Peter Wayner On The Spread Of Information 182
The demonization of people who think for themselves continues. Here's a quote from Amy Harmon's piece from Sunday's New York Times examining what software like Napster means for the world. The article itself covers a wide variety of view points and suggests that there's little the law can do if the people don't believe that something is wrong. But it contains a certain amount of worrying and handwringing, courtesy of Esther Dyson:
"We're very much looking at a biological model of an epidemic," said Esther Dyson, publisher of the technology newsletter Release 1.0. "On the Internet, a product doesn't require a central host and it doesn't require central distribution, it just spreads. It's new in business. It's been going on a long time in viruses."
It may not be fair to judge the quote outside of the larger context of Dyson's thoughts, but it still possible to focus on the dangerous assumption that this age is much different from the ones that came before. Products without central hosts and distribution are not new in business. They're old in business. The centralized, one-corporation economy is what's new. In the past, there was competition. Everything was not run by central planners of big corporations.
Consider the food business. It used to be quite local. Small companies and local producers competed with each other. Farmers sold to whomever stopped by their stands. Stores bought from multiple farmers. Now the business section of the same Sunday edition reports that Coca-Cola is gradually squeezing out all competitors from stores in the South. Coke used to fight for the best placement, now they want everyone else off the shelf completely. Should we be surprised that Ben & Jerrys is now just another brand in a big company's portfolio?
Of course, there were plenty of other products that didn't require central distribution or a central host. Almost all of the devices produced in the past lived without reporting home every few seconds because it simply wasn't feasible. Guns produced in the East empowered virus-like settlers, homesteaders, 49ers, and everyone else to swarm over what became the western states. Cars spread just as effectively. People drove them where ever they pleased and fixed them when they broke down.
Books were printed, sold, shared, and loaned without strict copyright laws. In fact, unauthorized reprinting was common. Plus, once they left the store, the newer owner was free to use the book as he chose. The law specifically granted only to the copyright holder the right to extract money from the book, in the form of its first sale.
Even software spread quickly -- and in a virus-like manner -- before the Internet came along. Plenty of software was free before the 1980s, and shareware continued the trend after that. People swapped disks and gave to their friends. It was coming of the Internet that gave rise to the centralized archives of shareware and freeware.
Dyson's words were used to imply that people who think for themselves and do not check with some central host for permission are acting like viruses. It's pretty sad to hear that the free flow of people, capital, and information is something that's scary and bad.
Re:The Internet is NOT a negative net-sum game (Score:1)
your analogy forgets something (Score:1)
Hm, fair use? (Score:1)
I'm not saying it is or isn't, I'm just curious about people's reaction to the idea. Oh, yeah, does it matter how much it costs me to super-duper-replicate an object?
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
Flies in the ointment... (Score:1)
An apple is an apple, while there are various varieties they are essentially unchanged for the past million years or so. I prefer Granny Smith myself, but if I could get a thousand free bushels of McIntosh for free I could learn to survive on them.
This is not the same with books, music, or software. There are millions of varieties of each, and it is the subtle difference between each variety which differentiates them.
It'd be like saying everybody would be happy if they could just have as many copies of the Backstreet Boy's Millenium CD as could ever be made, and this is all you would want for a lifetime.
That's a very dull, boring world. Also, unlike an apple I do not *NEED* music, software or books. Yeah they're nice to have, make my life less dull and boring but that's about the extent of it.
So I think I'll pass on the Backstreet Boys being the only music ever available, even if it is for free.
Piracy *IS* a negative net-sum game (Score:1)
Nice article, too bad most posters don't get it. (Score:1)
This is not about Esther Dyson's relationship to corporations. This is not about Esther Dyson's place in the computer community. It's about a very simple mistake which Dyson has fallen into: assuming the networked nature of the Internet is something new.
The author has some valid points to make, particularly about how networked phenomena were part of our economic past. They were.
But the author makes a minor mistake of his own: assuming the corporate world precluded a networked economy.
Networks have sometimes grown sparser in the corporate-style economies of the past 100 years and they have sometimes grown more rhizomorphic and more thickly branching. But they have remained fundamentally networks.
It has become popular in the past few years to assume the networked nature of the Internet is something new. That is what many people are assuming with Napster and Gnutella. Esther Dyson is correct in pointing out that this assumption is mistaken because the Internet was fundamentally a networked economy long before Napster.
She was wrong in assuming the economy was not networked long before the Internet. The author of this piece was correct in pointing this out. He was wrong in assuming (to the extent he did) that it was corporate economies of the past 100 years which have led to a decline in networked economies.
The corporate economies of the recent past have been replete with corporate success stories based on network effects: from sailing ships to steamships; from railroads to interstates; from phones to fax machines; from the post office to FedEx.
These corporate economies have also been replete with stories of failures of businesses who believed the new technologies of the day would make the old networks obsolete. Internet IPO-mongers are convinced they have invented "disintermediation" with the web.
Their assumption is just as wrong as all the others. Disintermediation schemes have been trying to "eliminate the middleman" for as long as there have been middlemen to eliminate. The middlemen (who are really the nodes of the networks which make the networked economy work) have been beating out those who would replace them with corporate central planning for as long as the big guys have been trying to eliminate them.
The big guys who pushed these efforts too hard (stealing the names of their retailers from their distributors, stealing the names of the customers from their retailers) usually ended up going out of business. They lost the value the network provided to their systems. As long as their central planning made the right choices, they thrived. But, once they started seeing chances to profit at the expense of their customers, they had no checks or balances on their power to prevent their mistakes.
The networks couldn't save them, so the networks routed around them.
It behooves us all to remember as we point out the errors in the assumptions of others that we be watchful for our own assumptions. It is our own which can prove disastrous for each of us.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
Fortunately for us, though, we get all the fruit we want. And when hobyists spend years developing the perfect fruit, we all get to have that too. Prety soon we'll have fifty bazillion varieties of apples, with different colorings, flavorings, etc, and someone (Farmer Fred?) will make lots of money keeping them all straight and making sure you can find the right fruit for you.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:3)
That's when Farmer Jones (next door) realizes that ... hey, wait a minute ... there might be some money to be made here. So, he calls us over, and says, "Tell ya what, kids. I've got some new fruit here. $20 a head, all you can carry. Take it or leave it."
Some of us take him up on the offer. Clones of the new fruit invariably get passed around, and pretty soon, everyone gets tired of that, too. We come back to Farmer Jones...
A couple years later, he's President and CEO of Farmer Jones Novelty Fruit, incorporated.
Meanwhile, Farmer Fred wakes up one day and notices Farmer Jones' new fruit-funded ferrari. "Damn," he says, "I gotta get me some of that Fancy Fruit action..."
Farmer Fred pulls the tarp off his old freezer truck, and starts loading it with clones of Jones' newest products. He drives out to outlying areas, offering Farmer Fred's Fancy Fruit -- FRESH!
Other former farmers also start to get interested. Some of them go into competition with Jones, making custom fruit, trading seeds and rootstock with each other. Others go into competition with Fred.
Jones' revenues dip a little, but by this time, he's become a trusted name, and people like his new work. Reason enough to go to him instead of the competition, in most cases.
Fred just keeps on truckin', although he's now a subsidiary of Farmer Clark's Cool Cantaloupe Express Delivery Service.
Related service markets spring up, to, including bulk fruit duplication, while-you-wait, and people developing fruit theming kits.
