Pay per scroll

7.40 am. I’m sitting on a rock. Birds are chirping. Annoying rain coming down the gray sky. The rock I’m sitting on is wet. That’s also annoying. I’m sitting here, watching my dog walking up and down, destroying all the sticks that are lying on the ground. It’s a chilled morning.

Anyway, I’m sitting here, typing this on my phone. I have my phone with me. I shouldn’t. I should have a book with me. But it’s raining. And books don’t go along well with rain.

Books are interesting objects. The entire consumption process of a book is interesting, especially when compared to websites. There’s no equivalent of the web for books. There’s no place where an infinite supply of books is available to you at virtually no cost. Reading a book involves some decision-making and, more often than not, some financial investment.

Sure, some of you are probably saying that libraries are the equivalent of the web for books but that’s not the same thing. And don’t get me wrong, libraries are great!

Reflecting on books made me think about what the web would look like if it was some sort of pay-per-scroll platform. Not a place where virtually everything is free but a place where everything has to be purchased in order to be consumed. Which sites would I be willing to pay for? I’m going to ignore the obvious answers because I’m sure almost everyone would have sites like Wikipedia or YouTube. Those are boring answers. Aggregators such as Hacker News or Reddit would also not be something I’d be interested in paying for because the actual content lives somewhere else. So I’d be paying just for the commentary.

In my case, I’d probably pay for two types of websites: either personal sites of people that do things I enjoy or that have interesting takes on the world or sites that collect content coming from a diverse group of people (LessWrong is a good example).

Would I be happy if the web was some sort of à la carte menu rather than a free buffet? I’d say no. Still, thinking about this made me realize—once again—that my media diet is something that I have to always keep in mind. It also reminded me that I’m not reading enough books!