Convenience is particularly important for pornographers. Pornography is readily accessible for free on the internet, yet subscription sites are still profitable. Subscription sites allow individuals to have the convenience of downloading large amounts of high-quality pornography from one high-speed location. Such sites are usually easily navigable and provide a high degree of reliability. Users are willing to pay for this convenience even when pornography is available for free.

Forcing users to update their zero-marginal cost goods on a frequent basis is another way to compel users to pay for a subscription-based service for the goods. The reliance on updates is particularly important when users interact with one another. Even if the software of massively multi-player online role-playing games can be replicated, users are willing to pay for subscriptions because the games are routinely updated and updates are required to interact with other users.

I agree with your first criticism that my first category might be too broadly defined. I just don't know if I see a meaningful distinction between those two categories other than that one is tangible and the other is intangible.

I think that the third and forth category is often related, but not necessarily related and consequently should be kept separate. The reason why I would keep them separate even if they are often related in reality is because this establishes a cleaner theoretical framework. I think that all four are often related. Most people do not use any one of the strategies in isolation.

I am not ready to embrace such a future. I just see it as highly likely. People really like Facebook and Pandora. Pandora isn't even seen as a danger. I use Pandora. Do you use Pandora? Do you feel like allowing your musical tastes to be so heavily influenced by Pandora is a good idea? I would actually really like it if Google recommended books to me.

I finished Winston Churchill's first book on the Second World War recently. It was fantastic. Seriously. It was one of the best books I've read in a while. Then I read Superfreakonomics, which was well-reviewed. I really didn't like Superfreakonomics though. Then I read Jared Diamond's Collapse, which I thought had its ups but was entirely too long-winded. If I could read these books on a Kindle with Google recommending books that I would love, then I would almost assuredly be complicit in my own destruction.

Wouldn't you? Do you like Pandora? If Facebook could introduce you to people whose company you immensely enjoyed and recommend activities you would enjoy, would you not want Facebook to do that for you? I waste a lot of time doing a lot of random crappy things with random boring people. I would love a device that told me who I would want to associate with. Of course, my personality, if it remained anything similar to what it is now, compels me to hang out with pro-abortion people, anti-abortion people, religionists, atheists, Satanists, the poly community, the LGBT community, White Separatists and any other fringe group that I can't think of at the moment. Facebook, if it tried to appeal to me, would introduce me to a diverse range of interesting and random individuals who were all random in the particular Steve-Wu way. I would love a device that told me what exercises to do and what foods to eat to have the physique of so many Hollywood idols.

If I could have my future employers offer me a device that I could carry so that I could maximize my value to them, I would carry it. Perhaps some kind of machine that would issue orders from HQ so that at every waking moment I could be a productive capitalist cog. Hell. It would offer me the ability to go home once in a while. I could sleep when it would interfere with work as little as possible.

After hearing some of the arguments, my feelings are that in the future we will be forced to live in a world of complete nakedness. I think in class we incorrectly assume that people do not want advertising or data aggregation. This is just not empirically true.

Do these clarifications and the edits above address your comments?

-- StevenWu - 19 Nov 2009