Tomorrow’s economy.

I’ve gone on at length about the replicator economy, what will happen to commerce as the cost of “stuff” goes to zero and the ability to copy anything becomes ubiquitous. Understanding the implications of this is going to make the difference between success and failure for whole industries. It also will help in drafting a post-Singularity tale that has logical economics. Well, I came across an absolutely magnificent article by Kevin Kelly on The Technium on exactly what you can sell when copies (of everything) are free. The premise is simple: if copies are ubiquitous, copies are worthless, so we trade in what cannot be copied. Think about that long enough, and you can leverage yourself out of the 19th century widget box much of the western world is still trapped in, and achieve, zen -like, an economy independent of things. This is the kind of article that will make an RIAA executive’s head explode.