good for more laughing.

Hell. I’ve been driving almost thirty years myself. It’s only been five since I first saw cars for the evil they really are. Because that’s when it happened to me about ten times in a row for the first time.

Happened the winter I decided to bicycle courier. When I figured on saving the planet one delivery at a time -– and got all nine-to-five about it. That’s why I was biking to work that particularly early mid-January morning. After it had snowed all night and the plough went through -– once. It was tight. Barely room for me between cars. Thing of it was, those cars weren’t looking to sparing me room. Weren’t looking to sparing me whatever. Kept honking and driving me full tilt into snowbanks like it was national sport.

Maybe it should have reminded me how, decades back, my then best friend had driven the cyclist off the road. Maybe. But it reminded me nothing of the sort. First few times getting off the ground, I was cursing at drivers like there was no tomorrow, no yesterday –- cursing like there was no today. No way was I recalling decades past. Not while shouting stuff like, “You wan’na kill someone? Come on! I’m still here, you ****! Come and do it with your bare hands! It’s better that way, you ****ing coward!”

The weirdest thing was this, though. I stopped cursing drivers about the fifth or sixth time it happened. Fifth or sixth time I scrambled from under wheels and tottered to my feet -– drenched, bruised and twitching in my own adrenalin -– I was raging at the cars themselves. The distinction between cars and drivers had ceased to matter. I’d finally seen what abomination cars and drivers jointly were. That’s when I began to think in terms of war-hammers. For self-defence. So that, when cars would come at me in future, at least I’d have the chance to strike back one blow. To do some –- however slight -– damage in return.

Yeah. Sounds crazy. It’s true, though. There’s no separating drivers from cars. Identity alters utterly behind the wheel. Physically -– not just culturally and psychologically. Imagine getting behind the wheel, starting the engine -– and someone leaning on the car. One feels the outrage of it physically. Right? When we’re behind the wheel we transform, instantly, into our motor vehicular selves. Our bodies extend in space, taper in time and escalate in mass. Once in accelerating motion, our every reaction and basic reflex adjusts appropriate to motor vehicular space-time mass. No video game. No fantasy. It’s immediate and real as anything gets. Bodies bucketed, rocking and rocketing in that balance, we thread trajectories and flinch from obstacles as if our hairs became triggers. We know the reality of it down to the most instinctive reflex and reflexive instinct. And once velocity accelerates sufficiently, our choices become less debatable and more hard wired than blinking.

It is an outrage and physical violation of personal space if anyone leans on the car. How mistaken they are relating to the car as if it were some inanimate object. And how they leap to realizing their error when we gun engines. Why not gun engines? No harm. Natural as breathing greenhouse gasses.

Meaning, of course, that there’s nothing natural about it. Never mind loose talking about cyborgs and singularities. Talk that loose largely confuses issues. Thing is, ever since that damn club of Moon-Watcher’s, we can scarcely avoid McLuhan-type metaphors about our tools extending our natural bodies. Metaphors which make our tools seem no more than natural extensions. As if our tools were just natural. Fair enough. So long as our tools remain inert like Moon-Watcher’s club used to be –- before it turned into a space-station. So long as our tools don’t get powered independently of our bodies. So long as our tools remain firmly in hand. But when our tools cease being inert? When our tools get independently powered? When operating manuals replace any and all our best intentions? That’s our tools getting totally out of hand.

This is not to say our tools are about to declare independence. Or stack all our switches against us and flick us off. It’s not to say family cars are apt to going intercontinentally ballistic soon as we unhand steering wheels. So long as our tools depend on our hands and eyes to guide them, such issues remain futuristic. Our tools aren’t ready to take us in hand or wipe us out of hand quite yet. But we’d better watch out. We'd better take care. Futuristic days are coming. Our independently powered tools started getting out of hand the moment they got independently powered. And even while continuing abiding our telling them where to go –- they take exponentially increasing charge when it comes to getting there.

By underscoring the vital intimacy between our selves and our tools, those McLuhan-type metaphors cut both ways. Hand powered tools become naturalized –- as extensions of our natural bodies. But independently powered -– never mind networked –- tools attach us no less intimately. And, however intimately extending our bodies, independently powered tools don’t get naturalized. Precisely the contrary. Independently powered tools de-nature our bodies and our selves. They pervert and transform all things natural in and around us. Because while dragged in the manic wake of independently powered tools, accelerating to ever sorrier dread ends, we become irretrievably unnatural. Monstrosities.

Nobody suggests shutting down all our independently powered tools at once. Nobody sane, anyhow. But getting dragged into any future defined by traffic patterns entails collective and ecological catastrophe. It is vital that our choices relating to our tools become more thoughtful –- and far less reflexive. We simply must stop to think and to choose. Each time. Before getting behind the wheel. Before rushing to our car trafficking. Because, more than anything else yet, taking car trafficking reflexively for granted has turned us into the roadkill civilization.

If only we’d stop pretending there aren’t alternatives. Our alternatives aren’t just myriad -– many are absolutely brilliant. For instance. Unlike bike lanes –- which by impracticality only perpetuate and entrench the myth that only motor vehicular traffic is realistically viable grownup transportation –- one particularly brilliant alternative is named velo-city. In the vision of engineer Joseph Adler and architect Chris Hardwicke, elevated bike tunnels transform every aspect of Toronto’s transportation culture –- for the incomparably better. In terms of obvious viability –- is it ever. On any cost-benefit analysis. For mere fractions what the subway extension to York University alone will cost, Toronto could get spanned entirely as Hardwicke proposes. And unlike TTC faring, it would fast turn profits –- at relative pittance compared to current TTC fares.


