Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, says "free"--or "Free!"--is "the future of business."  Sure, free products have been with us for ages--but, as in the case of giving away cookbooks to encourage housewives to buy Jell-O, "free" hasn't always been free.  But while the 20th Century notion of "free" was a marketing strategy, Anderson says in the 21st Century "free" moves beyond a psychological tool. 

We are living "in the world of Moore's Law."  Everything gets cheaper and cheaper (following Moore's law, the cost of processing power--or the cost of a transistor--goes down by 50% every 18 months).  And the marginal cost of productivity goes down to zero.  So "free" has become truly free.  And this is bringing radical change to the marketplace.  Soon, "anything that becomes digital will be available in a free version."  

Anderson has new book coming out titled Free: The Future of a Radical Price, and he spoke on the subject as the keynote speaker at Wired's Disruptive by Design conference earlier this week:

You can read Anderson's article on the subject from Wired here.