Kevin Kelly is out there.  I mean, in 1984, he was talking about the power of networks.  And you know, few years ago, KLM invited him to speak to their leadership and he talked about making their airline seats free!   He even quoted his book, New Rules For the New Economy:

As crackpot as it sounds, in the distant future nearly everything we make will (at least for a short while) be given away free—refrigerators, skis, laser projectors, clothes, you name it. This will only make sense when these items are pumped full of chips and network nodes, and thus capable of delivering network value.

After the talk, one of the top execs of the company tells him bluntly, "This is the most ridiculous talk I've ever heard."

Except that, couple years later, RyanAir did exactly that.  And over the last decade, they've posted 25% growth each year and now, more than 30 other European airlines are following suit, offering airline tickets as cheap as five pounds!

All commodities heads toward free (as they have for century and a half).  Yes, really -- a century ago, raw foodstuff was 20% of consumer expenditure; today it's 4%.  And Kevin is simply extending that by saying everything we make will be commoditized and head towards free; the value-add economy will be for the "luxury" services.

Kevin is usually spot on, but almost always ahead of his time.   On the other hand, Chris Anderson -- the author of Long Tail -- tends to be on time.  Working on his upcoming book titled Free, he's frequently throwing out the term we live by -- "gift economy." :)

As Chris trying to sort of the complications behind "free", there seem to be  three primary categories for "free":

1. Free to one, charge to another: Just like basic TV, Google is free to consumers, but they charge the advertisers. 
   
2. Free things, charge for services:  Your cell phone, airline seats, and coming soon -- free cars!
3. Truly Free: Wikipedia is free, large part of craigslist is free, everything CharityFocus is free.

So free is in, free is hip, and people are forced to ask the question, "How can I make it free?"  That is, how can I give it away?  Exciting times of transition  into deeper wisdom. :)

Still, this is an age-old, indigenous idea.  We're merely seeing its infant possibilities because of the connectivity that the web has manifested.  What the sages have seen, and in part, what moves us to be free, is a network that connects us all -- without the Cisco routers. :)