In The New York Times Magazine: Digital goods

IMMATERIALISM
With more of life lived online, spending on things that don’t seems more normal.

I’ve actually been scooped by Core77 in posting my own column! Embarrassing. Anyway, Consumed this week is about immaterialism and digital goods — why people buy things that don’t exist.

Consuming things made of bits might sound weird, but actually it offers a lot of the same attractions that make people consume things made of atoms. Facebook’s digital gifting is one relatively mainstream example.

Other examples, and the case for what it all has in common with buying things that do exist, in the full column in the May 3, 2009, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.

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