From Clay Shirky: The Collapse of Complex Business Models
“Dr. Amy Smith is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, where she runs the Development Lab, or D-Lab, a lab organized around simple and cheap engineering solutions for the developing world.
Among the rules of thumb she offers for building in that environment is this: “If you want something to be 10 times cheaper, take out 90% of the materials.” Making media is like that now except, for “materials”, substitute “labor”.
Can taking out 90% of the labor and making it 10 times cheaper be a goal for sharing ideas and information on the web?
Can those of us who are focused on teaching and learning, rather than branding and sales, accept doing everything much more simply and efficiently? And, at the same time, making the web more accessible and easier to use.