-I think that if you made something and millions of people were copying it without authorization you'd be pissed, too
I'd be flattered actually. It's only the greedy fucker who thinks to himself, "Damn! If only those passive leeches were FORCED to buy each copy for $10, I'd be $10 * 1,000,000 richer right now! Rich! RICH, I tell you! Those filthy pirates!".
I've got a lot of artists in my family, but they don't make their living through artificial scarcity - they work by selling what's actually scarce, rather than trying for a license to print money.
A million cheap fans are worth more than a million DRM-enforced "potential sales".
OK -- Imagine being immobilized under all that rubble and having a snakebot scare you half to death as it slithers into your crevice. No, it'd be much wiser to go with cockroach-bots.:)
I had high hopes for Planetscape, but after just finishing off-and-on play through three 7-day trials(*), the effect of the grand scale of the game wore off, the dozen-or-so vehicles lost the wow-factor, and the "battle rank" advancement to get more implants and skill certifications wasn't even that rewarding (i.e. addictive).
I admit that some of the combat was massively intense (as in 5 frames-per-second intense on a fast rig), but the periods of inaction and travel time between hotspots got boring; the game started to feel like a job of retaking the same boring continent over and over. The game's backstory for the three factions didn't make the conflict any more interesting.
IMO, a game needs to allow for a high degree of emergence so it can take on a life of its own. Plant some simple rules and allow the players to create the complexity they want from the bottom-up. (Yeah, easier said than done). I guess this is why I love games like SimCity...
(*) To play through more than one trial period you just have to create a bogus GameSpy account for each new unique trialcode.
I must be an oddball when it comes to tech then as I've always been humble (well, mostly). However, I do recognize the evolutionary psychology behind wanting to show off your apparent superiority over others; it's a feeling of power in an otherwise powerless life.
To call Kurzweil insane indicates you either haven't really read his or others' ideas on this subject, or you have a bad case of cognitive dissonance.
It's not a pie in the sky prediction of the future so much as it's extrapolating based on thousands of years of observation of the rate of technological change.
So why do you have problem with this observed exponential trendline? It won't go away (unless humans go away).
You've just described The Law of Accelerating Returns; it applies to the rate of technological growth in general, rather than just the specific case of Moore's transistor count observation.
The funny thing (to me at least) is that very few people have fully digested the implications of exponential progress. They're in for a rude awakening over the next couple decades.
So all we need is a movie review site that takes into account your tastes for calibrations. So you get a fuzzy-something like: "Critics who like the movies you like, rated this movie 7/10". I'm sure someone's doing this already.
Word-of-mouth advertising is the best kind there is, and if industry really thinks the true voice of the street is "undermining their carefully crafted marketing message" then expect to see them ramp up their stealth marketing and astroturfing in order to subvert that voice.
Jokes about restricting free speech aside, stealth marketing is the much more likely (and insidious) response to the people tuning out mass media hype and tuning into their webs-of-trusting-friends.
And by the way, my fellow slashdotters, Gigli is actually a GREAT movie! I really can't recommend it enough! Don't believe the critics or those lame spoofed SMS text messages either! See it tonight fer shizzle!!
The 'human' mind and it's creativity is it's defense and survival mechanism, just like any other animal.
The problem is that this "mine!" survival instinct only evolved because resources were historically scarce, but this innate greed doesn't translate well to economies of abundance.
Taking Ogg The Caveman's prize spear deprives him of its use, and he may go hungry - that is immoral. "Taking" Ogg's campfire song to another campfire deprives him of nothing; however, if I really like Ogg's song, I might decide to trade him a piece of flint in exchange for a unique (i.e. scarce) campfire performance, or I/we might decide to patronize him to create an original (i.e. scarce) work.
an artist or coder who wants to earn their bread and butter from their art
And how would you feel when (not if) in the future the molecules that compose bread and butter are almost as cheap and easy to assemble as are the digital bits that compose information? Would you object to people making and distributing illegal molecular copies of food, because then, well, the farmers (er, agribiz actually) would starve? Oh, wait, they wouldn't starve.
