Stanford CIS

Who Will Pay for the Zero Marginal Cost Society?

By Brett Frischmann on

Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, is at times thrilling, at times encyclopedic, and at times possibly hyperbolic. It is very well-written, it touches on an incredibly wide variety of modern topics, it builds on an exhaustive set of references, and most importantly it makes you think seriously about the future. You cannot possibly read this book without pausing at least a half a dozen times to ponder. There were parts of the book that presented me with completely new facts, claims, technologies, and predictions. For example, I hadn't considered the prospect of nearly zero marginal cost energy production. I don't know that I have as much confidence as Rifkin in that prospect coming true in the near future. But to contemplate the possibility and its implications alone was exhilarating. Similarly, I found fascinating his claim that "what makes the great infrastructure revolutions transformational is the convergence of new communications media with new energy regimes." I will be thinking a lot about this in my own work.

Read the full piece at The Huffington Post.