Pretty soon, the farming industry explodes into a vibrant marketplace. THE END
You're right, this is a good metaphor...
Re:Big Companies New? Counter-Example... (Score:2)
Good point. However, the East India company had an advantage in that their business was shipping goods and products, and as such had a method by which information could be passed easily, and at near-zero cost.
The East India Co. is a better example of how modern companies could learn something from old companies -- the EIC's local proctors at remote outposts were given a great deal of autonomy (more out of neccessity than through effusive good-will), and as such the company prospered. The local proctor was able to do things in the most efficient manner, as appropriate to the locale, rather than as a dictum from headquarters.
Still a good point, tho. I'd wager that at it's peak, though, EIC wasn't much larger (in terms of payroll) than a medium-sized business today. Say -- 1,000-2,000 employees. I'll see if I can look that up...
Big company/Small Company (Score:3)
The centralized, one-corporation company is new, because until the advent of the telephone, it was difficult -- if not impossible -- to run a company larger than a few dozen to 100 people. If you couldn't be in the same room with them, managing them was very difficult.
The telephone (and now, by extension, the Internet and networks) allows a large corporation to exist in the hundreds of thousands -- because you now have instantaneous communications between West Undershirt, Nevada and Gstaad, Switzerland.
Be careful of easy analogies -- they are easy for a reason. The "next big thing" will be (IMHO) a change in attitudes about what the networked world will do for individuals, not companies.
Personally, I believe that once a company reaches more than one billion in revenues (not market evaluation) it takes quite a bit to un-seat them. There's quite a lot of inertia in a billion dollars...
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
Of course, this analogy breaks down with digital content, because you need the musicians, artists, and programmers to continue producing new stuff. I think this is one of the things the "information wants to be free" crowd keeps forgetting: new information has an initial production cost. The current system is to ammortize that cost over all sales. (yes, I know the RIAA and MPAA are corrupt bastards who take way more than their share)
On the other hand, if in the future all of the necessities of life (food, shelter, etc.) were available for free (gratis), then costs for other things could go down significantly as well, since consumers wouldn't have to subsidize the living expenses of producers (since there would be no "living expenses"). Some form of reward system would probably still be necessary though, or the human race is likely to stagnate into a pile of lazy pigs that dont do anything but demand free MP3s and look at pr0n all day. Maybe only the people who make a significant contribution to society should be allowed to breed?
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
Some people would, yes. But who would do the necessary tasks, like colect the garbage, or be a cashier at 7-11? There's a lot of work in the world that needs to be done, and people will only do it if thy get some reward in return.
If content creators aren't paid, you end up with a world where some people are paid for their work, and others aren't. Doesn't sound fair to me. People should get paid proportionally to the contribution they make to society, and content creators do make a valuable contribution.
Hear hear! (Score:1)
Sad though it is.. In the near future, there isn't going to be any return to the days of the 'friendly local shopowner on the corner'..
Still, society really does need more of that old ethic..
The large corporate separation of the general populace into easy to dispense numbers really has played havoc with the human sense of worth..
Many diseases of the mind have become prevalent, and some actually appearing where they didn't really exist before..
Perhaps the large corporate view is more the form of the illness.. If the individuals are like viruses spreading, then, maybe they're like a cancer.
They have a central point, and they spread from there, taking over everything in their path, until they destroy the equilibrium.
Just a thought..
Malk
A virus is not necessarily a bad thing to be. (Score:2)
That's where the parallels fall on their collective mug.
You can't really draw comparisons like that because the facts are never black and white.
The RIAA, the MPAA and most big corporate content providers are up in arms because their hegemony is threatened.
Napster or something very much like it would have been welcome with open arms if it had been their idea and it spread their content (and collected their pound of flesh,) without it costing them a farthing.
You think its cheap to produce and package all those CDs for shipping to all those record stores all of which also want a piece of the sales price?
Well okay, it is, but the people, who are under investigation by the states for price collusion right now, don't want to share or play fair and if they can make more money slicing their pipeline's throat, they will.
Who cares what's on the CD? The companies all call the content "software" whether its music, movies, executable code or porn.
Get with it. They are greedy bastards and won't stop picking your pocket until they are run out of town on a rail.
If you want to get them to wise up, go for a month listening to radio or reading books from the library. When the revenue goes flat, so will the cardiograms of the greediest of them.
Re:Viruses? (Score:2)
--an "anonymous" Spinal Tap member, from their RealVideo interview on Tapster [tapster.com].
--
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
A compressed version of a song cannot ever be clearer than the original from which it was created. At best, it can only be equally clear.
For just one idea of how creativity can be rewarded in a society without copyright, check out www.fairtunes.com [fairtunes.com] (or its half-serious predecessor, paylars [paylars.com]).
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
who is going to pick up your trash all day if they dont have to?
Not sure what you're asking. Depending on the exact scenario and how I interpret your question the answer could be any of:
What reason does Farmer Fred have to design new fruits?
He enjoys doing so. It brings him fame and glory. Chicks dig it. In a world without money, you still have fame, power and sex.
But above and beyond this, can you imagine how boring this hypothetical world will be? If designing fruit keeps him occupied, it's its own reward.
but it takes him 10 years to do it when he might have done it in 1 when he needed to innovate (sorry) to keep his income flowing
So? If people want new fruits, then someone will design them. You don't think Fred is the only mad genius in the world with the Godlike Power of Fruit Design, do you?
'sides, as I mentioned above, he's got nothing better to do with his time....
Yep (Score:3)
I've read some of her stuff, it's bland, vague prognisticating.
One day when you feel hyper-active, compare "Release 2.0" to our own Bill Gates' "Business @ the Speed of Thought". See if it rings a bell.
And people shell out triple digits to subscribe to this, and pay lots of money to go to her seminars.
Even worse - she's the Big Boss of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and thus effectively the Absolute Monarch of the Internet! Under Queen Dyson's rule, the state of the Internet worldwide has gone from already bad to downright catastrophic.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
-=Gargoyle_sNake
-=-=-=-
Re:Viruses? (Score:3)
The parallel is the spread of ideas, not files. Memes, if you like that word. The particular idea in this case is "I can get music for free... I should get music for free!".
That is the idea that Napster "infects" people with. I'm not saying if it's good or bad, but it's sure an infectious idea!
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
(Yes, I'm ducking the "replicating books" question here. Suffice to say that while I don't believe in copyright law, I do believe that an author is within his rights to limit what a consumer does with his work via a contract.)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
Re:Exactly (Score:1)
This is the best explanation of "information wants to be free" that I have ever seen. I think that comparing information to physical laws yields a lot of insight. Perhaps you could flesh this out into a /. Feature?
Re:The Internet is NOT a negative net-sum game (Score:3)
Sigh. Did you even read the couple of sentences that got you so resentful? Here they are:
"We're very much looking at a biological model of an epidemic," said Esther Dyson, publisher of the technology newsletter Release 1.0. "On the Internet, a product doesn't require a central host and it doesn't require central distribution, it just spreads. It's new in business. It's been going on a long time in viruses."
I'll try to explain in simpler words. The biological model of an epidemic describes how something spreads. Its main characteristic is that once that something reached a certain point, this point becomes a source for further spreading. Obviously, this was developed by studying the spread of infectious diseases through human population. Ester Dyson pointed out that the same model is applicable to Napster-type file sharing mechanisms. This is a valid and correct (IMHO) observation. And yes, viruses did it first, although the model was AFAIK based on the spread of non-virus diseases (like plague and cholera).