Focus on what's really scarce rather than cheering for artificial scarcity just because it fits the old world.
No, I think our future lies not in space, but in the other frontier: the oceans.
Maybe you're unaware of another, much larger frontier, that you could call "innerspace."
Understandably, most people only know of the human condition and so are bio- and planetary chauvinists. But living like spam in a can really isn't very futuristic once you've opened your eyes to the exponential trends in technological progress, and the coming transhuman condition.
A biodegradable version of these things was also featured in Vinge's more recent short story "Fast Times at Fairmont High". The point was that certain areas (like parks) that didn't allow the conventional sensors would allow these because they didn't end up as toxic litter and need to be replaced after they failed.
The sensor nodes themselves weren't as important as how their data was seemlessly networked into everyone's augmented reality.
Personally, I don't care about anyone's "IP" "rights", including my own:
IMO, a lot of people don't care about "IP", unless they're either starving or extraordinarily greedy.
It's evolutionary psychology underlying this whole property debate: controlling ownership whether physical or intellectual == enhanced survival probability == greed is good gets propagated (regardless of scarcity).
The age of digital plenty just rubs some people the wrong way; and in the coming age of material abundance ("desktop manufacturing" nanotech), many more won't be able to cope with the idea of not really owning physical things anymore, because our brain's wiring can't adapt that fast without help. Selfish genes become a hindrance at a certain point.
Your doomsday analysis leaves out a huge development on the horizon: molecular manufacturing. This "desktop manufacturing" will mean the end of most international trade and conflict over resources. An economy of abundance means that all people can afford to be Basically Good, and share the commonwealth, instead of having to be greeding and fuck the next guy over in order put food on the table.
You're right that the short-term future doesn't look to bright though.
In the case of a game, goods only have value if the creators made the choice to make virtual goods artificially scarce, since that's what people are used to in the real world at the present point in time.
What would be interesting is to see a game model a post-nanotech economy of abundance, where any object can be copied almost as easily and cheaply as data. What would be valuable then would be the fundamental scarcities: space, energy, time, and intelligence.
So in this game an instance of an object itself doesn't have much value (hey, like an mp3), but the entity (NPC AI or human) who is capable of providing the service of designing newer and better objects and experiences, is. I suppose the rest of the game would be territorial fights over the best gameworld realestate, and competing to create the best things.
some scenarios: 1) "Hey, 3 wenches and 50 acres of land for anyone who kidnaps the player known as 'FrankLloyWright' to do killer architecture for our glorious l33td00ds-with-big-guns Kingdom!"
2) "Damn! The chinese are stealing more than their fair share of the solar slice! Destroy 1% of their panels in the mercury orbit. Why can't we all just get along?"
3) "Those evil arabs are squatting on large hydrocarbon deposits! they're evil, and it's manifest destiny for us to take it! We'll use the hydrogen in our fuelcells, and the carbon to build yet another space elevator!"
Man, this post just didnt come out the way I wanted it to, and 3 beers doesn't count as a PUI (Posting Under the Influence).:)
Now, the ideal solution would be an all-digital library...
I'm reminded of an episode of Futurama where all the knowledge of mankind was stored on 2 tiny disks inside a giant building.:)
Fact is that real world libraries will become mostly redundant as soon as the digitial divide is reduced (thanks to shinking computing costs) and virtual libraries are then available to all. Cheaper & more convenient wins.
... but publishers will not agree to that anytime soon.
Which is why black markets naturally emerge to meet that demand.
To be honest, I'm quite amazed that humans still haven't caught on to the exponential progress meme, and instead extrapolate our current rate of progress linearly.
I think it's amazing that you can't wrap your head around the fact that complexity emerges from simple evolutionary processes. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Even artificial evolution produces systems we can't understand, but that still work - no God need apply.
