The Value of Things

Value is a complex thing. Either in a currency system, or in a system of barter, value is something that must be discussed, negotiated, settled. It depends essentially on the ratio between offer and demand, and offer depends on the scarcity of each of the components that make up each good or service. Demand is even more complex, depending on what is needed, but increasingly, on what is wanted.

The evolution of scarcity

In great part, the history of Humanity is the history of technology. Fire is technology. The wheel is technology. Writing, mathematics, farming, bureaucracy – they’re all technologies. And technology upsets the status quo of what scarcity is. The wheel made distance a less expensive commodity. Gutenberg made information so simple to disseminate to the point that it transformed something easy to safeguard to something easy to copy. The loom made textiles worthy of a King available to the poorest. And technology keeps its relentless pace.

The evolution of demand

Producers of goods and services, to safeguard their livelihoods in the face of dwindling scarcity, created fashion. It’s just the simple act of creating “wants” where before there were “needs”. It’s fashionable to have the latest clothing. To live in the best places. To have a finer car. You don’t need any of those things, it’s all a question of what is fashionable.

Meta Evolution

Digital is the meta invention. Digital + The Internet are the Gutenberg press squared. Cubed. What once was made easy is now completely effortless. If you can describe it or scan it, you can make it available to the world, and thanks to the search engines, if you tag it well, it will be found by those who need it (or merely want it). Even if you’re just copying what someone else created, even without their consent.

The Problem

If an artisan spends a considerable percentage of his/her time creating something physical, if you just go and grab what they created, it’s theft. In part because it’s easily enforceable (you can lock physical things up) and also because it’s our culture, of property of physical goods. If an artisan spends a considerable time creating something that can be scanned or is natively digital, and wants to sell it, the buyer can easily duplicate it. Physical goods vs. Informational goods. They’re very different (and even the design of physical goods is usually easily replicated).

Trying to stop the ocean

The intellectual property industry’s reaction was to try to lock content up with DRM (Digital Rights Management). Millions were spent trying to lock what can’t possibly be contained. What they didn’t understand is that it takes only a single copy to get freed to be replicated endlessly to everyone who wants it. Basically it was a big and shortsighted waste of money.

An opportunity

Instead of fighting what can’t possibly be fought, some intelligent people created the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org) – basically, the expanse between “All Rights Reserved” (full copyright) and “No Rights Reserved” (placing something in the public domain). Instead of only having only the extreme options, they created several types of machine/people/lawyer readable legal licenses under which you can license what you create. Want your work to be available for free, but only for non-commercial uses? But not used in derivative works? But you insist on having it attributed to your name? No problem, Creative Commons licenses have it covered.

For free? Why?

Because the money to be earned is not on things that can be copied. That’s a lost battle. If you’re a musician, you can make more money on concerts and events. If you’re a photographer, more money can be made by shooting specific assignments for customers, or on photography workshops. If you’re a writer, you can make more money by participating as a speaker at conferences. The era of making something and making your livelihood from just selling copies of it is nearing its end. And getting your creations known to the widest possible audience is the key for getting work that can’t be replicated.

Summing up

This is the reason why I don’t create single copies of my photographs or limited editions. I want people to enjoy my photography not because it’s scarce, but because they like it. I do sell signed and numbered copies (limitless editions only), but only for the people who voluntarily want to financially support my art. Don’t buy it as an investment – buy it because you enjoy it and want to see more of it! Everyone else is welcome to just download and use (non-commercially) my photographs any way they like it – on your computer desktop, on your blog, by printing and hanging it on your walls!

You can visit my portfolio at pedromourapinheiro.com

We’re living through a transition, made possible by the development of the internet in the past fifteen years.  Some people still use the new medium as a digital replacement of the old system – they read online newspapers, chat with people they know personally, basically do online what they did “in real life”.  But others, and you’re one of this group if you’re reading this, have adopted a completely new posture of being “well informed people”, taking the advantage of the p2p (person to person in this case ) system made possible by *everyone* being able of becoming a source of information and creativity if they wish to do so, basically “for free”, in a whole range of different mediums.

