Doc for California Governor!
Tuesday, 29 July 2003
Complementary currencies
Stephen Hill, on the pho list, points to a great interview with Bernard Lietaer on complementary currencies (ignore the rather schmaltzy new age design; this is deep stuff about monetary theory, clearly explained).
First, let's define what a currency is, because most textbooks don't teach what money is. They only explain its functions, that is, what money does. I define money, or currency, as an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange. It's therefore not a thing, it's only an agreement—like a marriage, like a political party, like a business deal. And most of the time, it's done unconsciously. Nobody's polled about whether you want to use dollars. We're living in this money world like fish in water, taking it completely for granted.
Now the point is: there are many new agreements being made within communities as to the kind of medium of exchange they are willing to accept. As I said, in Britain, you can use frequent flier miles as currency. It's not a universal currency, it's not legal tender, but you can go to the supermarket and buy stuff. And in the United States, it's just a question of time before privately issued currencies will be used to make purchases. Even Alan Greenspan, the governor of the Federal Reserve and the official guardian of the conventional money system, says, "We will see a return of private currencies in the 21st century."
I think Heinlein once wrote that money should be an adjective, not a verb, that we should talk bout the moneyness of things.
Company Stock is in effect private currency, with a fluctuating exchange rate tracked by the Stock Market, and much of the net runs on non-monetary exchange.
Bridging these complementary currencies into the dollar economy is an interesting challenge.
First, let's define what a currency is, because most textbooks don't teach what money is. They only explain its functions, that is, what money does. I define money, or currency, as an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange. It's therefore not a thing, it's only an agreement—like a marriage, like a political party, like a business deal. And most of the time, it's done unconsciously. Nobody's polled about whether you want to use dollars. We're living in this money world like fish in water, taking it completely for granted.
Now the point is: there are many new agreements being made within communities as to the kind of medium of exchange they are willing to accept. As I said, in Britain, you can use frequent flier miles as currency. It's not a universal currency, it's not legal tender, but you can go to the supermarket and buy stuff. And in the United States, it's just a question of time before privately issued currencies will be used to make purchases. Even Alan Greenspan, the governor of the Federal Reserve and the official guardian of the conventional money system, says, "We will see a return of private currencies in the 21st century."
I think Heinlein once wrote that money should be an adjective, not a verb, that we should talk bout the moneyness of things.
Company Stock is in effect private currency, with a fluctuating exchange rate tracked by the Stock Market, and much of the net runs on non-monetary exchange.
Bridging these complementary currencies into the dollar economy is an interesting challenge.
Monday, 28 July 2003
Markets and Antimarkets
Abe Burmeister, on the Emergent democracy list, points to an interesting 1996 essay by Manuel DeLanda
called Markets and Antimarkets in the World Economy.
It reminds me a bit of my father's 1985 Two Kinds of Order paper.
Delanda talks of how bottom-up emergent meshwork markets compete with top-down hierarchic anti-markets, discusses historic exmples, and ends on this note:
Computers, in the form of embedded intelligence in the buildings that house small firms, can aid this catalytic process, allowing the firm's members to reach some measure of self-organization. Although these efforts are in their infancy, they may one day play a crucial role in adding some heterogeneity to a world-economy that's becoming increasingly homogenized.
As David Weinberger succinctly put it -'Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy'
called Markets and Antimarkets in the World Economy.
It reminds me a bit of my father's 1985 Two Kinds of Order paper.
Delanda talks of how bottom-up emergent meshwork markets compete with top-down hierarchic anti-markets, discusses historic exmples, and ends on this note:
Computers, in the form of embedded intelligence in the buildings that house small firms, can aid this catalytic process, allowing the firm's members to reach some measure of self-organization. Although these efforts are in their infancy, they may one day play a crucial role in adding some heterogeneity to a world-economy that's becoming increasingly homogenized.
As David Weinberger succinctly put it -'Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy'
Sunday, 27 July 2003
Conference attendance by proxy, continued
The hecklebot is currently winging it's way to Aspen with Joi, so I may get to heckle at Brainstorm.
Scoble's chums are suggesting autonomous robots, some of which have been built, but it's more fun to be carried around by someone really there, and pop up on the screen of the presenters to correct them.
Scoble's chums are suggesting autonomous robots, some of which have been built, but it's more fun to be carried around by someone really there, and pop up on the screen of the presenters to correct them.
Monday, 21 July 2003
Micro-content - Macro discontent?
Joi explains his interest in micro-content
It's a good summary, but it misses a key point. By emphasising the difference between commercially produced 'content' and user-created 'micro-content' he is ignoring the enormous area inbetween.
The current content publishing model is only efficient for large-runs of sales - sell under a few thousand books, a few hundred thousand CDs, or a few million cinema seats, and you won't be welcome in commercial publishing.
This gap is gradually being bridged by innovative companies, such as Cafepress and Customflix, but both of these are still creating physical goods.
I think there is a huge opportunity here to be the eBay of digital media, and I think mediAgora is the way to go about it.
It's a good summary, but it misses a key point. By emphasising the difference between commercially produced 'content' and user-created 'micro-content' he is ignoring the enormous area inbetween.
