SL Economy Addendum

For those interested, I found a really decent article on the economics of Second Life and MMORPGs in general. Thinking about what it is examining more closely, I begin to think that IP and capitalism are more emergent properties in society, and not arbitrary legal frameworks . . .

The Second Life Economy

Western civilization is dealing with a crisis over intellectual property. The fact that any digital medium can be easily copied with perfect fidelity ties our legal system into knots, leading some, like Cory Doctorow to call for the outright abolition of Copyright law. However, DMCA et al is a harbinger of what is likely to become a much more serious problem. Over time, as technology and production efficiency has increased, the “cost” of physical goods has become less and less based on the actual stuff it’s made of. Right now, for most products, the “cost” is mostly tied up in things such as production, marketing, and distribution. And as we move toward on-demand fabrication, and possibly on-site fabrication (a kiosk that burns you a brand new Metallica CD at the local Tower Records while you wait) both production and distribution trend toward zero. . .

What happens when everything has effectively zero cost to manufacture and distribute? When the only value an object has is the creative energy expended to design and market it? What happens when you can download a Rolls Royce from Napster? While this resembles some versions of Utopia, it does pose a rather important existential question: Can an economic system exist without scarcity? (aka “How does Starfleet get paid?”)

Interestingly, there is currently a model of this sort of “Replicator Economy” in existence. The designers of the "game" Second Life have created a laboratory in economics or intellectual property. In a nutshell, within the game the only resource of any scarcity is land, and to play, you really don’t “need” land; you can just dive in and walk around. Like any other RPG, there’s a currency, and you can buy stuff. Unlike most RPGs, everything for sale (except land) has been created by other players, (including financial services) and when you buy something (except land) you’re buying it from another player. i.e., almost all goods and services for sale in Second Life have a cost derived only from the “creative” input and marketing involved. There’s no material cost, and no distribution cost— in Second Life it “costs” as much to create one Naughty School Girl outfit as it does to create 1,000 of them. One of the consequences of this is the recognition that ALL products are intellectual property.

“But, Mr. Swann, it’s only a game— there’s no connection between this and the REAL world”

Actually, there’s an exchange rate between the in-game currency and the US dollar. It floats and, as of this writing, is hovering around 260 Linden dollars to the US Dollar. So those 1,000 Naughty School Girl outfits at $L1500 a pop represent about fifty-five hundred dollars. That’s pretty real.

So, despite what many inhabitants of this intellectual bubble called the internet have predicted, the first truly virtual economy is not only solidly capitalist, but extremely conscious of IP rights.

Other SF Authors Who Blog

Anyone who's reading this will probably be interested in other SF writers who blog. Very cool list from the SF Signal blog.

Off The Pink!

Ok, I decided "S Andrew Swann's Blog" was kind of generic. So I changed the title of my blog to something more apt to pique curiosity. If you're reading this, and your curiosity is piqued, I'll direct you to my Moreau series of novels...

(Ok, if you're lazy: "Off the Pink" is a political rallying cry for the non-human masses in those novels. "Pink" is a slang term for human being.)

Science <> Religion

Jose, over at Meme Therapy just quizzed me for one of their "Brain Parades". One of the questions he asked me, and subsequent browsing of the site, ignited a pet peeve of mine:

WOULD EVERYONE STOP TREATING SCIENCE AND RELIGION LIKE THE SAME THING?!?

“No, Mr. Swann,” you say, “I don’t treat science like religion, no-sir-ee. I understand that science is directly opposed to religion—”

THAT’S JUST WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!

(ok, deep breath, I’m better.)


Here is my point. When you, mister fundamentalist, and you mister scientist, set up science and religion as opposing poles on an intellectual continuum, you set both up as equivalent mutually-exclusive alternatives. Most of you with this problem get the “mutually-exclusive” part. What you don’t get is the “equivalent” part. By setting these things in opposition, you are maintaining that they are the same sort of thing. They aren’t. The only thing they have in common is that both provide some explanation of the nature of the physical world. This isn’t even the most important aspect of religion, as most religions can exist when scriptural definitions of the physical world are taken metaphorically. There is no metaphor in science; there is no philosophy in science. Science is observable fact. Period. End of sentence.

If you believe that science supports an atheist worldview, you are as badly and dangerously deluded as the poor evangelical Christian who doesn’t understand that Creation Science/Intelligent Design (or whatever you want to call it) is not a valid scientific theory.

