The-Greenman.net

More choice is not all it's cracked up to be. Too many options end up hiding what is good. In our networked culture, it's not more choice that matters, it's less choice.

One of the foundations of our new networked hypersociety is the limitlessness of options. If we want more possibilities, we just have to turn them on. Less choice is not about the lack of possibilities, it's about distributed decision making. I want to make use of the skill and depth of knowledge in my network by outsourcing as much of the thinking as possible to my peers.

I am no expert, well, not to most people in most things. There are some domains in which I am happy with my judgement, but I am the first to admit that my skills are limited. So, why should I not allow someone else to decide for me if they are more equipped to discern the differences between the options?

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.