The current content publishing model is only efficient for large-runs of sales - sell under a few thousand books, a few hundred thousand CDs, or a few million cinema seats, and you won't be welcome in commercial publishing.
This gap is gradually being bridged by innovative companies, such as Cafepress and Customflix, but both of these are still creating physical goods.
I think there is a huge opportunity here to be the eBay of digital media, and I think mediAgora is the way to go about it.
Monday, 14 July 2003
Microsoft extrapolates
Jakob Nielsen explains why people hate PDF's:
For online reading, however, PDF is the monster from the Black Lagoon. It puts its clammy hands all over people with a cruel grip that doesn't let go. [...]
Here's a quote from a customer who shunned those parts of the site that were in PDF:
"It looks like I'm going to have to go to PDF, which I'm dreading."
Scoble explains how jealous Microsoft is:
Let's see, Adobe makes money off of Acrobat. About a billion a year (Acrobat is funding an entire additional Silicon Valley skyscraper, Adobe's CEO said in a recent magazine article I read). Macromedia makes money off of Flash. Borland makes money off of tools. One of Microsoft's biggest buildings (#42) is full of guys writing tools.
The Palladium/NGSCB information locking is what Scoble is getting at here - he argues that stopping people reading things is the glorious future of profitability for the no-longer-growth-stock MSFT.
Ballmer explains what is really going on here.
A senior partner in an accounting firm needs to send email to his partners with a confidential contract proposal attached. Besides specifying who may read the proposal and that they may not copy, paste or edit the information, he specifies that the email itself cannot be forwarded. The recipients' email and word processing applications transparently enforce these policies. All partners worry less about information leaks that might damage ongoing negotiations.
Ballmer's key mistake here is assuming you can rely on computers when you don't trust people to trust you.
Why are Microsoft so obsessed with this?
I think they still bear the psychological scars from having their internal emails spread all over the papers, and are subconsciously trying to fix this with code...
Personally, I'm all in favour of anyone who thinks this way having their writings made unreadable by others.
For online reading, however, PDF is the monster from the Black Lagoon. It puts its clammy hands all over people with a cruel grip that doesn't let go. [...]
Here's a quote from a customer who shunned those parts of the site that were in PDF:
"It looks like I'm going to have to go to PDF, which I'm dreading."
Scoble explains how jealous Microsoft is:
Let's see, Adobe makes money off of Acrobat. About a billion a year (Acrobat is funding an entire additional Silicon Valley skyscraper, Adobe's CEO said in a recent magazine article I read). Macromedia makes money off of Flash. Borland makes money off of tools. One of Microsoft's biggest buildings (#42) is full of guys writing tools.
The Palladium/NGSCB information locking is what Scoble is getting at here - he argues that stopping people reading things is the glorious future of profitability for the no-longer-growth-stock MSFT.
Ballmer explains what is really going on here.
A senior partner in an accounting firm needs to send email to his partners with a confidential contract proposal attached. Besides specifying who may read the proposal and that they may not copy, paste or edit the information, he specifies that the email itself cannot be forwarded. The recipients' email and word processing applications transparently enforce these policies. All partners worry less about information leaks that might damage ongoing negotiations.
Ballmer's key mistake here is assuming you can rely on computers when you don't trust people to trust you.
Why are Microsoft so obsessed with this?
I think they still bear the psychological scars from having their internal emails spread all over the papers, and are subconsciously trying to fix this with code...
Personally, I'm all in favour of anyone who thinks this way having their writings made unreadable by others.
Compression becoming redundant
Jem pointed me at an interesting article about the future of hard disks.
Nothing very new, (Odlyzko discussed this trend a few years back) but the implications of disk space growing with a much bigger exponent than CPU, Networking or bus speed are rather subtle.
One interesting one is that audio & video compression become pointless over time, as they clog CPUs, whereas once raw transfer speed catches up, playback can happen without the CPU involved at all.
Nothing very new, (Odlyzko discussed this trend a few years back) but the implications of disk space growing with a much bigger exponent than CPU, Networking or bus speed are rather subtle.
One interesting one is that audio & video compression become pointless over time, as they clog CPUs, whereas once raw transfer speed catches up, playback can happen without the CPU involved at all.
Wednesday, 9 July 2003
Heckling limericks
Lots of people have blogged Supernova; I was heckling in Limerick form.
The WiFi session:
The problem with wifi you see
Is coupled with coffee and tea
When you pay for your drink
It makes sense to think
That both toilets and packets are free
Kenamea session:
The biz model for Kenamea
Is hiding a simple idea
As http can fail
You should use email
And pay up to keep us in beer
New Platforms session:
The panel calls all of us users
As if were just drug abusers
They show lots of glitz
And hope that it fits
But we want people to amuse us
The WiFi session:
The problem with wifi you see
Is coupled with coffee and tea
When you pay for your drink
It makes sense to think
That both toilets and packets are free
Kenamea session:
The biz model for Kenamea
Is hiding a simple idea
As http can fail
You should use email
And pay up to keep us in beer
New Platforms session:
The panel calls all of us users
As if were just drug abusers
They show lots of glitz
And hope that it fits
But we want people to amuse us
Tuesday, 8 July 2003
Social botware
Clay Shirky and David Weinberger have been talking about rules for social software.
