Malcolm Gladwell reviews Free by Chris Anderson: Books: The New Yorker “Information wants to be free,” Anderson tells us, “in the same way that "life wants to spread and water wants to run downhill.” But information can’t actually want anything, can it? Amazon wants the information in the Dallas paper to be free, because that way Amazon makes more money. Why are the self-interested motives of powerful companies being elevated to a philosophical principle?" - yeah I've often thought that about the information wants to be free aphorism. it's a nice catchphrase but what does it actually mean to say that information wants something.