No matter how hard I look I cannot see anybody here making an analogy between Internet and viruses (or virii). Perhaps you could enlighten me?
Viruses, bacteria, fungii and other parasites live off the strength of the host organism. They weaking it in order to grow, a negative net sum game since they die when the organism succumbs.
You didn't listen carefully at your high school biology lessons. Successful parasites do not kill their host, since this is counterproductive. The most successful even help their host and then it is called symbiosis. The bacteria living in your intestines are a good example of this -- without them you'd get into trouble fast.
Parasites that kill their hosts and do it quickly are at evolutionary disadvantage -- they tend to die out together with whatever part of their host population they got to.
The Internet is not a negative net sum game.
And who
But the Internet is like a living process in that it is robust and fault-tolerant. In this way it is like viruses. And very unlike the vulnerable centralized large-corporation model that still prevails. said it is?
I don't like these analogies, but let me point out to you that Internet is fairly centralized. Destroying a dozen buildings (starting with MAE East, etc.) will severly cripple the 'net. Shut down the DNS root servers and the 'net will grind to a halt very quickly. Sure, it will recover at some point, but today's internet is a far cry from the virus model: a mob of simple, self-sufficient units that replicate very quickly and do not need to communicate.
Kaa
Re:The Internet is NOT a negative net-sum game (Score:1)
Kenneth Todar University of Wisconsin Department of Bacteriology
Re:The Internet is NOT a negative net-sum game (Score:2)
Not all viruses, bacteria and fungii are parasites. Some perform useful services for their host.
You have more bacteria in your intestines than you have cells in your body. There are also large numbers of bacteria on your skin.
Exactly (Score:5)
Unlike heat, however, information is easy to make copies of. Imagine a cold room with a hot corner. Eventually the whole room is just warm. The heat covers the whole volume, but at the cost of becoming less detectable. Now imagine a information-less network with a information-source attached. Since information spread is by making copies, not by diffusion, eventually the entire network is as "hot" as the original source. There is no diffusion. In other words, a net gain for every node, instead of nodes gaining at the expense of the source.
Another parallel: You get work done when you make heat do something while it diffuses. For instance, you heat up a pot of water (spreading heat throughout the container) which creates steam. The steam escapes the spout (spreading the heat throughout the room). If you put a pinwheel by the spout you harness some of that heat escape as physical force. Same with info: Put an "information engine" at the bottleneck between the information source and the rest of the network and you turn information into money. But, just like you can't get the heat from the escaped steam back to re-heat the pot, you can't get a network node that already bought the information to pay for it again later. Copyright laws are an attempt to legislate mathematics/physics and Napster is proof once again that that doesn't work.
--
Re:Society is logarithmic... (Score:2)
We aren't even seriously exploiting the potential for fission generation on this planet. We could generate electricity so cheaply it wouldn't even be worth metering the stuff for household use. Instead, we tie up the process with absurd amounts of red tape, make policies based on a layman's understanding of nuclear fission (i.e. a healthy mix of voodoo and pure nonsense), and don't let our engineers get any real practice building nuclear reactors, then complain that it's not as cheap as it they claimed it could be.
Humans aren't reaching for the stars, they're being squeezed out among them. Exponential population growth reaches any fixed limit eventually, and while we could probably support over a trillion humans on this planet, fights for breathing space would limit the population long before that.
Seriously, though, wood?! That isn't even an actually relevant commodity, just a sentimental hang-up and a building-material and fuel of desperation for the outcastes of the world economy. As well talk about the disturbingly short supply of draft-horses.
As for oil, we've got plenty left (assuming that there even is a limited supply; we just seem to keep finding more the harder we look and now there's a serious theory floating around that it is a natural geological occurance like rocks and is in no way a "fossil fuel" nor is it, in any practical sense, finite), and we just use it out of laziness. We'll have no trouble switching to alternate energy sources and synthesizing what we need if we're pushed to it.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
diseconomies of scale can't be removed (Score:2)
If you want everybody in a company to be doing what B.G. Roller at the top wants, you need a hierarchy of middle management to keep an eye on everybody and see what they are doing.
Don't forget that a corporation has the purpose of gathering all profit to one point. This requires that hierarchy of watchdogs to make sure all the profit keeps flowing uphill. People steal. Most of them, given the chance, will skim from the profits (or worse yet, fake crises and steal directly from the investment capital).
This is the diseconomy of scale: the cost of policing the workforce, then policing the police, etc. The larger the scale, the taller the pyramid, the higher the police:worker ratio.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Centralized Information is no good... (Score:3)
There is nothing worse than centralized informaiton. Most of the news stations/papers/magazines/websites/etc... are owned by one or two giant for-profit conglomerates... That is a large part of the reason the news is boring, and fails to pick up on many truely important things, instead focusing on non-issues.
The more centralized information is in your system, the more easily a government, company, or powerful individual can successfully censor data that reaches individuals.
For similar reasons, centralized computing is not always a good idea, because it takes away control from the individual, and it also creates a single point of failure, and some great opportunities for Big Brother to poke through your files/programs/core space/whatever...
When people create products that phone home, i start to worry. I believe that software should be like a book, in that once you buy a copy, you can use it, and the company who sold it to you HAS NO RIGHT to know or care where/when/how you are using it. Otherwise large companies who know they have a large enough installed base by the balls go and do evil stuff like charge per page for their PDF encoders, or other such sleazy things that do not benefit the users, but they can't switch because they are trapped on the upgrade treadmill...
Then there is the whole thing where the less control the user has over their computer/software/etc... the better. It creeps in from all sides. UI's with fewer and fewer "confusing options" (read FUNCTIONALITY), more crippleware (think of connection/processor limits for commercial OS's (mainly NT and Digital Unix spring to mind...)). Buncha bastards if you ask me.
I much prefered the software environment before the majority of computer users had internet access, because programs didn't require, try, or expect to be able to phone home. Goddamn it!
Re:Issues (Score:1)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Of the course the Farmer's Market doesn't like any of this, since they have been using their market power to convince and browbeat all sellers of korn to do it at $17.00/bushel.
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juxtoposition (Score:3)
Like most things, there are two ways to look at this. Central Hosts, as Dyson so, um, 'accurately' put it, are made so by the fact that they are better. Why is Coke #1? Why is Microsoft #1? Before the flaming starts, realize that there is NO software more easily installable (it's grandma-approved) or application-supported than Windows. If there were a better coke, or a friendlier OS, would those monopolies be there?
The other side is this (and basically spouted by all those against big-corps): "Big corporations are heartless! They could care less about the end user and they just want profits profits profits!" And in some companies, this is very true. The dollar is numero uno and the shareholders just want to see the numbers go up. They are greed. They are everywhere.
What most of us (I'm speaking to the geek and geek-friendly alike) think the latter. That these huge conglomerates want big business, and they don't care what little people they have to stomp on to get it. But it's not so much identifying the problem as it is finding the solution. Think about it: What if Debian or Redhat or Slackware just so happen to get so user-friendly, so installable (grandma-friendly) and so supported that THEY (that distrobution) were in 95% of the computers in the world? What would our thoughts be then? Would we turn our back because they were successful? Because they made money using a kernel that everyone worked on? What kind of ironical hypocritical situation would that be?
