MIT's courses can be given away because you still can't buy the degree. Most Google services are free (paid for by ads). It turns out 'free' is not a new idea: think radio and television in the days of antennas. The value of Chris Anderson's work is in showing us exactly how 'free' can work. We're all for it as long as we are on the receiving rather than the giving end. We've heard that information wants to be free. In the future, he argues, when we talk of the 'money economy' we will talk of the 'reputation economy' and the 'time economy' in the same breath, and our world will never be the same again. And he demonstrates the ways in which, as an increasing number of things become available for free, our decisions to make use of them will be determined by two resources far more valuable than money: the popular reputation of what is on offer and the time we have available for it. He pinpoints the winners and teh losers in the Free universe.

He shows how the flexibility provided by the online world allows producers to trade ever more creatively, offering items for free to make real or perceived gains elsewhere.

He explains why this has become possible - why new technologies, particularly the Internet, have caused production and distribution costs in many sectors to plummet to an extent unthinkable even a decade ago. In his groundbreaking new book, The Long Tail author Chris Anderson considers a brave new world where the old economic certainties are being undermined by a growing flood of free goods - newspapers, DVDs, T shirts, phones, even holiday flights. What happens when advances in technology allow many things to be produced for more or less nothing? And what happens when those things are then made available to the consumer for free?

The future of a radical price