I've been exploring online chat again recently, via iChat and Joi's IRC channel
Points Clay and David made both come up - the room occasionally falls into Clay's three default topics, and there has been a bit of kerfuffle about rules, deflected to a wiki.
More interesting was the emergence of the room's personality as David describes. This was shaped early on by Jeannie, who joined from AIM, and became an unofficial hostess, damping down the geekiness a bit and making it feel like a place.
Victor brought in a bot in Python called 'Jibot', to join Aaron's 'datum' both of which look up information over the net. As Victor's first language is Spanish, he leaned heavily on datum's dictionary and acronym lookups.
Jibot being Open Source, various of us modified it to say silly things to each other, but as the frustration with WordNet's dictionary grew, Victor added a way to define and query words in it.
Suddenly, Jeannie started using this to tease and keep track of people, by defining them in the dictionary. I added multiple definitions and the all important 'forget' command, and the bot became a community gossip repository.
Because all the bot commands were issued in public, and people can edit entries, the bot got a wiki-like convergence going, storing persistent info about people.
Last night I added the 'herald' function - now, when people join the room the bot announces them using what has been said about them, or uses a random canned phrase if it doesn't know anything about them yet.
I think this follows both Clays rules for community forming -persistent handles, rewards for core users etc and David's encouragement of informal serendipity.
Seems to work well so far; regulars are introduced, new people want to be, and only a bit of complaining about the bot talking too much
I've been exploring online chat again recently, via iChat and Joi's IRC channel
Points Clay and David made both come up - the room occasionally falls into Clay's three default topics, and there has been a bit of kerfuffle about rules, deflected to a wiki.
More interesting was the emergence of the room's personality as David describes. This was shaped early on by Jeannie, who joined from AIM, and became an unofficial hostess, damping down the geekiness a bit and making it feel like a place.
Victor brought in a bot in Python called 'Jibot', to join Aaron's 'datum' both of which look up information over the net. As Victor's first language is Spanish, he leaned heavily on datum's dictionary and acronym lookups.
Jibot being Open Source, various of us modified it to say silly things to each other, but as the frustration with WordNet's dictionary grew, Victor added a way to define and query words in it.
Suddenly, Jeannie started using this to tease and keep track of people, by defining them in the dictionary. I added multiple definitions and the all important 'forget' command, and the bot became a community gossip repository.
Because all the bot commands were issued in public, and people can edit entries, the bot got a wiki-like convergence going, storing persistent info about people.
Last night I added the 'herald' function - now, when people join the room the bot announces them using what has been said about them, or uses a random canned phrase if it doesn't know anything about them yet.
I think this follows both Clays rules for community forming -persistent handles, rewards for core users etc and David's encouragement of informal serendipity.
Seems to work well so far; regulars are introduced, new people want to be, and only a bit of complaining about the bot talking too much
Monday, 7 July 2003
Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking
I have mainly been engaged in the ongoing copyright debate online, but last week I took part in two different public fora - one was the NPR show 'Talk of the Nation' which had a section on music downloading (I'm on at 23:40), the other was the ILAW seminar at Stanford, where they were discussing the same issue.
In each case I was both frustrated and concerned. On NPR I explained that the RIAA repreesent only a tiny minority of musicians, and many more are able to take advantage of the net, but was cut off before I could develop the point.
At ILAW I was able to make one brief point on emulation, but time ran out before I could explain the objections to the Fisher 'Nationalisation' proposals.
With the Grokster CEO, the Future of Music Coalition and the lawyers at ILAW all wanting the government to fix things for us via compulsory licensing and taxing computers and the net, I am getting concerned.
Lisa Rein did film my off-the-cuff explanations, but I feel I need to do two things - come up with sound bites for use in these occasions in the future, and explain them more fully here.
Here are my sound-bites, which I will call the 6 heresies of digital media:
DRM destroys value
The top 20 don't matter
Streaming wastes bandwidth
Live broadcasts waste time
Advertising reduces incentives
Compression wastes entropy
I'll expand on these later, as time permits.
In each case I was both frustrated and concerned. On NPR I explained that the RIAA repreesent only a tiny minority of musicians, and many more are able to take advantage of the net, but was cut off before I could develop the point.
At ILAW I was able to make one brief point on emulation, but time ran out before I could explain the objections to the Fisher 'Nationalisation' proposals.
With the Grokster CEO, the Future of Music Coalition and the lawyers at ILAW all wanting the government to fix things for us via compulsory licensing and taxing computers and the net, I am getting concerned.
Lisa Rein did film my off-the-cuff explanations, but I feel I need to do two things - come up with sound bites for use in these occasions in the future, and explain them more fully here.
Here are my sound-bites, which I will call the 6 heresies of digital media:
DRM destroys value
The top 20 don't matter
Streaming wastes bandwidth
Live broadcasts waste time
Advertising reduces incentives
Compression wastes entropy
I'll expand on these later, as time permits.