No one I know puts "scale" into perspective better than Randall Munroe at xkcd. If you haven't seen the latest, you should take the time to dive into what may be his largest image ever (and he's known for creating large images) dealing with money. I warn you, though, it may suck up a lot of time as you go through it: While he's offering a poster of it for sale (along with some of his other "giant" images), I'm not sure even a poster does something like this justice, which is why he's also offering it as a "custom-printed four-poster tile pack. It comes as four individual 36"x24" posters which can be tiled on the wall, for a six-foot-wide mural view of the chart, allowing you to clearly read even the finest details." I may have to put that on my holiday wishlist.

For quite some time now, we've been trying to convince many folks in a variety of industries, but especially the recording industry, to recognize why their rush to create and embrace business models that rely on artificial scarcity was not sustainable. What's been most amazing is how the folks in the industry themselves turn a blind eye to it (or falsely seem to accuse us of just promoting "theft.") However, with the recording industry continuing to struggle, it looks like insiders are finally starting to hear the message. Mathew Ingram points us to a talk given by Yahoo!'s Ian Rogers to a music industry conference last month with the title: Losers Relish Scarcity, Winners Leverage Scale. He goes on to discuss the "physics" of media, which is nothing more than basic economics. However, using the word "physics" makes sense here. For whatever reason (and economists may be at fault here), too many people still assume that economics are what people want to happen or what should happen, rather than recognizing that it describes forces that actually are happening. Talking about economics as "physics" helps get that point across. It's a good pitch, though my experience suggests that the important people won't listen (or, rather won't "hear" what's being said). While much of the industry is figuring this out, the big bosses of the record labels are still a long way from waking up to the reality they face.