For the past few years I have been hanging around at the edge of London's Free Culture scene. I built a currency system for WSFII, organised Dorkfest for Node London and attended a bunch of other gatherings. I was quite into it, but could never quite believe.
Nothing is ever really free. There is always a cost somewhere, someone always paid in some kind of currency. We can hope that social network value might pay for some of this, but, after a while, the costs add up. My attachment to free culture slowly faded. Last week however, things changed.
For a long time Russ Vandeberg has been chanting his mantra, "Before you can be free, you must be cheap!". For a long time I did not actually listen, but then over breakfast in Sheffield, Andy and Sebastein Mary showed me the simplicity of Russ's wisdom, it's not free culture that we want, it's cheap culture.