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Today I ran across another entry in the growing list of refutations of Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price. This time it’s an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education featuring the story of Berkley Physics professor Richard A. Muller. In a nutshell, Anderson uses Muller as an example in Free of a case where web exposure (in this case YouTube videos of professor Muller’s lectures) has translated into commercial success (in this case a book deal).

The problem is, Muller doesn’t agree with Anderson’s conclusions. Muller is quoted in The Chronicle:

“That is wishful thinking from someone who is trying to conclude that Webcasts lead to money,” said Mr. Muller. “But correlation is not causation. What Anderson says may be ‘easy to see,’ but it just ain’t so. He is letting his hoped-for conclusion drive his analysis of events.”

The Journal then goes on to detail how Muller performed a quasi–scientific experiment to attempt to confirm Anderson’s hypothesis:

“I have been personally contacted by about 1,000 people who saw my Webcasts,” said the professor. “When the book came out, I arranged to e-mail all of them (using Norton’s account)

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Malcolm Gladwell Bitchslaps Chris Anderson

Full disclosure: I have not read, and have no intention of reading Wired editor Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.” This is mainly because I think that Anderson is a deluded cybertopian freetard, and I have no intention of giving money to someone who is exhorting the rest of us to give our work away for free. I’ll read Chris’s tripe the very day he decides to post it online free of charge.

Even though I don’t recommend reading Anderson’s babble, I do highly recommend reading Malcom Gladwell’s evisceration of Anderson’s “logic” in his review of the book in The New Yorker. Gladwell does an excellent job of exposing Anderson’s cybertopian fantasy for the garbage that it is.

hat tip to Daring Fireball for the link

Update: I just found out that Anderson is releasing a free edition of Free. Fuck it, it’s still tripe.