I suspect that if we had enough computing capacity to simulate the world down to atomic detail, that eventually virtual creatures would evolve that took advantage of the same locomotion as the waterstriders. Same with geckos - their "magic" stickyfingers would turn out to be using natural physical properties (vanderwaals force).
Yes, but Asimov wrote the Foundation series in the WW2 era, before nanotechnology was a science (or even much science fiction). A post-nanotech Earth-Trantor could be self-sufficient with solar and fusion for energy and by recycling moleculur resources to manufacture new food, buildings, ships, and other objects, since atoms don't wear out.
It's not totally realistic, but neither are respawning monsters
So why not try an experiment where you populate the gameworld with creatures who can reproduce (and tend to migrate toward and settle near player camps to keep things interesting)?:) Of course, there might be a problem if the human players exterminate a race completely, but a "living" ingame ecosystem would be fascinating (in theory).
e.g. If wamprat-eating Orcs are over-hunted, then the wamprat population could explode and eat all the players' crops, so then the players don't have enough virtual energy to go out and hunt Orcs at the same rate, so the Orcs spring back to eat more wamprats. That kind of dynamic is exciting (and counts as education for some people).
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I'd be flattered actually. It's only the greedy fucker who thinks to himself, "Damn! If only those passive leeches were FORCED to buy each copy for $10, I'd be $10 * 1,000,000 richer right now! Rich! RICH, I tell you! Those filthy pirates!".
I've got a lot of artists in my family, but they don't make their living through artificial scarcity - they work by selling what's actually scarce, rather than trying for a license to print money.
A million cheap fans are worth more than a million DRM-enforced "potential sales".
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OK -- Imagine being immobilized under all that rubble and having a snakebot scare you half to death as it slithers into your crevice. No, it'd be much wiser to go with cockroach-bots. :)
--
I admit that some of the combat was massively intense (as in 5 frames-per-second intense on a fast rig), but the periods of inaction and travel time between hotspots got boring; the game started to feel like a job of retaking the same boring continent over and over. The game's backstory for the three factions didn't make the conflict any more interesting.
IMO, a game needs to allow for a high degree of emergence so it can take on a life of its own. Plant some simple rules and allow the players to create the complexity they want from the bottom-up. (Yeah, easier said than done). I guess this is why I love games like SimCity...
(*) To play through more than one trial period you just have to create a bogus GameSpy account for each new unique trialcode.
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To call Kurzweil insane indicates you either haven't really read his or others' ideas on this subject, or you have a bad case of cognitive dissonance.
It's not a pie in the sky prediction of the future so much as it's extrapolating based on thousands of years of observation of the rate of technological change.
So why do you have problem with this observed exponential trendline? It won't go away (unless humans go away).
--
The funny thing (to me at least) is that very few people have fully digested the implications of exponential progress. They're in for a rude awakening over the next couple decades.
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Jokes about restricting free speech aside, stealth marketing is the much more likely (and insidious) response to the people tuning out mass media hype and tuning into their webs-of-trusting-friends.
And by the way, my fellow slashdotters, Gigli is actually a GREAT movie! I really can't recommend it enough! Don't believe the critics or those lame spoofed SMS text messages either! See it tonight fer shizzle!!
--
The problem is that this "mine!" survival instinct only evolved because resources were historically scarce, but this innate greed doesn't translate well to economies of abundance.
Taking Ogg The Caveman's prize spear deprives him of its use, and he may go hungry - that is immoral. "Taking" Ogg's campfire song to another campfire deprives him of nothing; however, if I really like Ogg's song, I might decide to trade him a piece of flint in exchange for a unique (i.e. scarce) campfire performance, or I/we might decide to patronize him to create an original (i.e. scarce) work.
And how would you feel when (not if) in the future the molecules that compose bread and butter are almost as cheap and easy to assemble as are the digital bits that compose information? Would you object to people making and distributing illegal molecular copies of food, because then, well, the farmers (er, agribiz actually) would starve? Oh, wait, they wouldn't starve.