People such as Dyson don't think as much about the big picture as they do about the paycheck they go home with.
People like us don't think about the paycheck as much as we do the big picture.
In the middle is the internet, torn between huge conglomerates, and those who want it to be completely open and free to anyone who wants anything. There are two sides, and Dyson so wonderfully forgot the other side of that coin.
Re:Is Esther Dyson the Faith Popcorn of the tech s (Score:2)
-russ
if you have a replicator.. (Score:2)
then farmer frank probably does too, which means he only has to grow *1* good tomato to start from,... the competition then will no longer be a matter of producing substance, but services which cannot be replicated.
that is what we're facing now.
...dave
OT? Schmeiser VS Monsanto (Score:1)
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Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
(Farmer Fred's Famous Fine Fruit ©2000 Monsanto Corp.)
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Re:Is Esther Dyson the Faith Popcorn of the tech s (Score:1)
Can you point me to some of her brilliance on the web, maybe?
Thanks,
George
Re:Is Esther Dyson the Faith Popcorn of the tech s (Score:2)
Rochester, NY Democrat and Chronicle, in the Monday business section, IIRC.
A quick search of their web page showed no Dyson columns, if I remeber I'll look it up and see what wire service is carrying her.
George
Is Esther Dyson the Faith Popcorn of the tech set? (Score:5)
I've read some of her stuff, it's bland, vague prognisticating. And people shell out triple digits to subscribe to this, and pay lots of money to go to her seminars.
I guess she got in the right place at the right time, but she sure doesn't impress me.
Now Freeman of course, was another story.
George
Re:well, thats a suprise. (Score:4)
But this isn't new. Perhaps it's new to you, but wearing all black and a black cape would have gotten me dirty stares in high school some 20 years ago. And I suspect it would have gotten people dirty stares 50 years ago.
It's not getting more dangerous to be different--it's always been dangerous to be different. In fact, I'd suggest that this is the first time in history that people who have been different have demanded respect from others, rather than hiding in the underground and pretending to be normal to anyone who wasn't their closest friends and/or families.
By demanding respect, the popular culture is fighting back by answering with a resounding voice: "No!" Do you blaim them? Only 40 years ago, teenagers who got pregnant were shipped off to "homes" on the outskirts of town and everyone pretended she was "visiting relatives" rather than being shuffled off to the shadows so no-one would know that things weren't picture perfect.
In fact, I would even go so far as to suggest that what we are seeing now is a rebellion by an older generation who was raised to believe that a centralized command and control system was the only way to do things. They were raised to believe that centralization, conformity, and central planning were the only ways to crack the nut of happiness and prosperity--and they're scared shitless that we're quickly migrating to an Internet Just-In-Time decentralized technological economy which can support individuality and efficiency simultaneously. A world where short manufacturing runs allow us to cost-effectively produce goods we never thought we could before. Efficient logistics which allow us to ship goods from tribes in Puru to shops in middle America. Virtually free information exchange.
Scary stuff.
We've taken away the need to centralize in order to achieve efficiency, and we have created the technology to support radical individuality where differences are not only prized, but sought out by a young generation who are sick and tired of a pre-processed white-paste "culture." Now it's just a matter for the older people of the last "command and control" culture to either adopt, or die out.
Frankly, I'm excited to be living in this age!
Re:Is Esther Dyson the Faith Popcorn of the tech s (Score:2)
I'd suggest poking around the web for illicit copies of Release X.0 or other works by her. I know there were some bootleg videos of some of her seminars floating around a few years ago, maybe someone MPEGed them.
the AC
[what papers carry her column? Are they on the web? I'm too lazy^H^H^H^Hbusy right now to search
Re:Is Esther Dyson the Faith Popcorn of the tech s (Score:3)
But quoting her out of context makes for better headlines. Isn't there a dilbert line "if it weren't for lack of context, there woudn't be any news"?
As Peter says, It may not be fair to judge the quote outside of the larger context of Dyson's thoughts. It is the Times article which takes a statement and turns it into an emotionally charged story. Reporting facts and bland opinion doesn't sell more newspapers, only preying on people's emotions sells more.
the AC
Re:Is Esther Dyson the Faith Popcorn of the tech s (Score:1)
1) painting a picture that appeals to a large set of people with synergistic agendas.
2) reading enough about technology to make up vague floating abstractions that seem concrete. Typically the scheme here is to loosely use real technology as an example, but not really explain the connection, or to simply make up a nice sounding word, without really defining it.
3) writing reasonably well.
4) not offending anyone or any group of people.
There's no question in my mind that Dyson is one of these. But enough people are sufficiently clueless about technology, or simply unable to reason, to be taken in.
-- Eric
Re:The Internet is NOT a negative net-sum game (Score:1)
I resented the analogy/comparison/modelling of the Internet as a virus/epidemic because it inspires fear in the casual reader. Even if it is scientifically correct. Fearmongering and other loaded writing is hardly scientific. It is crass sensationalism.
I am well aware of the beneficial role of many bacteria, but chose not to cloud the issue. Dyson used "epidemic" and "viruses" which most people justifiably fear. Are there any beneficial virii?
As for the Internet's centralization, yes, losing one of the MAEs or TLD DNS would hurt. But it would hardly be fatal. I've often done without DNS and know my dotted quads. Packets would eventually find their way around a lost MAE, albeit at much reduced bandwidth.
Robust doesn't mean "cannot be harmed". It means "will survive". If I break an arm, I will survive. If an engine breaks a cambelt, it will need a complete rebuild.
The Internet is NOT alive (Score:2)
The Internet appears alive because it manifests living people interacting with each other. It is an outstanding communications medium but nothing more.
The Internet develops in the direction people [users] want it to go. Where it doesn't, those parts die from low hitcounts. If Ester doesn't like the Internet, perhaps she doesn't like [mistrusts] people ?
Dis-economies of scale (Score:2)
But diseconomies seem to be very persistant: from Ford's Rouge River plant thru corp.conglomerates and raiders to federalism. I don't think these are simply organizational failures.
I think the limitations are more in human abilities. One person's ability to know and understand activities is limited, by time if nothing else. So their span-of-control is limited. Trust is always imperfect ["The Agency Problem"] so the number of layers is limited.
Improving communications and trust increases the upper bounds, but does not remove them.
The Internet is NOT a negative net-sum game (Score:4)
Viruses, bacteria, fungii and other parasites live off the strength of the host organism. They weaking it in order to grow, a negative net sum game since they die when the organism succumbs.
The Internet is not a negative net sum game. New value is being created in myriad, often unrecognized ways. The economy as a whole benefits, even if some fat parts don't like the pressure of competition.
But the Internet is like a living process in that it is robust and fault-tolerant. In this way it is like viruses. And very unlike the vulnerable centralized large-corporation model that still prevails.
It would appear that Ester Dyson is a corporatist. This is a rather tenuous position, since large organizations are a recent development (~100 yrs) and are known to suffer of very real diseconomies of scale that can overpower the advantages of size.
Re:Society is logarithmic... (Score:2)
Re:Exactly (Score:1)
- jc
---------------------------------------------
James C. Diggans
jdiggans@excelsior-web.com
Re:Piracy *IS* a negative net-sum game (Score:2)
I am always amazed at the number of laissez-faire, free-market libertarian yahoos who somehow claim that IP is nonetheless valid.
