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Peter Wayner On The Spread Of Information
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.
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...
DNA just wants to be free...
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...
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
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...
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The distinction must be made between symbiotes (like mitochondria,) and parasites (like the common cold or HIV.)
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.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
--an "anonymous" Spinal Tap member, from their RealVideo interview on Tapster.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
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 (or its half-serious predecessor, paylars).
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....
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.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Actually, there is a parallel between biological viruses and the internet, and I think that's what the original article was getting at.
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)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
I resent the Internet-as-virus analogy. It is inflammatory. And somewhat in-accurate.
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
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
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.
And this is what is meant by "information wants to be free". It doesn't mean "information has a brain and certain desires". It doesn't mean "should be released to everyone at no cost". It means "information, like heat, tends towards a state of maximum diffusion".
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.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
All the more reason to leave the planet. There's no practical end to the uranium and deuterium easily available in the solar system.
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.
Why? In a word: "fraud".
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.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Warning: THis is a rant!
... Sometimes the whole mess makes me want to go around kicking these sleazy people in the brains...
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!
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Play Six Pack Man. I
Why would the farmer find a new job? He likes making food. If he doesn't then he shouldn't be a farmer. The fact that his one farm can feed the entire world just changes the paradigm a bit. If he's making shit food, then no one will want him to make anymore, they'll eat his stuff, process it, and eliminate it. Now if he happens to be a particularly good farmer, or makes really good potatoes, people will realize this and eventually will come straight to the farmer for food. If the farmer makes it clear that he cannot make food without seeds, his fans would have to buy enough seed to make a new crop. Now the farmer could also sell other items, while people are eating, to buy his seed and pay his rent. This was, as someone mentioned the other day, the original reason for the saying "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch," i.e. get them addicted and then jack up the price, or make it up on beer.
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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+&x
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.
Maybe she was being bland and vague because the subject matter was bland and vague. I spoke to her about a specific piece of hardware, and how I might best sell it. Her suggestions were quite specific and based on years of advising other people about the same sort of thing. Yes, I'm being bland and vague about what the product was because the deal fell through.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
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
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
(Farmer Fred's Famous Fine Fruit ©2000 Monsanto Corp.)
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what papers carry her column? Are they on the web? I'm too lazy^H^H^H^Hbusy right now to search
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
Seriously, how did she get to be a wealthy spokesperson/trendsetter for the tech set?
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
everyday it gets harder to be an indevidual, I get questioned about wearing all black, wearing a cape or trench coat, more times then I care to think about, and most inquireys are less then polite.
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!
Most of my appreciation of her comes from personal contact many years ago. She jumped into the philosophical end of the computer industry at the beginning, as sort of a counterbalance to all the hype going on. Since there are so few people doing what she does, she looks very good. I feel she is a bit out of touch, because over the last decade she is more in tune with big corps and never has time for street cred or leading edge research. Cringely is a rumour spreader, and he tends to rehash ideas he picks up elsewhere. Lots of IMNSHO for that paragraph.
:-]
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
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Esther has a lot of her father's intelligence. Much of what she comes up with does have some thought put into it. She makes her money from being very energetic and passing some of that energy to people in her talks and seminars. She is very dynamic and can think circles around most people in a discussion.
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
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
The Internet is no more alive than computers are intelligent. Of all people, Ester Dyson ought to know the difference!
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 ?
I agree diseconomies of scale aren't necessarily present. They are certainly alot softer and harder to prove than the well-known economies of scale.
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.
I resent the Internet-as-virus analogy. It is inflammatory. And somewhat in-accurate.
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.
You're forgetting the exponential consumption of wood and oil that we are consuming as a species. Too bad the planet's supply of both is not logarithmic.
Wah!
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 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.
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now what?
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.
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
and so is the entire universe that we live in.
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.
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
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.
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
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).
-DanielI 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
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
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
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Or maybe, if there are no more living expenses, people will create art simply because they want to. If one or two people enjoy it, wouldn't that be enough?
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
So don't share. Who cares? The point is, it's your choice. For every person who chooses not to share, there will probably be 1000 who will. It doesn't really matter, since the continued prosperity of all doesn't depend on people doing anything at all. Share, or don't. I'm certain that many people will come together explicitly for the purpose of advancing knowledge and sharing in a community.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
I suspect that if we had replicator technology, we would probably also have the capability to build robots to take care of the drudgery. There wouldn't be any 7-11s, because what need is there of a convenience store when you can have your replicator create anything you need? The whole notion of "commerce" would lose all meaning. All that's left is the free exchange of ideas, and there would be no incentive to hoard those, since all of your needs would be provided for.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
What I see as the real issue here is how people get compensated for adding something to the culture. Whether it's music or software, prose, poetry, art or photos, as long as it can be made digital it can be copied infinitely. By anyone, because the means to do so are cheap and necessary for a computer to be more than a rather lousy paperweight. People have to get compensated somehow for the effort, or they don't do it. But there are currently a lot of hangers-on and middlemen that look to be losing a job sometime in the not too distant future. With the current state of things, you can't ditch them yet, but they're growing less necessary as time goes on. Who cares if you download a song from the internet or get it from a record store? The artist certainly wouldn't as long as they got something out of it.
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.
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.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
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.
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.
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.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Two Points:
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.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
The East India Company
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.
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.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
A farmer sells me some of his fine fruit.. now I pull out my super-duper-replication device and zap up a truckload of Farmer Fred's Famous Fine Fruit only I now give it away for free... what do I care? I didnt grow it from scratch... I didnt break my back plowing the soil.. I didnt worry about pests and soil PH levels.. I just bought some of F.F.F.F.F. and now I give it away.. now what?
[just playing devils advocate...BTW]
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
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.
----
This is a classic addition to where our future's history is going. People will look back upon this era and notice that there was a revolution, just like when computers first came in.
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.
I think you are taking viral transmission the wrong way.
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.)
-fff-
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".