So who would win in a fistfight: Malcolm Gladwell or Chris Anderson? Is Free the Price of the Future, or will goods and services still be Priced to Sell?

The ACME Company of the classic Strong Bad email universe (you’ll notice I don’t call it the Homestarrunner Universe), Cheap As Free is famous throughout Strongbadia for products of dubious quality, ranging from action figures to children’s books to this opening credits sequence.

This reflects the prevailing belief that “you get what you pay for”. Well, maybe not prevailing for too long. Two of my favorite authors appear to be having a bit of an intellectual disagreement over the concept of Free.

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You’ve probably noticed how diverse the topics of my blog posts can get. Anime, professional wrestling, media theory, comic books, /b/, the Internet. You’ve also probably noticed that my post tags reflect this diversity.

Now imagine how limited my writing would be if I limited myself to a single narrow topic every time I wrote. Say, anime, without talking about the effect of the advent of broadband or the influence of Western animation or its synergy with Japanese music. And yet this is how we used to define things — genres, individuals, movements.

Think about your Pictures folder on your computer and how you sort individual files. Some pictures fall under Family, for example, and some under Friends. What happens when you have a picture that has both Friends and Family in it? Do you upgrade it into a higher-tier (but more general and vague) category, ‘Loved Ones’? Do you decide that the presence of family members in the photo trumps the presence of friends and sort it accordingly, or vice versa? Do you place one copy in each of the folders? What if your sister is your best friend too?

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So far all I’ve talked about are the strange niche interests I’m into, and I haven’t given more than a passing mention for all the things I ‘ought’ to be into as a member of the greater otaku community. I haven’t talked about Heroes, which I am told should be right up my alley. I haven’t said anything about World of Warcraft, which I haven’t played past the first newbie quest. I haven’t discussed Blackest Night or Civil War. I haven’t watched Naruto or Bleach. I am a poor representative of the cross-section of otaku, and therefore have no right to prescribe what people should or shouldn’t watch or read or listen to.

Boy, it’s a good thing I’m not doing that.

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