Friday, January 29, 2010

Public Property

Recalling the story of the electronic democracy movement's infancy just a short while ago, he contemplated the implications of the presentation he was about to make.


When the universal means of exchange paradigm started to fail it was not at all clear how a new value system would take its place regardless of its efficacy. A single unit of value measurement seemed for centuries to be the holy grail of prioritization scalable from an individual all the way up to the collection of all individuals.


Eienstein was on to something when he said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler". In hindsight it was not hard to understand why our valuing system had become simpler than optimum. Like so many long-lived procedural patterns, the nuance of its meaning was lost to habit. People were unaware that the underlying assumptions no longer applied, their simply was not sufficient consequence to ignoring the rationale for automatic activity. Sure, the signs were there when clever but short-sighted folks started exploiting the flaws. For the most part the consequences were minimal because the holes could be easily plugged.


As complexity started yeilding to technology mediated consensus the simplicity of the value system (a single unit of value) was less important to efficient transactions. The first clear illustration of this was trying to value along a single dimension, friendship.


So, in this new environment and using this insight, how might he present the advantage of rethinking ownership of intellectual objects? He logged on with the Level VII protocol and began to document his current stream of consciousness.


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