It was well before the 2014 Atlantic article that the phrase "the original sin of the internet" surfaced. Marc Andreeson used the phrase at least somewhere around then or earlier, and Cory Doctrow and others had been using it too. So what is it? In short, the inability of the early Internet to accept payments over a wire. That's it. This is what mostly led to the Attention Economy, as it spawned a free-to-look Internet that supported itself via ads, just like your local alternative weekly blo...

It was well before the 2014 Atlantic article that the phrase "the original sin of the internet" surfaced. Marc Andreeson used the phrase at least somewhere around then or earlier, and Cory Doctrow and others had been using it too. So what is it? In short, the inability of the early Internet to accept payments over a wire. That's it. This is what mostly led to the Attention Economy, as it spawned a free-to-look Internet that supported itself via ads, just like your local alternative weekly blo...