This has created a wealth of available information, some of it excellent, some of it original, and some of it intelligible to non-experts outside each field, and we can discuss about what we learn with people we’ve never met before.  This makes the selection of what we read or watch, and who we interact with, much more important decisions than they were under the old system, due to the sheer scale vs. the available time that we have.  How do you personally handle climbing these mountains of knowledge?

Who pays this increase in immobilization costs? The final customer, meaning housing and offices are much more expensive than they should be if the necessary official legal steps took a reasonable time. And who profits from it? The lenders – and the bureaucracy, who reaps even more taxes on the interest charged over the loans.

After 30 years from their launch from Earth, despite still being operational and doing active and useful science, they are mostly unknown to everyone. These are the pinnacles of human genius – pieces of ourselves out there, studying the universe. We should be celebrating our long reach as humans – instead, we focus on the worst and most banal aspects of humanity, everyday.

They’re not the only probes still working – many others are active, a lot of them lasting well beyond their expected lifespan.

First off, it’s completely multi-modal – meaning that you can update it or receive updates by several different channels – on your phone through SMS messages, through your existing instant messaging account, through your web browser, or through a dedicated client (the system is open, anyone can interface with it – and for now it’s free and they are footing the bill for the SMS messages the system sends you). I like this multi-modality, meaning you can reach it and be reached (or not) in the way you choose.

As with any basic and open system, people have been using/hacking it in interesting ways, finding new ways to make it fun and/or useful. The basic usage is to give the world (if you have your account public, or just your friends if you have it marked private) a status of your situation, such as “stuck in traffic”, “eating lunch @ so an so”, or “taking crap from the pointy-haired boss again” – which gives rise to interaction, as people in your list may respond (either to the “ether”, or prefacing it with “@name” so everyone knows to whom the interaction is directed), giving it a feel of a big pub conversation (in which many times you’ll “hear” just the half of the conversation from the person on your list). Some people have also created identities that are fictional (like Darth Vader telling you what he’s doing and feeling ), or useful hacks (such as RSS news feeds that you receive like regular twitts). Another useful aspect of it, as the Twitts are archived in your account, is to record little ideas or phrases in the collective memory that you can look up later (and that you don’t mind other people finding out about, of course). Meg Pickard has written a nice summing up of Twitter as she sees it.

This makes Twitter not a messaging system as such, but more of an interface for very short messages, be it between people, or connecting us to machines (imagine getting your server status as twitts, as another example, something not very complicated to script). It will be bought by Google like everything else (it’s probably being indirectly financed by the money this guy made when Google bought Pyra Labs/Blogger). They’ve got a blog where you can keep up with their evolution.

A Catholic priest says to a rabbi: “It seems to me that if the Creator made pork, He must have made it for a purpose. It must be a sin not to use it then, don’t you think? When are you finally going to try it?”

The rabbi replies: “At your wedding.”

(as found on wikipedia, and for those who don’t know: Catholic priests must remain celibate, and Jewish people can’t eat pork).

This week it was announced that the OLPC would see a price hike, and that it wouldn’t be able to reach the $100 price target until at least 6 million units are sold, and that it would start to be sold around the $130-140 price range.
One of the interesting business/social practices of Freeplay is that they help fund their social works in the developing world through the sale of their products in the developed world.

I think the specifications of the OLPC are very interesting also for children in the developed world – think of it as a Fisher Price “My first laptop”, for children 5 and up, simple, sturdy, pre-packaged with reading and math software for first graders.  If it was sold for approximately $199/€159 in the US and in Europe, and the difference between the cost and the retail price applied towards financing the OLPCs to the developing world, it would help both increase the amount of OLPCs produced and lower both the overall cost and purchase price for the developing world.

If you have a dog, or are thinking of getting one, here’s good info about it.  On the last page of the article there are some links to guides on choosing which kind of dog is the best for your lifestyle.  And don’t forget, be it a dog or a cat, before buying one, why don’t you go by your local animal shelter?  Millions of dogs and cats die each year because there aren’t enough people wanting them.