Disqus - Latest Comments for jpjacks

Re: A Case Study: Yahoo! Answers Community Moderation

Joseph P Jackson — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:18:04 -0000

I am intensely interested in this topic and very much want to have both of you at an event I am hosting at Berkeley July 29-31, 2010. I did a study once of Omidyar.net for a molecular biology institute that wanted to develop its own "karma" platform for registering research projects and later perhaps using community ratings as a basis for converting points to funding $. I'm now talking to multiple groups who've started micro finance/crowd funding for science platforms as alternatives to the traditional grant system, but they don't have any sophisticated micro attribution systems in place. I also think the field of "reputonics" or the attention economy (see Goldhaber if you are not already familiar with him), has profound implications for the emerging era of "lifelogging" ( see Gordon Bell, my life bits, author of recent book Total Recall). Please contact me so we can discuss further. I've searched for your email without success. I am joseph.jackson@gmail.com Thanks

Re: Freemium and Freeconomics

Joseph P Jackson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:52:25 -0000

iamronen I encourage you to read about RepRap and other developing examples of personal manufacturing. http://reprap.org/pub/Main/... Groups from MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms have already taken Fablabs to Kenya and other countries for field testing. None of this is futuristic or science fiction--the tools have been here quite some time and are constantly getting better and cheaper. http://seedmagazine.com/con...
Neil Gershenfeld and others are trying to create a global network of community based learning centers so that people can learn to use these new productive tools You probably heard about Grameen Bank and microcredit. The astounding thing about this is that it is merely a return to basic principles of social lending that used to be common practice before centralized banking became dominant.

We're in a very difficult period right now but the next 15 yrs could bring the foundations of a new era of sustainable, universal prosperity. Yes, Silicon Valley is complicit and has participated gleefully in some of the worst hype/bubbles promoting inappropriate technologies. No, the iPhone is not going to save the world. But the idea of projects like One Laptop per child is to get appropriate technologies into the hands of those who will benefit the most. IT alone is insufficient. But combine this with democratized tools for physical production and new community based investment mechanisms to build and maintain wealth locally and you may be very surprised at how much better things can get, relatively quickly. On the other hand, pandemics, systemic disruption, and even major wars are quite possible. It could go either way!

Re: Freemium and Freeconomics

Joseph P Jackson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:01:51 -0000

Thanks Fred, I have talked to Chris Anderson a bit about this as far as trying to get an effort underway to shake up economics by making abundance a field of study. As seen just from the responses to his book so far, 99% of the planet will not understand or will dismiss this as fringe immediately. Fortunately, the main task is to build the enabling infrastructure for abundance (killer apps for alternate currency creation, cheaper tools for personal fab) and it should scale rapidly. A good google group to follow is here http://groups.google.com/gr... Will be great if you'd like to get involved in these converging movements.

Joseph

Re: Freemium and Freeconomics

Joseph P Jackson — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:19:41 -0000

There are some good exchanges in these comments but for the most part everybody seems to be missing the really big big picture. #1 Bandwidth doesn't have to be expensive. Think for a bit about the history of our telcom industry. A great book on this and larger issues is Peter Barnes' Capitalism 3.0. Basically, when the Titanic sank, aspiring communications monopolists used this event to pass legislation creating the FCC to save us from the "chaos" of unregulated spectrum which had been used by amateur radio operators. This was the beginning of imposing artificial scarcity on our public airwaves commons, and this model--charging the citizen/consumer by renting us the use of what we already own--has been the basis of Telcom ever since. The Disney empire, CBS, NBC, etc are all based on this gigantic public giveaway. Barnes calculated that even a .5% tax on the Trillions of dollars generated by this industry could have been the basis of an American Dividend fund (perhaps similar to what Alaska does).

Also see Tim Wu's Opec 2.0, why Broadband is the Oil of the digital economy and how we can avoid repeating history (hint, its probably too late!). http://www.nytimes.com/2008...

