I’m becoming facinated by the flip flopping of social expectations of what we should pay for and what should be free.
Examples:
Many of us now pay more than $1,000 a year to receive television entertainment from various cable and satellite providers. Yet we used to expect television programs to be provided to us for free in exchange for commercial interruptions. You pay for ESPN. Is it commercial free? You pay for the Discovery Channel. Do they run ads? You also pay for dozens of channels you rarely if ever watch. They run commercials as well. And, oh, by the way, they track your viewing habits down to which commercials you skip and which ones you rewind and freeze-frame to get a better look at if you know what I mean.
What happened to free commercial-backed programming?
We pay more now for television programming than ever before.
And yet.
We used to pay for our newspapers and magazines even though they were full of ads. $.50 a paper and $4 for a magazine was the norm I remember.
Now we expect the same or better content be provided to us via the web at no charge and the ads served to us better be targeted, limited, and easily avoided if we so choose.
How dare the Wall Street Journal charge for access to their content? It’s on the Net! It should be free!
Who needs a local paper delivered for $5 a week when it’s all available for free from Google News and Comics.com?
We pay for what once was free yet we demand for free that which was once happily paid for.
Strange times these digital days.
Now in their latest move to monitor and control your life, Google will give you free GPS software for your Andriod phone (and soon your iPhone to be sure) likely wiping out two multimillion dollar companies in the process. Goodbye Garmin and TomTom and your $99+ GPS devices.
In exchange for Google’s magic free software? Oh, just the usual simple Google ads I’m sure. They would never track your location to build a targeted advertising database on you. Please. Don’t be silly.
Why would they want to see that you were at the mall before sending you their ads. Or the doctor’s office. Or a book store. Or a church…
Remember. There’s free and then there’s Internet free. Beware.
Now whose turn is it to get up and change the channel. Jeopardy is coming on next…
