Why the New York Times did us all a good deed by charging for (or limiting) online content

Do you remember the brouhaha about the New York Times establishing an upper limit on free articles you could read each month? There was quite a bit of debate about the pros, cons, business, and ethics of such a move. It probably was a good business move, because they haven't reversed it. Ethically, I never had a problem with it, because is there content, so they should be able to do what they want with it. But I'm starting to believe that the move was beneficial not only for them, but also for society as a whole.

I recently hit the monthly article limit for the New York Times. It also happened with the Wall Street Journal. Then today, the same thing happened with the Economist. And if you're anything like me, you might be able to guess that each of those events happened in one sitting. It starts out innocent enough. I visit one of my serendipity pools like Twitter, Facebook, or Hacker News, see an interesting looking link, and open it in a new tab. When I get around to looking at the article, I see three other article that look interesting and open each of them in their own tab as well. Pretty soon...tab explosion. Not only that, but I've reached my monthly limit. To top it off, I probably read all of one of the articles, the first paragraph of a few of the others, and the title and sub-title of the rest of them. Now I have the pleasure of knowing that my productivity for the rest of the month will be higher, because I can't read anything else from NYT, WSJ, or whatever the website happens to be.

Now I don't necessarily think this is a good habit. In fact, I think it's a bad habit. Because the internet puts more information than one person could ever comprehend at our fingertips, we think that information is "free." And it mostly is if you are only talking about money, but what is monetarily free is often not healthy for us. Plus, it has other costs, such as time, attention, and our ability to enjoy things. Enjoyment often comes from something being new. It springs from a sense of surprise, serendipity, or awe. Am I in awe of the fact that humans can go to the moon? Yes of course, but then I quickly move on to the next thing.

Some people like to draw an analogy between information and food, and I think it's a good one. A good diet of food does not consist of eating everything in sight, even if it is kale, carrots, beets, and kefir. A good diet consists of eating what you need and then using it (exercise, living, etc)--and don't forget rest either. What would be the informational counterparts to exercise and rest?

So, it may seem like I got off topic (which I kind of did), but here's the point, the tildra, the aphoristic wall-hanger: By limiting the number of articles someone can read each month, the New York Times (and other websites) are retraining us to do what we should be doing (and used to do out of necessity)--choose what we really want to read and focus.