There is some disagreement among laissez-faire, free-market libertarian yahoos on this subject.
This guy [freenation.org] makes a libertarian case against IP laws.
I'm still trying to form an opinion, personally. On one hand, it seems like the new street-performer-like business models are going to make the whole issue moot (there's that damned market at work again). On the other hand, copyright can be thought of as a form of binding contract. Sort of.
I'm really hoping the new business models do take off. There is way too much bland, homogenized BS in the entertainment world, which is priced exorbitantly and licensed restrictively. $15.99 for a stupid CD from a sucky artist? No thanks. I quit buying CD's 5 years ago, and have stuck mostly with DJ mixtapes and streaming MP3 radio.
--
Re:ok... now what... (Score:1)
One Corporation Monopolies a New Thing? (Score:1)
The story of this century (the 20th) is one of giant monopolies in several industries wielding so much power that it extended into most people's everyday lives.
Just off the top of my head I can think of the original Standard Oil Company, the giant railroads, and AT&T. To the best of my knowledge, there were similar situations in banking, insurance, and heavy industries (e.g., steel).
Society is logarithmic (Score:1)
Yes, we had decentralization in the pre-1900's. Yes, software also spread in the 1980's. Then we got the Internet, and the same thing happens... ten time faster. Can you imagine millions of people every day trading mp3s via sneakernet (pretend they fit on a disk)?
Consider the following:
It took billions of years for the Earth to form
It then took millions of years for humans to arise.
It then took thousands of years for the invention of electricity
It then took ~100 years for the first mainframe to be invented
It then took 30 years until the internet, 20 years until the web, and then we arrive at the present.
It hasn't happened yet with space flight, but then too will spaceflight achieve the same rapid growth.
Yes, the free flow of information was slightly tapered by the rise of corporatism. This will only be a blip in history; already, the flow is beginning to resume its exponential course.
So therefore, the article was correct as far as it went. What it failed to release is that these sorts of trends are natural, and the dramatic information explosion and indeed the growth factor of the internet is not anything new. It is just yet one more pin being knocked down in technology's, the universe's, and indeed life itself's ever-increasing acceleration.
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Re:Society is logarithmic (Score:1)
One of the posts will probably get modded down to 0 or -1, and rightly so. If the other gets moderated up, it will have to get up to 4 or 5 just to break even. Which really sucks for my karma.
Moral: Don't double-post
P.S. It's not my fault; the MS Proxy where I work often times out on
--
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
What happens is that the farmer finds a new job. While this is the way society works (people complained about the sewing machine displacing labor; this happens with almost every new invention), we don't want this to happen to our culture. The horse is already out of the proverbial barn when it comes to music -- we can never go back to the old system again. But now we desperately must find a new revenue model, some incentive to produce, or our cultural output will suffer greatly.
--
Society is logarithmic... (Score:4)
Yes, we had decentralization in the pre-1900's. Yes, software also spread in the 1980's. Then we got the Internet, and the same thing happens... ten time faster. Can you imagine millions of people every day trading mp3s via sneakernet (pretend they fit on a disk)?
Consider this:
It took billions of years for the Earth to form
It then took millions of years for humans to arise.
It then took thousands of years for the invention of electricity
It then took ~100 years for the first mainframe to be invented
It then took 30 years until the internet, 20 years until the web, and then we arrive at the present.
It hasn't happened yet with space flight, but then too will spaceflight achieve the same rapid growth.
Yes, the free flow of information was slightly tapered by the rise of corporatism. This will only be a blip in history; already, the flow is beginning to resume its exponential course.
So therefore, the article was correct as far as it went. What it failed to release is that these sorts of trends are natural, and the dramatic information explosion and indeed the growth factor of the internet is not anything new. It is just yet one more pin being knocked down in technology's, the universe's, and indeed life itself's ever-increasing acceleration.
--
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
What if, F.Fred stops farming because its unfeasable and he needs to work for cash so that he can hold on to his house.
Imagine if F.Fred had continued farming and had, at the age of 55 gained enough experience with excellent farming techniques, and had with the luck of the seasons and some creative inspiration, stumbled upon a fine and hard to cultivate fruit that was wonderful to all who tried it; making them satiated and happy. Well sure your dupe device will allow all to have it and thats great. But the problem is it never came to pass because F.Fred had to become a pool cleaner [or did something else that isn't duplicatable and re-distributable].
Maybe no one would ever know or care because FFFF is pretty damn good, although homogenous. But I think in music, hearing the same couple songs from now until 2020 would make everyone think, "Remember when people used to be able to find the time to actually write music? Like the Beatles or something. I wonder how they ever did that being that theres no money in it and no way to support oneself."
-Daniel
Of course, the Beatles made more money than they'd ever need, but that's beside the point and uncommon.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Besides, I think your new idea hinges on replication machines being expensive and few. Imagine it this way: $5 for a fruit from anybody. $100 for a machine that, will let you make fruit-dupes that you can trade with people from all over instantaniously for variety.
now where exactly is there money in this for anyone but the person making the replicators (its built so you can't fit one in another). Creating an original fruit is a one time sale (almost, barring collector's purchases), you might only make 35 in your life; you'd have to charge a;bout $33,000 a new fruit to be able to support a family with 2 children about [guess]. And your fruit would /have/ to be a hit every time or people would just go for all the other cheep replicated fruits.
-Daniel
Centralization? (Score:4)
Cars are centralized. They get produced, thier producers extract money, they are then owned. Sure no one cares later if that care broke down or if the person hit something but that doesn't make them decentralized. Granted a leased car is more centralized.
Books are centralized. They are sold and produced and mostly distributed by the same people [publisher/author cooperation implied]. Temporary use is usually regulated by libraries. Okay so when you're done with a paper back you can give it to a friend. Its nice that that's not illegal but it also makes sense since you didn't just copy it for a friend, you gave it up. Now you could copy parts of a book, but its normally really really inconveinient to copy the whole.
Guns were mostly like cars, or ploughs or toasters or lightbulbs for that matter. How about All non-perishable goods.
Shareware is indeed different in one respect. When someone decides to pass it on, they don't have to give it up for themselves. That's very usefull for wide distribution since a person is not truely "sharing" it they're just copying and distributing it. Money is handled in a mostly centralized way; media can be charged for. It cannot be changed though to send money elsewhere (legally/ethically) without permission from the copyright holder/author (if only those were always the same actual people).
SO: MP3s and Files are just plain distributed, and there isn't a method in place to ask for money, in return for a $12 registration of the album files you get the full color process Album booklet. That would be so cool... huge full color album "jackets" with poster and t-shirt options (gold, platinum, executive/groupie registration).
So I don't think that the article was thoroughly worded to get the idea accross. I think I'm missing why centralization is "new" (think british empire, or just rome).
-DanielRe:ok... now what... (Score:2)
I think we are very slowly but surely moving in this direction. You think the flap with Napster is big, wait until stereolithography becomes feasible for the average person at home. Imagine if we all had 3D printers that could pretty much make any plastic object we wanted. Think of all the little doo-dads you would never have to buy. Think of all the cool designs people would invent and distribute. The patent lawyers will really start crawling out of the woodwork then.
