Original artwork, not a still
Information wants to be free.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Quoted alone it sounds like a rallying cry for open source and file sharing, but Brand's point was a paradox: the same fact pulls its price up and down at once. Cut in half it became a slogan for the free-software movement, the hacker ethic and every argument about piracy since. The missing first half is what makes the line honest.
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In context
May contain spoilersShow the scene
Stewart Brand said it at the first Hackers Conference in November 1984, a gathering whose guest list came from Steven Levy's new book Hackers. Brand was describing a tension, not a slogan: information wants to be expensive because it is so valuable, and it wants to be free because the cost of getting it out keeps falling. The Washington Post covered the conference on 18 November 1984, and the exchange was printed in Brand's Whole Earth Review in May 1985.
Sources (1)
- Quote Investigator: Information Wants To Be Expensive. Information Wants To Be Freereply section and the 1984 Washington Post citationReference checked
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