I often end up tearing my hair in frustration when I am reading something or find something to read online and I am ‘told’ to pay up to continue reading. While it makes perfect economic and business sense for the content provider, I am left wondering if the world is flat only for some people, and not all.

I may be stretching things too far when I try to extend the concept of the flat world to accessing the content on the world wide web. But, the affordability factor cannot be ignored. This must have been because many an article I wanted to read had to be paid in dollars or pounds when I earned in the humble rupees.

Five dollars may not be too much for an American or a Canadian, or many a European to read an article. But, for me, $5 is nearly Rs 250. It’s not a price I can afford to pay for a single article. It is what I may pay for a novel.
I had thought the future would be brighter for those who love to surf the Net for information and knowledge, when more and more content from magazines and newspapers were being made available for free.

But, costing pressures of the content providers i.e. magazines and journals is catching up it seems with free-riders like me. Despite all those cost-benefit analyses of free content online, I seemed to throw logic out of the window when surfing the world wide web looking for information or to read. This, when I am always trying to spread the ‘gyan’ on why we pay how much we pay for whay we use.

In social sense and commercial sense the world is indeed flat. A schoolmate, on his way to work in Toronto pings me to ask how I am doing while I am at work or am winding up my work for the day. Now I can ping him when he is on his way to work to enquire how a common friend was doing in Naples, while an ex-colleague pings me from Hong Kong to ask if my job is safe.

Wish the world would become flat in the sense of affordability too.