The Nonprofit Feeding the Entire Internet to AI Companies Highlight

“information wants to be free.” In popular usage, the phrase is frequently stripped of its context. It comes from a remark made by the tech futurist Stewart Brand in 1984. In a discussion about how computers were accelerating the spread of information, Brand observed that “information sort of wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable.” But, paradoxically, he said, “information almost wants to be free” because computers make the cost of distributing it so low. In other words, it’s not that information should be free—rather, computers tend to make it seem free.