-Vercingetorix
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
The one point alot of people seem to be missing is that replication technology makes the whole concept of a job and income meaningless. Farmer Fred doesn't become a pool cleaner because there is no reason for him to. He doesn't need to make money because he can replicate anything he needs (this is the one point that I think Marx had right - ownership of the means of production). What's left for Farmer Fred to do? Probably spend most of his time designing new and better tasting fruits and then freely distributing those designs. If Fred's designs are good, and people replicate them a lot, Fred's reputation will grow. People will turn to Fred about suggestions for new fruit. He will gain respect in the fruit-design community, and other fruit-designers will likely seek Fred out and offer their assistance in creating other new fruits, or will learn from Fred so they can go on to make even better fruits.
-Vercingetorix
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
-Vercingetorix
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
-Vercingetorix
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
-Vercingetorix
Issues (Score:2)
So right now there are a lot of artists who aren't sure how to distribute their stuff over the internet and continue the lifestyle they're accustomed to. And there are a lot of record companies, publishers, and whatnot that are looking at a much less certain future than any of them would likely have envisioned even ten years ago. Kind of sucks to suddenly be wondering about your pension. So of course they're going to fight tooth and claw over this issue and they're going to try to get the big bad government to squish anything that threatens them.
You see, the only reason this all -has- to happen is because no one has come forward and offered a solution that gives EVERYONE a way to back down gracefully and compromise. When that happens, then we can point fingers and mutter about the Evil Empire.
Capitalism, the Internet, and the 10th Amendment (Score:3)
Unfortunately, since some people have decided that THEY know what's best for other people, they make every effort to use the power of government to deprive people of things THEY disapprove of, be it tobacco, alcohol, or guns from the economy, or porn, MP3s, and strong encryption on the internet. The people against letting others have access to things they disapprove of (for shorthand, we'll call them the "virtuecrats,") usually try to make use of the three branches of government to enforce their dictates, and frequently at the higest (federal) level. For a while the virtuecrats used the legislature to pass laws against the things they hate, but increasingly they've been using Executive Orders and lawsuits to destroy the industries they hate.
Of course, theses ideas are anathema to both the idea of federalism, and to the Constitution of the United States itself. [Those who always complain that Slashdot is an international community and we shouldn't be talking about U.S. specific issues may start their ranting now. ;-)] Most specifically, the Tenth Amendment sates quite plainly: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Simply put, since none of these things (with the exception of guns in the Second Amendment) were mentioned in the Constitution, the right to regulate them does not, and should not, reside with the federal goverment. It resides either with the individual states, or with the people themselves. (I would argue that in almost all cases it is better that it rest with the people.) Also note that, coming after them, the Tenth Amendment modifies the Commerce and Establishment clauses (the two clauses that have probably be used to wreck the most judicial mischief).
This is not to say that there aren't occasionally real issues of individual rights involved. But unless they deal directly with issues explicitly laid out in the Constitution, they should not be be handled by the federal judiciary.
Re:Viruses? (Score:2)
It is like a virus in that it spreads in an almost unchecked manner. A virus spreading throughout an organism (in which it can live) is very close to a file which everyone wants being spread over the internet, except that its working a bit in reverse. Where the virus starts in one place and looks for the next place to go, the file starts in one place and waits for people to find it.
It also fits in the mindset of the people (and perhaps a better fit there). You start out with people of one mindset, then one person gets infected with a new idea. That new idea is spread (through various means) to people who had not had that idea as of yet where the virus/idea multiplies and spreads further. Its a very simple analogy that I'm sure you've heard used many times before.
The use of the word virus unfornatly gives it a bad light, as people don't like diseases usually, so this analogy doesn't convey a good thing like it could, but oh well, nothing is perfect.
Not new, not old (Score:4)
The examples given apply better to the USA than elsewhere, although Europe after the Black Death is a far good fit as well.
Guilds were earlier forms of "centralized" sourcing. You could only buy certain things from the guild's members, not just anyone.
The early copywrite laws grew out of laws intended to allow printers to stomp out competition, supposedly just those reprinting the printers' books. While unauthorised printing was common, it wasn't blessed, just hard to stop given slow communications and lack of international agreements (remember that many of the pirates were privateers, authorised by one government to attack ships sailing under another's flag.)
IP wasn't an issue in the modern sense. Patent often meant that the state was giving you an exclusive right to make or sell something, sometimes with no time limit on the restriction of others.
The "open" model seems to exist when there is fresh, uncliamed, and mostly unexplored, territory to move into. In the past this meant land, in the last 150 years it has come to include market and information, the Internet being an extreme example of this. These new territories allow for small providers, alternative methods, and isolation from the mainstream that helps differences come into being and grow.
Once enough individuals and institutions have carved outa fair size slice of the new land, those alternatives become a threat. There's little more open space, to grow you need to take away from others. Tribes form, social standards evolve, strangers are unsafe because they might be there to take from you.
The new territory of information is different in that we're a long way from running out of room. It's cheap to clone information, so cheap that broadcast media just throws information into the air without any idea of who is receiving it. Yes, a TV station cost money to run, but compare that to the cost of making 10s or 100s of thousands of films or videos. Some of the rules have changed, yet we - individuals, businesses, governments, haven't really adapted to those changes. No, this doesn't mean "copyright is wrong" or whatever, just that costs have taken a great drop and there's lots of room for alternative ideas. Consider the joke about cable or satellite TV - now you can watch I Love Lucy reruns on 500 channels! That's the old style - multiply the existing product, not create new alternative products.
Change scares most people, differences worry most people. It's tough to get them to see otherwise.
Viral activity - bad? (Score:2)
One of the greatest things about the Internet is the ability of ideas to spread all over, for people to gather information, for minds to meet. When we get together, we can create great things in society. This rampant flow of information perhaps harms the isolated genius, but when lots of great minds are together, they all only benefit.
Facts are facts. Does information spread on the Internet like a disease? Yes! Of course. The questions is whether that spreading is good or bad.
Re:juxtoposition (Score:2)
I don't think Microsoft was the best OS provider or that they are now. They earned a Monopoly by becoming IBM's "official provider" (piggy backing on an older monopoly), and now keep their dominance because everyone is used to using them and they have application dominance (We have by far the largest market share therefore everyone writes apps for us, thus allowing us to hold onto market share). Don't misunderstand me, Mircosoft's products are rarely terrible. They do a reasonably competant job and let inertia and marketing do the rest. I just put a fresh Mandrake 7.0 install on my box at home. It was easier than installing Windows. It recognised all of my hardware without any effort on my part, and would have chosen packages and even fdisked my hard drive for me if I had let it. It boots into a GUI logon screen and has gui tools to control every aspect of the system. It is as easy as Windows. There are three things that will prevent it from taking over much market share from MS.
1) It is as easy as Windows, but it is different. Unless someone writes a window manager that not only is as easy as MS Windows, but actually behaves in almost exactly the same manner alot of people are just going to say "Why should I learn something new? Sure this is easy, but it is easier still just to use what I already know."
2) It is not made by Microsoft. There is a large percentage of the population that takes the attitude "Better the evil I know, than the risk of worse." Whether they like MS or not, people are comfortable with them. A better, but untried (to them) system will be ignored, it could be even more trouble.
3) Apps. This is improveing but slowly. Many vendors take the "Let's see how this comes out" attitude. Of course everytime a vendor says that s/he is weaking the chance of success (One application may nmot make or break an OS, but what about a hundred or a thousand vendors saying "let's see how this plays out." Collectively they have just taken a huge hand in the decision just by doing nothing).
