The internet copies everything, so how does one make money selling free copies? Kevin Kelly has a great article on this topic. His simple answer is:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

And he discusses eight things that can’t be copied:

1. Immediacy,
2. Personalisation,
3. Interpretation,
4. Authenticity,
5. Accessibilty,
6. Embodiment,
7. Patronage, and
8. Findability.

Thanks to uberblogger Seth Godin for finding the article for us.

In the U2 film Rattle & Hum, there’s an amazing conversation between legendary blues guitarist B. B. King and Bono as they are about to practice When love comes to town:

B. B. I’m no good with chords so, uh, what we do is get somebody else to play chords.

Bono: Sure, well Edge’ll do that. There’s not that much chords in the song – [laughs kindly] I think there’s only two.

B. B. Yeah, I’m horrible with chords.

Become very, very good at something and the rest of the world will happily work around you.

Curiosity is, by definition, the willingness to explore something new without knowing if there’s benefit in doing so (otherwise it’s pragmatic self-interest).

Will you learn something if you listen to a particular podcast, subscribe to a certain blog, go to that conference or read that new book? Will you benefit from trying a different method, meeting that new person or collaborating with a given group of people?

Most people never find out – they remember the time that their curiosity was not rewarded, view curiosity as a poor investment and opt for mainstream, low risk experiences.

If, however, you approach curiosity as a long series of small investments – try many podcasts, many blogs, many conferences, many books, many methods, meet many new people and/or collaborate with many groups – you’ll find that in spite of some experiences being useless, your attitude of curiosity pays handsome dividends in the long term – new knowledge, perspectives, insights & opportunities.

Perhaps, then, an attitude of curiosity is actually pragmatic self-interest after all.