Online presence

Before we go on, you may wish to look at the First part or Ennui's out of sequence continuation - or even a couple of texts from 'way back in the day' on this subject: [Future culture manifesto] and [Electonicopolis]

So, we have something like a metaphor for online existence as it currently is.

But one of the big changes online is that no one knows who you are, and the concept of persistent 'worth' is changed...

We continue the transcript.

Iceman: typing differntly like using slang or something like that can tell you a little more about the person, like where they are from.
Vitenka: but the ability to fake on the net is second to none
Injektilo: There is a difference when someone is riled
Iceman: But you can really fake anything on the net
Ennui: You can't fake intelligence. Ask goku.
Injektilo: soeme people will just SATART TYPING IN CAPS YOU Ho! and others will use smart insults.
Vitenka: Good point - so there is an inherent value system. The harder something is to fake, the more it is 'worth' in some sense.
Ennui: The value system is information based. Whether that's ideas, acks, software whatever. Info is the currency of the net and if you have it then you can trade it. I mean in its widest sense. As in people value your critisim as info, morat wesites as info, hlds as info.
Vitenka: Ah well, on the net EVERYTHING is information, you're taking the easy way out :) I'd say that information was more a trade goods - and different tribes value different types of information.
Ennui: How is social worth defined outside of the context of trade?
Vitenka: ah, got it - same point as you, with my definition of trade goods - there is a common arrow among the tribes - if something is rare, (hard to fake) then it is more valuable as well as 'more is better' :) So there is SOME transfer of social wealth between tribes
MC: Only if I'm interested in that knowledge
Oz: Although the social wealth tends to go with the person who migrates.
Injektilo: The person with the most knowledge has the most worth - the village elder.
Vitenka: Leading neatly back to the origional 'famous' class.

Oz: Well, what's the cost of information?
Vitenka: oz - more information?
Injektilo: But on the net, very few people give info but so many take it, it isnt balanced trade, people come and take what they want then move on, parasites.
Vitenka: We do't have anything approximating a 'base currency'
Ennui: Information itself isnt inheriently valuable. Its interpritatoin which is. Information is free but to use that information is value - interpretation through synthesis, or application, or education provides the worth in a society.
Vitenka: Right - but the information is the carrier of that, similarly a coin has no inherent worth.
MC: information isn't necessarily free - how much did it cost you , vit, to be able to get the info to put together your guides, for example.
Ennui: carrier == currency
MC: well, was thinking mostly of the cost of your time - what value does that have? but there were the physical costs to start up.
Vitenka: That is definately something I can measure - it took me time and effort to make those things. So, we can say how much those things cost in physical terms - but their worth is whatever people get out of them. Which means that they might be worth either more or less than they cost - so they aren't really a currency.
Ennui: value is never absolute. Percieved value is not usually equivalent to monetry value.
Vitenka: So, let's abandom this, say that 'information is currency' in some sense, even if we don't know the particular worth and get back to 'is this gonna work'?
Injektilo: It works atm vit.
Vitenka: ok inj - will it KEEP working that way? Or will, for example, it become impossible to find certain information without being an 'in member' of some tribe?
Coldfire: barter based systems require vastly more knowledge about economic systems and produce an iniquitous situation. A currency based system allows for universal trade without knowing the value of every item.
Ennui: But in an information economy the whole point is that that knowledge is avilable.
Injektilo: the way i see it, the net could go 2 ways, 1 it will be like the tv... it will become part of everyday life for everyone and be taken for granted and maybe people will get bored, or 2 the matrix.
Vitenka: inj - I think you missed 3 - the net will be a part of everyday life, which will be DIFFERENT from todays life
Coldfire: Ok, say there are 1 million items of value and you have one and want to sell it. It can be info/ physical object/whatever. Then someone says Ill give you this and this for it and you have no idea what they are.
MC: what will you trade at the local market for an apple?
Coldfire: And the VALUE of items starts to become valuable info in and of itself...
Ennui: Book for the day, old but relevant: Bruce Sterling, Islands on the net. More modern tribal slant: Bruce Sterling, Distraction

Vitenka: A question - if we DO 'degeerate' a generation to the tribal view, then in a hundred years time, would they reinvent civilisation and democracy and cities on the net? :)
Iceman: I think so.

Ennui: Why is tribal culture seen as degeneration? I think its the natural evolutionary next step for cilvilisation
Vitenka: Well, it's thought that that's the way people lived a few k years ago. So it's backwards.
Iceman: because it wasnt as advanced as we are today i guess
Oz: I think tribes were very possibly the most stable political/social/governmental/economic systems to grace the earth.
Vitenka: ennui - but in a lot of ways it is a step back, you lose democracy and justice. The origional question was, 'is this a bad thing'
Ennui: Cities were only popular because of the wealth creation of location specifics. The net means that the motivation for cities residence is no longer there.
Vitenka: ah, but there IS still a drive for location and settlement. Moving has SOME cost, and it is valuable to be in proximity to other like minded people.
Ennui: Sure but tribalism doesnt mean nomads.
Oz: Basically you need to be with your friends, or else we'd all be on different irc servers atm.
Ennui: It means people organising according to common interestes rather than around physical location.
Oz: Proximity to people with common ideologies
MC: much easier to move if your neighbors piss you off
Vitenka: would this tribal viewpoint on the net give way to countries and governmetns on the net?

Ennui: there were very interesting experiments I was involved in on removing all authority, everyone had the power to remove or add someone.
Oz: You can see; this is how settlements grew up - a hierarchy
Ennui: Didnt work. Chaos.
Vitenka: When I say backwards, I'm meaning in time, without exculusion that it might lie forwards too. You are attatching a negative meaning to it. This meaning is not intended
Coldfire: because of anonimity the net will be heirarchical - very little authority to the normal user.
Vitenka: But a user high in the heirarchy is not fundamentally different from one low down. They only get there by the decision of the other people. Unless you count 'king of nothing' as high up :)
Coldfire: No, he gets there by the decision of the infrastucture owner, and the users have little power. The model is forming already - access to bandwidth required to run some frorm of INet servcie is deided by RL financial resources.
Vitenka: there's enough infrastructure, that if people don't like a bit of it, they move.
Coldfire: Yes, but there are generally only 2 or 3 GOOD providers of any service - due to total mobility it's best of breed or nothing. We're seeing this with game sites now. Internet communities grow around hubs.
Vitenka: the problem with it, as I see it, is that there is a demand for freedom. One little change/creation can destroy a 'real life' model.
Coldfire: The hubs are generally controlled by one small group. ie Half Life - many 'free' communities - ONE content supplier. Communtites have little control over the content.
Vitenka: you can throw a hub down, but if the communities ignore it, what's the use?
Vitenka: The PLACE isn't important, it's the people.
Shp: dog eat dog world - one minute you're on top next minute youre not.
Coldfire: so you get two types - LARGE corporate sites which link to each other and then small communties which are impossible to find except by word of mouth. LARGE sites are content driven, small sites are people driven. But because of mobility all services will be oligopolies because there is no room for less than best of breed suppliers. _unless_ some form of charging model is introduced for the services, in which case you also have price differentiation - but nowhere near the normal number of differentiating factors that predominates in a conventional economy
Vitenka: Um, my point here, is that this is a completely real-life worldview and thus, ignoreable. This is the 'world' in which the tribes are living.
Coldfire: Why will it be different. It's instantaneous travel and rapid product assessment, how else is it different from any other economy?

Definately raising more questions than it answers.

This transcript continues in another editorial, but for now - why not return to the main page - or I'd prefer you to send me your comments or even better still join the discussion