Don't misunderstand me here. I am not saying that MS makes the worst software in the world, nor that Linux is the best software... just that MS's status now puts automatic barriers to entry in front of any new player. The same is true of Coke. Hell, in some parts of the country (US) "Coke" is synonymous (sp?) with "carbonated beverage". It is tough to break through that kind of mindshare. I prefer lots of beverages to Coke, but I drink more Coke than I do anything except water. Why? When I walk into into a store anywhere in the country (the world really), I can get a Coke. I like Coke well enough... It is sufficent... I know I can get it. Hence I drink a lot of it.
Re:The Internet is NOT a negative net-sum game (Score:2)
Re:Dis-economies of scale (Score:2)
The limitations are in human abilities too ... well, not so much "human", but there are information-theoretical limits to what any subsystem (human) can achieve - both in terms of understanding (information input) and activity (information output).
Improving communications can help, but it is the structure of the communication systems that is important. If the system is structured badly, nothing can save it, but better and better technology can stave off the day it collapses.
In short, everything you say is true, but I disagree with your conclusion.
For more information on what cybernetics has to say on topics such as these, I suggest the following books:
Stafford Beer: Decision and control
Stafford Beer: The Brain of the Firm
Stafford Beer: The Heart of Enterprise
Re:diseconomies of scale can't be removed (Score:2)
That is the diseconomy of scale - half your employees are management - and it's unavoidable. But the "diseconomies of scale" we hear about are vastly worse than a mere 50% drop in productivity.
Re:your analogy forgets something (Score:2)
Consider that the value of information changes temporally.
This is true, although your subsequent statements didn't really go down this path. But fresh information ("news") is more valuable than the same info after it has become stale. Of course, this is only true for some types of information: The value of stock market information is proportional to its freshness. But a knowledge of calculus doesn't get any less useful with time.
Most often, it is only valuable when only a few people have access to it. If it diffuses across a room, like in your steam analogy, it actually does "cool down."
But this begs the question: How much of that value is based soley on the fact that, by controlling the bottleneck of information flow, you can make money? Sure, the information is less valuable if everybody has it, because then nobody will pay for it. But that doesn't necessarily mean it is less useful.
Big Companies New? Counter-Example... (Score:2)
The East India Company [theeastindiacompany.com]
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
With your super-duper-replication device, you've now pretty much destroyed the market on fruit. Farmer Fred rapidly goes out of business (along with all the other fruit farmers) and begins to look for other areas of employment. Once he retires, he goes back to what he loved to do, which was grow fine fruit for his own pleasure.
For the rest of us, though, that enjoyed Fine Fruit by Farmer Fred, we'll have to learn to live with the exact same Fine Fruit every time. We'll live with it until the Fine Fruit becomes not-so-fine anymore, because we're tired of it. Then we'll go to Farmer Fred in his private garden and beg him to let us have some of his new, different Fine Fruit.
Farmer Fred will put up with this for a while, and then he'll kick us out, and we'll be without Fine Fruit ever again, except for those of us who are farmers.
Good metaphor, by the way.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Now, I don't believe old Karl was right, on this or just about anything. But I'm not willing to dismiss him under all circumstances. Sure, Marx' philosophy seems to have proved wrong, given human nature. But human nautre is the sum of human history, and the underlying facts of history might be changing... If you have a replicator that eliminates scarcity, then Adam Smith and all his tenets go out the window.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
This discussion is proving that even among slashdotters, people can't get their minds around the way the world is changing. We are just barely in the realm of perturbation theory here -- pretty soon, the exponential divergences are going to really take off.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Actually, I'm being semi-facetious. I don't mean (in this case) "history" as in a written record of events, or even the idea of the non-mythical past. I mean sort of the collected experiences of everyone we'd call humans ... that is, everything experienced by the species.
So while curiosity, greed, betrayal, and fear are part of "human nature", they are also results of the evolutionary pressures upon a hairless ape on the plains of Africa. Greed and aggression are perfectly reasonable responses to a lifetime of want and scarcity. Heck, even environmental carelessness "makes sense" if your population is small and nomadic.
But ever since the invention of the steam engine, we have trembled on the edge of a world wherein those factors need not exist. Say what you want -- no one starves on planet Earth because there isn't enough food. There simply isn't enough food where it's needed. Food is no longer truly scarce; it's just hard to distribute. (Now, a rising population could easily carry us out of this regime, but that's another diatribe entirely...)
And so, yes, things will always be "scarce" in an economic sense, because the Universe is finite. But what really matters is relative scarcity. For example, the Solar System contains enough metals and materials to supply our current civilization's needs for millions of years, perhaps more. The energy available is, of course, even more amazing. If we were fully exploiting these resources, and if our civilization remained at roughly the same size and demdands, then objects would be essentially free, because the average resource cost would approach zero.
But even if you denounce this as utopian fantasy (not hard to do), that doesn't change the fact that some things are scarce in our world (and require an economy to produce and obtain) and some things simply are not. Digital information, it seems to me, is the latter -- no matter how much the copyright cartel wants it to be otherwise.
Re:Piracy *IS* a negative net-sum game (Score:2)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:3)
At least, it's worth nothing economically. There are values other than economic value. For example, if this book has been bursting inside you, the writing might provide you with contentment and peace. If Farmer Brown loves making apples and creating varieties, then he might draw emotional benefit from his new Fine Fruit. Does the world also have to pay him money on top of this? No, it doesn't.
Sure, it might pay him -- if he is contributing something worthwhile and hard to acquire. But in the world of the easy replicator, he doesn't have to work, and so his "work" is an act of joy and creation. Whatever, if anything, he gets monetarily is a bonus.
Especially in the world of the easy replicator, there is no economic incentive to create, but there is no economic penalty for it, either. Since you don't have to "support yourself", you don't have to either be paid for creating or find some other job.
It's a whole new ballgame, people. The digital world is seeing it first, that's all.
Re:Piracy *IS* a negative net-sum game (Score:5)
People using Napster are replicators. They take an object and reproduce it, in no way reducing the availability of that object to its "owner". They do undermine the unnatural economic value of the song (or whatever), but, that value derives from an artificial monopoly and has no a priori justification. So you really have to argue that Napster, etc., lead to an actual diminution of creative output and value. The jury is out on this -- some studies find a correlation with declining sales, some a correlation with increasing sales.
Key point: If you -- like most big corporations -- claim to believe in "free enterprise", then you must admit that according to all that is holy in Adam Smith, digital recordings have no intrinsic economic worth. Since the supply is effectively infinite, the price drops necessarily to zero. As such, the entire intellectual "property" scheme is an artificial restriction on the market. Now, I personally have no problem with such a thing -- but it must serve the public good, if it's going to back up with governmental force.
I am always amazed at the number of laissez-faire, free-market libertarian yahoos who somehow claim that IP is nonetheless valid.
ok... now what... (Score:2)
[just playing devils advocate...BTW]
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
Marx was a loon. living in a marxist society is as I imagine hell would be. (sorry, I dont need to imagine I'm a god... remember?)
Human nature came before human history.. sorry...
Labor, creativity, intelligence, land, time and motivation are all still scarce so Adam is just fine.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
On what grounds? not that we can't agree to disagree.. I'm curious.
