Quoted:
Marginal Utility
Dealing with contemporary consumerism, capitalism, and the life it permits.

20 June 2008The time cost of free goods
If goods become free, but consumption takes time, we may find ourselves in danger of being overwhelmed with things we have acquired that are demanding the time to be used. This hidden time cost of seemingly free things is easy to overlook, because we don’t customarily think of goods costing us anything but money. But internet distribution is changing the economics of cultural consumption, unleashing the attention economy, and forcing us to consider how we budget our limited time for information intake.