Scarcity is easier to deal with than abundance, because when something becomes rare, we simply think it more valuable than it was before, a conceptually easy change. Abundance is different: its advent means we can start treating previously valuable things as if they were cheap enough to waste, which is to say cheap enough to experiment with. Because abundance can remove the trade-offs we’re used to, it can be disorienting to the people who’ve grown up with scarcity.

Theory applies to the world of Internet bandwidth as well.  We only know a world of scarcity because incumbent telecommunications providers are unsure of how they will make money in a world of abundance.

Shirky, C. (2010). Amazon Kindle: Cognitive Surplus. Retrieved from http://kindle.amazon.com/work/cognitive-surplus-ebook/B0035EV8MC/B003NX75HC