Sometimes this is undoubtedly the case, but a fire alarm or burglar alarm bit really is worth knowing about. And the bit that says your pacemaker is about to fail has even more value. We also require that the validity and security of a TV bit be a vastly different proposition to a bank account or aircraft control system bit. Whatever machines may do or think, it is clear that all bits are not equal in the eyes of mankind.

Looking to the telephone network and the Internet, we generally see no costing or classification of bits by worth. From a transport perspective all bits and messages are treated the same. Historically telephone bits have been seen as expensive, and remain dominated by distance, speed and time. However, the trend is towards reducing infrastructure costs and decoupling cost from distance.

On the Net the illusion has been that bits are free, which they are not - someone has to pay. The rise of pay-per-click advertising, commercial services and bit priority ranking between real and delayed time applications will rapidly kill the illusion of total freedom and bit equality.

In another, parallel universe of bit delivery, cable, satellite and terrestrial TV networks ignore distance and supply everything real time. The considerable expense of doing this is funded by advertising and over-delivery of huge quantities of junk bits.

However, the principal money earners are the emotional bits. This is the emotion conveyed by chat shows, news, sport and blockbuster movies. It also includes the emotional engagement and demand of the viewers who feel they must witness that sporting event right now.

If pay per view is emotionally driven, perhaps this is also true of the allocation of advertising revenues and licence fees that support terrestrial TV. Viewer ratings are emotionally driven - why else do people watch the programmes?

In the interactive world of multimedia the opportunity to charge by bit type, distance, speed and usage is with us, but extremely difficult to tap. In today's telephone networks billing operations are becoming huge and unwieldy, consuming vast resources, and tending toward the uneconomic. The same is true of satellite and cable operations that venture far beyond rental and simple encryption card purchase.

In macro-economies based on micro-prices, you cannot use a cheque or a credit card to pay 20p, 2p or 0.2p. The processing costs of billing for the exchange of goods for such small amounts swamps the per item cost. It is already clear that some businesses can no longer collect their charges economically, and as costs fall further, they could fail. So it might just be that in a commerce of bits the complexity of differentiating between bits and collecting the money might, by default, ultimately render all bits equal.

Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is:
http://cochrane.org.uk