Focus on what's really scarce rather than cheering for artificial scarcity just because it fits the old world.
--
Maybe you're unaware of another, much larger frontier, that you could call "innerspace."
Understandably, most people only know of the human condition and so are bio- and planetary chauvinists. But living like spam in a can really isn't very futuristic once you've opened your eyes to the exponential trends in technological progress, and the coming transhuman condition.
--
The sensor nodes themselves weren't as important as how their data was seemlessly networked into everyone's augmented reality.
--
IMO, a lot of people don't care about "IP", unless they're either starving or extraordinarily greedy.
It's evolutionary psychology underlying this whole property debate: controlling ownership whether physical or intellectual == enhanced survival probability == greed is good gets propagated (regardless of scarcity).
The age of digital plenty just rubs some people the wrong way; and in the coming age of material abundance ("desktop manufacturing" nanotech), many more won't be able to cope with the idea of not really owning physical things anymore, because our brain's wiring can't adapt that fast without help. Selfish genes become a hindrance at a certain point.
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You're right that the short-term future doesn't look to bright though.
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Viewers interested in this news may also be interested in:
Bleh. Why did I bother? :)
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In the case of a game, goods only have value if the creators made the choice to make virtual goods artificially scarce, since that's what people are used to in the real world at the present point in time.
What would be interesting is to see a game model a post-nanotech economy of abundance, where any object can be copied almost as easily and cheaply as data. What would be valuable then would be the fundamental scarcities: space, energy, time, and intelligence.
So in this game an instance of an object itself doesn't have much value (hey, like an mp3), but the entity (NPC AI or human) who is capable of providing the service of designing newer and better objects and experiences, is. I suppose the rest of the game would be territorial fights over the best gameworld realestate, and competing to create the best things.
some scenarios: 1) "Hey, 3 wenches and 50 acres of land for anyone who kidnaps the player known as 'FrankLloyWright' to do killer architecture for our glorious l33td00ds-with-big-guns Kingdom!"
2) "Damn! The chinese are stealing more than their fair share of the solar slice! Destroy 1% of their panels in the mercury orbit. Why can't we all just get along?"
3) "Those evil arabs are squatting on large hydrocarbon deposits! they're evil, and it's manifest destiny for us to take it! We'll use the hydrogen in our fuelcells, and the carbon to build yet another space elevator!"
Man, this post just didnt come out the way I wanted it to, and 3 beers doesn't count as a PUI (Posting Under the Influence). :)
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I'm reminded of an episode of Futurama where all the knowledge of mankind was stored on 2 tiny disks inside a giant building. :)
Fact is that real world libraries will become mostly redundant as soon as the digitial divide is reduced (thanks to shinking computing costs) and virtual libraries are then available to all. Cheaper & more convenient wins.
Which is why black markets naturally emerge to meet that demand.
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Thousands of years? Try decades.
Singularity or bust.
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I suspect that if we had enough computing capacity to simulate the world down to atomic detail, that eventually virtual creatures would evolve that took advantage of the same locomotion as the waterstriders. Same with geckos - their "magic" stickyfingers would turn out to be using natural physical properties (vanderwaals force).
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I'd take a "waterspider controversy" over the Kobe Bryant crap any day. Tabloid news.
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So why not try an experiment where you populate the gameworld with creatures who can reproduce (and tend to migrate toward and settle near player camps to keep things interesting)? :) Of course, there might be a problem if the human players exterminate a race completely, but a "living" ingame ecosystem would be fascinating (in theory).
e.g. If wamprat-eating Orcs are over-hunted, then the wamprat population could explode and eat all the players' crops, so then the players don't have enough virtual energy to go out and hunt Orcs at the same rate, so the Orcs spring back to eat more wamprats. That kind of dynamic is exciting (and counts as education for some people).
--