Summary: It is technologically possible for entrepreneurs to provision low cost bandwidth and/or local governments (municipal wifi) to invest in it as a public utility. Entrenched incumbents have no incentive to allow this to happen. Think AT&T.

#2 The discussion of Freemium, digital media, etc, needs to take account of the very radical changes that are going to transform the entire economy during the next 30 years. I refer to the idea of Agalmics or "post scarcity economics," meaning what happens when we harness the ever increasing power of automation to create abundance for everyone instead of concentrating resources in the hands of a few. Short term we're going to see another industrial revolution as 3d printing and Fablabs usher in an era of personal and community based manufacturing. The "Open Source Currency" or community currency movements are poised to transform finance. Local Exchange Trading Systems, Mutual Credit Clearing and Direct P2P lending will replace the "Money as Debt" paradigm that is ultimately the reason for inflation, the business cycle, and all sorts of dysfunctions that orthodox economic theory can't seem to fathom.

Anyone interested in these issues can get involved with the recently launched Abundance: The Journal of Post-Scarcity Studies. Our wiki is at adciv.org The journal is hosted at abundancestudies.org and I am opening calls for submissions to the first issue, which will present a history of post-scarcity thinking and "resource based/futurist" economics. Hope to have Issue 1 out in Sept.

Re: Conferences

Joseph P Jackson — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:13:06 -0000

As far as "spreading ideas" with TED, isn't this what Youtube is for? Seriously though, if TED was maximally concerned with carbon footprints and so forth, couldn't they just contract with local videographers in every city where the speakers/fellows are located and have them do the talk and then upload vs. ....... renting out an entire city block in Long Beach and creating a week of "spectacle philanthropy?" I understand that TED creates a "unique atmosphere and energy, etc...." but it seems ironic to stage such an event at 6K per head while the costs of disseminating ideas continue to plummet (anybody can shoot a video and use social viral marketing, digg, redditt....and P2P, bittorrents to distribute). Perhaps the cost savings alone could then fund most of the fellowships.

It seems to me that no matter how inclusive TED now aspires to be, the very concept of the event presupposes a particular conception of how we identify and "certify" the "ideas worth spreading." I mean, honestly, haven't a lot of the fellows spent years "spreading their ideas" without all the pomp and circumstance before they finally get "discovered" and reach the grand stage of TED?

For fascinating insights into questions of the "attention economy" see http://goldhaber.org/blog/. Disclaimer, not my blog, I'm just a fan. Conferences ultimately get their allure from artificial scarcity and the creation of exclusivity....otherwise how would you "sell" the event to registrants. The great promise of the net is to break the distribution monopoly that characterized the 20th century industrial model of cultural production. Now that anyone can afford the means of production for digital media ($1000 home studio equivalent to $ 1 million of equipment 20 yrs ago), there is no need for 500 "top name" artists to capture all the eyeballs. American Idol proves that pop stars are not in short supply--one can be manufactured in a few months--talent is not scarce, but our attention is routed only to select "superstars." Hell, the industry of celebrity impersonators and cover bands shows that the experience of Frank Sinatra, Elvis.... etc can essentially be duplicated--even if concerts seem scarce, the supply of equivalent experience performances could be expanded to meet demand.

Given this shift in perspective, and the new possibilities of digital media production and distribution, I'm left feeling that TED perpetuates an obsolete idea of celebrity as one-to-many communication, whereas the future is heading toward micro-niche-celebrity (twitter) and many-to-many interaction. Sure, seeing and meeting these "super achievers" can be inspiring, but it they are usually noticed and promoted because they are, in Gladwell's term, "outliers." It is fine to call attention to these exemplars, but does the "average person" watch a TED talk and feel that they can relate or are they left with the feeling that only these "anointed" can change the world?

Certainly, Gandhi, MLK, and other leaders of social movements managed to spread their ideas without TED.... the more connected we get, the less necessary such an event seems. And whatever spin you try to put on it, a $6K price tag or, for those who can't afford it, a "feed from Palm Springs" for only $3750, gives the lie.

I'm with Groucho Marx on this one.