If you still don’t get it, here it is in small words:

Science deals in observable facts. A scientific theory must provide an explanation of those facts that can be tested.

How does one going about testing for God? Please tell me. I'd like to know.

While you’re at it, perhaps you can ponder how one can produce any sort of meaning, ethics, or morality from the scientific method? (And those of you who started along the lines of “The greatest good for the greatest number,” or “treat people how you would wish to be treated”— You all better start over, since the only observable concrete facts in those two premises are “number,” “people,” and “you.” )

Blogging the Alien

One of the more difficult things a writer can do is write about a culture that is truly alien. A lot of bad SF— especially in TV and movies— has shown alien beings that are significantly less alien to someone from a western culture than many human cultures.

My own personal shortcut to the problem of envisioning an alien species is to take some universal base-line facet of humanity and changing it, following the change to its ultimate conclusion. Changing the method of reproduction is one possible change; altering the method by which young are produced will change everything in a society. (Consider how much of human religion is dedicated to sex and gender roles.) Altering the primary method a species receives sensory input is another radical change that would produce profound psychological and cultural differences.

Another possible change, and one that I believe has some implications for the future of our species, is altering the species’ primary means of communication. The most alien of the aliens I have written about are the ghadi in Broken Crescent. The ghadi were a whole species as intelligent as man, but suffering a universal aphasia that removed the capability of verbal and written language. They end up thinking in a way that is completely alien to us.

More concretely, a change in the means of human communication— movies, television, and the mass-media— has caused radical and wide-spread permanent changes in human culture. One of the more profound effects being the ability to propagate a culture beyond its physical boundaries without force of arms. What the Romans did with legions, we do with Nike and Keanu Reeves.

Consider now this blog. The ability of one person to conduct a dialog with an entire planet. It isn’t clear where this will lead, what is clear is that we have no idea as a society how to handle it. The idea of public and private speech is obsolete on the internet. Your employer can Google you and uncover every stupid inappropriate comment you ever made on a Hello Kitty website. You drop a shopping list and someone can post it on—line. You can get fired or expelled because you scared someone in authority— and you can’t take back those electrons.

The more we communicate by text and e-mail, the closer we come to a scary point of universal selective omniscience. When we speak, we speak to everyone, and we can find out everything about anyone we want. What then?

Brain Dead?

When you write science fiction, you often find yourself in the position of thinking about the sciences in general. And it came home to me recently how strangely out of sync progress in medicine is in comparison with— for instance— physics or chemistry. While it’s easy to point out the massive progress medicine has made over the past ten, twenty, or fifty years, we have to face the fact that a large part of medical science is still limited to doing something to someone and noting the results. Pharmaceutical companies can’t even predict how well a medication might work, or what side effects it might have, until it’s actually used in trials. This would be like an car company having to build several full-scale model vehicles in order to figure out not only which design might actually run, but which ones wouldn’t blow up or fall apart.

The sad fact is that medicine wasn’t really a science until around World War I. To put that another way, a Chinese herbalist is only about 80 years behind your local neurosurgeon technology-wise. For the SF writer, that means that if you want to place a bet on where your next major world-shaking scientific discovery is going to come from, medical science is a good bet. There’s just a lot more uncharted territory. While it's unlikely that any future work in physics will upend the premises set down by Newton or Einstein, we can be certain that some of the current fundamental “truths” of accepted medical science will be overturned.

An example; the accepted fact that nerve tissue does not regenerate and brain damage is permanent and irreversible. 19 years ago, a man named Terry Wallis was in an auto accident and suffered severe brain damage. He entered a coma from which he was never expected to awake. However, three years ago he did wake up. Not only that, his condition has been improving since, and he has been regaining some motor functions. While still profoundly disabled, he is fully conscious and able to communicate. Most exciting, his doctors have found evidence of his brain rebuilding itself.

You can't tell a book by its cover

?
=

A while ago I sold the Russian rights to my first four books. I cashed the check and thought little more of it. Then, one day I was googling my work and found a page in Russia. . . I did a little digging and found the cover of the Russian edition of Forests of the Night.

Saying the choice of cover is odd seems a bit of an understatement. It doesn't even seem the same genre. I just hope the cover blurb was descriptive. I'm picturing some poor Muscovite expecting a latter-day Conan or Gor, and finding a furry Mike Hammer.

Welcome to the 21st Century

Well, after going through and giving my website a thorough updating I decided that I needed to step fully out of the mid-90s (where my site had been stuck for close to six years) and get myself a blog. So here we go.