True enough, they are still scarce
The universe is finite... there must always be scarcity... or we will have reached a point where all such concepts are meaningless.
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
guess I'm missing the difference here.
So while curiosity, greed, betrayal, and fear are part of "human nature", they are also results of the evolutionary pressures upon a hairless ape on the plains of Africa.
roughly the same time we became complex tool users is when homo spaien speciated from homo (habilis/erectus?).. What is the advantage of tool use? It makes things easier.. so you can GET more.. so you can DO more so you can BE better than others.
I contend that mankind has grown from individual self interest since the dawn of man and THAT has guided history.. not the other way around.
But even if you denounce this as utopian fantasy
I think also that resources will be free or close enough.. some day... but the things of TRUE value aren't created from physical resources alone.. and will always be limited.
Urban Sprawl (Score:2)
The flow of life goes beyond just real-world examples. I doubt that all up and down the line-of-supply of Walmart (or similar) you won't find technology somehow influencing end retail cost.
As far as Esther Dyson's comments about spreading like a virus, our whole market is like that, and from bigger beef and vegetables to $.99 impulse-item-goo-removers, we're quite corrupted in the real world without even seeing the computers responsable. I'm not complaining, it's just obvious how deep this goes, and it's just our times.
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'Twas the best of times, 'twas the worst if times. (Score:3)
We are now moving away from what computers were initially only designed for (massive libraries, databases, computations) and moving into a home-appliacance, easy accessibility mode.
Rules are changing. Business models are changing. If you want any power, you have to be part of the collective of a large company and climb through the ranks. There soon won't be any independent companies. What's happening to the food business is very similar to what's happening to the computer business. All of the small companies are being bought out by the giants.
People might be scared that the future will turn out very bitter, but people are always scared of change. People get scared whenever technology goes ugly, but it usually passes and people adapt.
The article does have valid point, though.
Re:Viruses? (Score:2)
Culture is viral. I taste a food I like from India, and then adapt it into my diet. Wham! Viral infection. I didn't adapt it into my diet until i got infected with the taste.
To be a virus, one must be able to transmit on it's own. Repeating catch phrases, forwarding e-mails, gossip and dance crazes are all viral. They pass from person to person in a spreading fashion. Consent is not a factor.
It is correct that human life is viral in many many ways, it is the *speed* of infections that has increased. Now we can infect ourselves with things from other cultures without ever leaving home. (This infection is only cursory, and has no depth that actually visiting the country and experiencing it first hand would have.)
Re:ok... now what... (Score:2)
1) Star trek - Everyone can have as much of everything as they want, using the amazing replication machine. World hunger is abolished. The fundamental rules of economics, such as resources being scarce, collapse. Nobody needs to work in manufacture. Seen as nobody needs to manufacture, people who enjoy it (i.e. me) can develop new products and distribute them for free (No need for money... what is there to buy?) to show how clever they are. People will change to do money-irrelevent work, like exploring space and things. We will live in a futuristic utopia.
2) What would be more likely to happen - when the replication device is in it's infancy, high-profit companies will crush it, by offering all developers money to work on something else (Think of development of clean fuels). If one developer is missed for bribery, they will finish the product. plans will be distributed on the internet, but it will be hard to use, probably not suitable for anything practical (like DECSS). Large manufacturers will find out. Every time something is replicated, hundreds of multimillion dollar patent-infringement lawsuits will be launched. Original developers will be ruined financially. In the end, a shaky product will be produced, and plans will be publically made availiable. It will likely involve lots of very complicated embedded processors that people will have trouble acquiring, but they will start to become more widespread. Initally, large companies will start launching lawsuits against users for patent infringement. This will continue for some time, until the replicators become so widespread the companies notice severe drops in profit. They will then pay^H^H^Hlobby the Government to pass some jargon-filled law, like the '2020 Digital patent enforcement act' (Oops, I meant to get an e-commerce and an internet and a millenium in that title...). This law will be passed, mainly due to the bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hdonations made by companies to politicians funds. This law will specify that all these replication machines are illigal, worse-than-murder disasters for America, they should be destroyed and the users executed by being slowly lowered into a sea of maggots.
Inintially there will be some token gesture arrests, but some manufacturers will try to cash in with a for-profit kitchen replicator. These will be brought. Eventually, most people will have replicators, like most people have TVs. These replicators will take little disks holding the blueprints for items to replicate. Companies will make money be selling replicator data-disks. A lot of people in manufacture will become unemployed, but that's okay because they will be able to replicate food. A new type of money will be introduced that can't be replicated due to some special property. After a while, people will start sharing thier disks around a bit. They will justify it to themselves, saying, it isn't the original designer taking the hit, it's the greedy corperation that is charging you for the disk. People will begin sharing the disks more. Say, 5 households per disk. The companies will realize they are now getting 1/5th of the income they once were. Whilst they could say 'Ah well, we don't have a manufacturing division, we don't need the money', they won't. They'll simply opt for a 500% increase in price. This will force more people to share disks. Sharing will increase, every time slightly less money being made. Eventually, the large companies will give up and stop producing at all. The quality of products will fall dramatically. There will be freely availiable alternatives, but they won't be as polished and user-friendly. Some people will design things because they enjoy doing it, but they won't be as motivated as paid people are. The majority of people won't explore the universe or design new things, prefering instead to stay at home and eat replicated fast food and have sex with thier replicated Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) until they die from heart attacks from the food or exhaustion after they set thier Sarah Michelle Gellar to 'Insanitable' sex appetite. Those who don't die will continue to replicate things like 16-foot yachts until the world's oceans are totally saturated with them. You won't be able to drive for all the stretch limos, rolls-royces and private hellicopters littering the streets. Power plants will begin to collapse under the demand of all the replicating people are doing. There will be some sort of restriction on how much you can replicate. Anything you don't want can be burned to generate electricity to power your replicator. Eventually, everyone will have all the things they need in the world. Replication will slow as people find there aren't any options better than what they already have. People will say 'Hey, I can't replicate anything better than this 16-processor motherboard loaded with 16 20Ghz Pentium 5 processors. Then people will realize nobody is producing anything new. Power credits to operate your replicator will become a sort of currency. Anyone who develops a product better than an existing one can sell the plans to people who will give him replicator credits in return. Soon, people will start doing whatever they're good at doing and selling the results to get credits. Then somone will say 'hey, why are we carrying out all these difficult power transfers with lotties full of ni-cad batterise? Why don't we place physical power distribution in the hands of the government and have little pieces of paper that represent power credits? We could have big ones called 'Dollars' and little ones called 'Cents'. The economy will be back at the start of it's evolution, and things will end up rather like they are today, just totally different.
Well, that's my prediction. I'm likely totally wrong.
Ciao,
Michael
...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
"Virus" is Not Necessarily a Derogatory Term ... (Score:2)
-fff-
Wrong argument (Score:2)
What we're seeing now is radically different, in that the Internet and the current level of connectivity, as well as the sheer number of people using it, means that the barriers to distributing IP have been driven to essentially zero. Yes, in the old days PC clubs swapped disks of BASIC programs (and I probably have a few on a closet shelf, in fact), but those bits didn't travel as far, as fast, or get into as many hands as bits can and routinely do today.
We're seeing the IP equivalent of the "flash riots" the SF writer Larry Niven talked about decades ago, an analogy I think of every time I hear about some site "being slashdotted".