Lisa Margonelli: "Free" vs. Peak Oil

I haven’t read Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” but I’ve been following the debate over Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker review and Anderson’s response. Gladwell summarizes Anderson’s basic argument as: The digital age is exerting inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas.” This revelation is not unique to Anderson. I mean, hey, it’s 6:30 am and I’m blogging for free about articles I read for free for you who will read it for free and meanwhile, my “free” gmail account is trying to sell me a “Didgeridoo for Sleep Apnea.”

But underlying this copious pile of free is a steady stream of electrons that keeps our eyes and ears hooked into the ideas beaming out of our computers, TV’s, stereos, and twitter-enabled smart phones. Between 2000 and 2005 according to this pdf report by Jonathan Koomey, the amount of electricity used by servers alone doubled to account for 14 power plants world wide and $7.2 billion dollars. Is there some tension between free ideas and limited energy and natural resources? Are free ideas and Peak Oil compatible? Or do they have some strange synergy? I think so, but the unified theory of it all remains to be thought, so I’m throwing it out to you, readers. Respond freely.

The low cost of energy has underwritten much of what we accept as reality. Free shipping for buying an extra book on Amazon is a case in point. But so is the bargain price of goods made in China with subsidized fuel and cheap container transport. And so are suburban McMansions, enabled by mortgages that didn’t take the cost of power into account. Long commutes in big cars were enabled by cheap gas, which seemed inconsequential until it topped $2 a gallon (and then $3 and then $4.) In the US, energy is a “right” as much as an expense, which changes its psychological price, at least.

The Atlantic