February 20, 2007
The Question I Didn't Ask Steve Forbes
I put my hand in the air. He looked at me and began to point to me in the back row of the auditorium. I sat up straight and leaned forward. His arm began to extend in my direction, granting me the next question to ask, for him to answer. As he did, the moderator at the Q&A forum stood up and announced there was only time for one more question.
As the announcement was made, Steve Forbes slid his shoulder in a smooth redirect to the back right of the auditorium, and pointed to where a student was sitting with their hand raised for much longer then mine had been.
Had he allowed, I had a question I wanted his answer to.
Mr. Forbes is (in no particular order) a publisher, a politician, and a multi-multi millionaire. [As stated in his lecture press sheet.] In his opening remarks to his lecture, he spoke about the internet and how it has revolutionized business models, communication paradigms, and simply changed our lives, personally and professionally.
My question to that point, was this:
Mr. Forbes magazine he had explained, like so many others, migrated their publication's content online. And like so many other publications, that content is free online. A businessman with the gravitas of Mr. Forbes, I am sure understands that when you give away your product for free, it's perceived value is seen as such.
How will anyone ever be able to make money off of information ever again?
When you give away your product for free, you can seldom expect anyone to pay for it ever again. Newspapers are in a dismal state. They are going bankrupt. Magazines can only hope to stay afloat with their dwindling ad revenues. Every one wants to communicate online and multimedia jobs are a dime a dozen, and everyone is hiring. But the problem is: it cost money to make websites. And it costs money to shoot video. And it costs money to take pictures. And it costs money to write words. But no one is buying any of it. Market demands force it all to be given away for free. I can go to Barltey.com or Wikipedia.org to learn about almost anything. I can go to Craigslist to search a classified ads list that is exponentially bigger than my local papers. I can log onto the New York Times to read about the world.
And all of them are free.
If this trend continues, how long will it be until academic institutions of higher learning a pressured into the same market trends?
If colleges and universities follow suit, then like new distribution and worth of information education will be given away for free. And then, the only way to attempt to make a profit is to plaster every available area with an advertisement, in hopes of what revenue is lost in subscriptions to readers (i.e.: tuition to students) be recovered in ad sales to other businesses.
Will Yale (sponsored by Google) one day be free? And every text book (with their covers plastered in advertisements, each chapter will have a corporate sponsor, and each page will look like a magazine with columns full of ads) also be free?
Will anyone ever be willing to pay for information for education again? And, are companies willing to buy ad space? ( That answer is yes, if we are willing to look at it.) Is there an inherent conflict of interest in allowing private corporations to sponsor education material and even entire institutions. (Can the U.S. Army sponsor a U.S. History book, - or a religion book on the history if Islam?) That answer, perhaps is, why not? It already happens. Private institutions do it every chance they get in private donations, from people in those big businesses.
Will people expect education to be free?
Will people be willing to deal with the advertising that would replace the cost of college tuition? (about $30,000 worth of advertising, per person, to equal a year of tuition at my particular college.)
Tibor Kalman once said, "Everybody who wants information wants it to be free. People who make it, assemble it, edit it, and publish it want to make a living at it. Some of them want large Mercedes-Benzes. But what I want to know is: How is info supposed to be free when food isnt?"
And so to Mr. Forbes, a man who has inherited millions, and made millions more by selling information, and who also (gets paid) to lecture at institutions of higher learning, and who laments to the power of the internet, I would have asked them that.
But as it was, he redirected his finger, and pointed to some one else in the back of the auditorium.
And I leaned back into my seat.
Posted by Todd Roeth at February 20, 2007 10:08 PM