Knowledge is free, but is it worthless?

The internet has revolutionised the way we live.... (probably the most overly used statement, EVER)

I don't plan to use this blog to write about the individual virtues of Google, Facebook or Twitter as they do enough to promote their services without my help. However, I do want to share my belief that a hyper-connected world is a good thing.

Many people are afraid of the internet. I understand this. I, more than most, should be concerned about the pictures of myself that Google will readily offer up to complete strangers when they type my name into that all-seeing search bar! It should concern me, but it doesn't.


 For the very minor privacy concerns that the internet throws up, it offers so much more information in return. I am literally a few clicks away -within reason- from the world's collective body of information. Before the internet, knowledge was locked away. People and opinions were locked away. Before the internet, we relied on institutions to allow us access to information and we had to trust their version of 'said' information.

Religion was the first custodian of knowledge. If you wanted an education, you had to believe in a God (descriptions often vary) and learn in a way that tied you to a Holy Book and its belief framework. Society later 'evolved' to allow Governments and private enterprise to control the delivery of education. Nations and Governments quickly understood the benefits of an educated society but the word in the aforementioned sentence that I should be placing emphasis on is the word 'control'. The delivery of education is still controlled but this time the custodians of education want your money -not your faith. Even Education delivered by the state costs money as it is funded by taxation.



When all is said and done, if you want to know something, you have to pay someone money to teach you. This is the very basis of a knowledge economy where Intellectual Property (IP) enables private individuals to create profits. 

As an economist, I find this to be a very interesting market place to analyse both from a philosophical viewpoint and a purely academic standpoint. Markets exist where demand for 'something' exceeds the supply and in the case of education, I find it fascinating that the supply has been artificially limited for such a long time to sustain this 'market'. It stands to reason though, if knowledge is power, surely you have the right to profit from passing that knowledge on?! or do you...  Fundamentally that model is broken. If education is only passed on through the monetisation of knowledge, and knowledge can only be bought with money, the rich will get richer and the poor will become poorer.

We may have convinced ourselves that we no longer live in a feudal society, because our homes have running water and flat-screen TVs hanging off shoebox-sized living room walls, but the reality is that the distribution of wealth (and education) in this world (more so in Britain) is still massively skewed toward a small percentage of people. The Guardian posted a very consumable video on how bad it is in this very country here. The same families, time and time again frequent our elite universities, inherit large businesses and family wealth. This is not a meritocracy (interesting article on this principle here) and whilst we are trending towards more equal opportunities... it needs more momentum.


Enter, the internet. 

The internet has opened information and the entire human knowledge base to unprecedented levels. Computers and internet connections are more affordable than ever and we (the human race) are on the cusp of a critical mass whereby anyone with sufficient time and attitude can reach out to the world wide web and carve out an education for themselves. No longer do we have to pay an unfair price to better ourselves. We will no longer be exploited by the church, the state or someone with more money than us.

The internet not only provides a platform for information but it also enables enterprise. It removes all of those traditional and costly barriers to starting up a business. The Internet puts a global market at the end of the webpage and gives individuals more and more dynamic ways to express their ideas and interact with potential customers or business partners.

The internet releases the shackles of control from knowledge and tears down market barriers. 


Unless you make your living from controlling valuable resources that were never yours to control in the first place, this isn't an evolution that should cause you concern. The internet will enable a meritocracy. It will enable people to educate themselves, create their own knowledge and operationalise it so to fairly compete for personal wealth.

Knowledge is now a commodity, trying to artificially limit its supply to create value is old school. The new school realises that it is not simply 'what you know' that is valuable in modern markets, it is 'the speed of which you can operationalise that knowledge and then iterate'. Time to market and the speed of which new knowledge is created is crucial to today's value chain and that is simply because the one commodity that makes us all equal (and is yet to be commoditised or past down through inheritance) is 'time'. In the same vein, the one quality that differentiates us all is our 'attitude' and the last time I checked, that hasn't been bottled, commoditised or packaged up for an inheritance package yet either.

Learn, Operationalise, Iterate, Repeat and Compete. Make the world a better and fairer place. 

Thanks for Reading,

Chancey