Donna Bogatin : � Social Web or Business Web: where is the money?
Naturally, people are fascinated by this question of "where's the money?"
But it's the wrong question. The more interesting one is "why the money"? And it's still gonna take us a long time to get our heads around that. But that's what we're all gonna be asking at some point.
The more effective the internet and the web are at helping us communicate and co-ordinate, the less money will be involved. Because ultimately the economy is a communication network and money is its protocol
The network is not the means to the end of money.
Instead, money and IP are rival protocols in rival networks which are means to the same end : that of articulating human labour to create more wealth for humanity. Money isn't wealth, it's just a kind of signal which can be used to help identify good ideas and channel more resources to them. On the internet we are increasingly finding alternative ways of identifying and signalling what things are worthwhile.
And the better the network does this, the less need there is for money to be involved at all.
This is gonna be the ultimate platform war. All the stuff about Windows vs. Apple, or RSS vs. Atom or Google vs. Yahoo are minor skirmishes. This is the biggie : TCP/IP vs. the dollar.
Which will pull your strings in future? Which will motivate you?
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2 comments:
This is a very bright essay. It's on your blog, but one you should tuck away for future use and distribution.
Read an interesting article by Amartya Sen http://www.littlemag.com/
globalisation/amartyasen.html
"The market economy does not work alone in globalised relations — indeed it cannot operate alone even within a given country. It is not only the case that a market-inclusive overall system can generate very distinct and different results depending on various enabling conditions (such as how physical resources are distributed, how human resources are developed, what rules of business relations prevail, what social security arrangements are in place, and so on), but also these enabling conditions themselves depend critically on economic, social and political institutions that operate nationally and globally. As has been amply established in empirical studies, the nature of market outcomes is massively influenced by public policies in education, epidemiology, land reform, micro-credit facilities, appropriate legal protections, etc., and in each of these fields there are things to be done through public action that can radically alter the outcome of local and global economic relations. It is this class of interdependencies which we have to invoke and utilise to achieve greater prosperity, more equity and fuller security."
Over-long snippet, but I'm not so sure the metaphor of Platform War is really the right way to see it. On one hand the "war" does highlight the differences in communications networks (money vs. social networks). But on the other hand obscures the interdependencies of the two.
I agree: But where's the money? is the wrong question to ask. But the interdependencies between the two networks still seem to offer the most interesting questions.
Story Continues ...
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