In 1988, “Saturday Night Live” aired a parody commercial deriding clumsy business models. “At First CityWide Change Bank, our business is making change,” said actor Jim Downey, portraying a naive “service representative.” After listing various ways in which his company could break a five, he explained how money is made. “The answer is simple: volume.”

More than 20 years later, I wonder if some digital entrepreneurs think the same. “Simple: we’ll make money on volume of traffic, at some future date,” they promise, even if the math doesn’t add up right now. Despite a knee-deep recession, the idea of giving away something for free and charging for something else later is bigger than ever. But is “free” selling?

Free

Although not the inventor, the chief evangelist of the “free” world is author and Wired editor Chris Anderson. Last year, before the recession hit, Anderson outlined his upcoming book in a cover story titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.” A year and a half later, the final subtitle was changed to a less pretentious “The Future of a Radic