Incomparably better ways – at fractions of the cost

But viability must evolve far beyond cost-benefit analyses. Fortunately, that’s no issue. Not in this case. Seeing past merely short term profits requires no more than glancing at velo-city’s site:

velo-city is a sustainable rapid mobility system for the City of Toronto.. a high-speed, all-season, pollution-free, ultra-quiet transit system that makes people healthier… The elevated bikeways are enclosed in tubes to provide protection for all season cycling.. separated by direction of travel to create.. a natural tail-wind… velo-city increases speeds, reduces spent energy and eliminates intersections to produce total travel times that rival any other form of high speed transit… Users of velo-city understand the value of distance and its relationship to the environment because they put their own energy into their mobility… People make cities. velo-city is people powered rapid transit.

Viable. Profitable. Sustainable. Healthy. Liberating. Personally, collectively and totally ecologically responsible. And tragically unlikely to get implemented -– precisely but not only because it entails rethinking how we relate to our tools and to what remains of the natural.

Why velo-city is so unlikely to get implemented -– and what we might do to fight for it -– next installment.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[Photo illustration(s) by Marc Ngui, posted to the velo-city Website. Used via Creative Commons license.]

Better Than Free

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire. We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once its flowed on the internet.

This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.
Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.
There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user. We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?

From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.

Eight Generatives Better Than Free

Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset. Many people go to movie theaters to see films on the opening night, where they will pay a hefty price to see a film that later will be available for free, or almost free, via rental or download. Hardcover books command a premium for their immediacy, disguised as a harder cover. First in line often commands an extra price for the same good. As a sellable quality, immediacy has many levels, including access to beta versions. Fans are brought into the generative process itself. Beta versions are often de-valued because they are incomplete, but they also possess generative qualities that can be sold. Immediacy is a relative term, which is why it is generative. It has to fit with the product and the audience. A blog has a different sense of time than a movie, or a car. But immediacy can be found in any media.

Personalization -- A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room -- as if it were preformed in your room -- you may be willing to pay a lot. The free copy of a book can be custom edited by the publishers to reflect your own previous reading background. A free movie you buy may be cut to reflect the rating you desire (no violence, dirty language okay). Aspirin is free, but aspirin tailored to your DNA is very expensive. As many have noted, personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user. It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that "stickiness" because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over.

Interpretation -- As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free -- and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance. I suspect a lot of genetic information will go this route. Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it -- the manual for your genes so to speak -- will be expensive.

Authenticity -- You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted. Or that it was indeed actually performed by the Dead. Artists have dealt with this problem for a long time. Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity -- a signature -- to raise the price of the copy. Digital watermarks and other signature technology will not work as copy-protection schemes (copies are super-conducting liquids, remember?) but they can serve up the generative quality of authenticity for those who care.

Accessibility -- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them. We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it, as well as any movie, photo (ours or other photographers). Ditto for books and blogs. Acme backs everything up, pays the creators, and delivers us our desires. We can sip it from our phones, PDAs, laptops, big screens from where-ever. The fact that most of this material will be available free, if we want to tend it, back it up, keep adding to it, and organize it, will be less and less appealing as time goes on.

Embodiment -- At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. Feels so good. What about dwelling in your favorite (free) game with 35 others in the same room? There is no end to greater embodiment. Sure, the hi-res of today -- which may draw ticket holders to a big theater -- may migrate to your home theater tomorrow, but there will always be new insanely great display technology that consumers won't have. Laser projection, holographic display, the holodeck itself! And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive.

Patronage -- It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead's recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead's case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.

Findability -- Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.
The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon, which we all know, connects niche audiences with niche productions. But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators. This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet machine does that). Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with. Other intermediates such as critics and reviewers also channel attention. Fans rely on this multi-level apparatus of findability to discover the works of worth out of the zillions produced. There is money to be made (indirectly for the creatives) by finding talent. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week. Stuff, it is worth noting, that was free to the viewers. There is little doubt that besides the mega-aggregators, in the world of the free many PDLs will make money selling findability -- in addition to the other generative qualities.

These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.

In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

Careful readers will note one conspicuous absence so far. I have said nothing about advertising. Ads are widely regarded as the solution, almost the ONLY solution, to the paradox of the free. Most of the suggested solutions I've seen for overcoming the free involve some measure of advertising. I think ads are only one of the paths that attention takes, and in the long-run, they will only be part of the new ways money is made selling the free.

But that's another story.

Beneath the frothy layer of advertising, these eight generatives will supply the value to ubiquitous free copies, and make them worth advertising for. These generatives apply to all digital copies, but also to any kind of copy where the marginal cost of that copy approaches zero. (See my essay on Technology Wants to Be Free.) Even material industries are finding that the costs of duplication near zero, so they too will behave like digital copies. Maps just crossed that threshold. Genetics is about to. Gadgets and small appliances (like cell phones) are sliding that way. Pharmaceuticals are already there, but they don't want anyone to know. It costs nothing to make a pill. We pay for Authenticity and Immediacy in drugs. Someday we'll pay for Personalization.

Maintaining generatives is a lot harder than duplicating copies in a factory. There is still a lot to learn. A lot to figure out. Write to me if you do.