Ian Shoales here. Ebay went down in flames recently, a victim of its own success. So many people want to bid on tshotchies, or scan them for those who want to bid on them, that the whole virtual flea market crashed, sending panic into the hearts of Spawn action figure collectors everywhere.
Some say this is a precursor to what economists call a market correction. A correction in journalism, as I understand it, is just that. ıIn yesterdaysı editorial on Boris Yeltsin, we referred to him as a hopeless drunk . It should have read HOPEFUL drunk. The editors regret the error.ı
In the marketplace, however, a correction is more dire. A correction means tornadoes, thunderstorms, earthquakes, vast conflagrations, entrepreneurs throwing themselves in despair from top story windows. Fortunately, most entrepreneurs work in streetlevel dwellings so injuries are minimal.
But thatıs a moot point. I donıt see how a correction can stop the Internet. In a real warehouse, if a fire rages through it, all the products within are consumed. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, especially if you donıt have fire insurance. In a virtual warehouse, all that disappears are depictions of products. Take Ebay. Even though it crashed, its products didnıt.
In the real world, on the other hand, products donıt just vanish from the shelves mysteriously. If they did, the chances are good the typical consumer would blame it on an alien invasion and run from the store screaming. In the virtual world, products disappear constantly, and consumers take it in stride. Theyıll come back sooner or later. Theyıre just pixels after all.
I suspect that money in our new global economy is fast becoming the same thing, that is, it doesnıt REALLY exist, only depictions of it exist, and if your money goes away, well, just reboot in six hours, and it will all come back, and then some.
Itıs like the old hippie saying, ıLet your love go, if it loves you, it will come back, if it doesnıt it was never yours to begin with.ı If itıs YOUR money, I mean truly YOURS, it will go out there and multiply just because it loves you. And if itıs NOT your money... well, even better.
So if the online economy offers lines of code which represent your money and can be exchanged for other lines of code which represent whatever it is you want to buy, well, frankly, itıs no wonder everybodyıs getting rich. How could we not? Itıs like playing monopoly with yourself. If you lose, well, it just means YOU win. I gotta go.
Seemingly unfazed by his ongoing legal battle with the United States Government, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates recently unleashed in the pages of TIME Magazine, excerpts from his new book BUSINESS @ THE SPEED OF THOUGHT: USING A DIGITAL NERVOUS SYSTEM.
These took the form of rules, which included the advice, ıUse e-mail to communicate.ı What else would you use it for?
ıShift knowledge workers to high-level thinking.ı For this rule, he used McDonaldıs as an example. Thanks to PCs and Web technologies, ıAs soon as you order two Happy Meals, a McDonaldıs marketing manager will know.ı Which means, I assume, the marketing manager didnıt know before, or if he did he had to count Happy Meals on his fingers, or use an abacus.
Mr. Gates also said we should strive for a paper-free work environment. Right. This would make it easier to avoid complying with subpoenas as well.
My personal favorite rule was Number 7: ıCreate a digital feedback loop.ı This sounded like kinky fun, until I realized he was just talking about re-examining business processes. Boring!
Other rules: Respond to customer complaints, ıtake a hard look at your core competencies (whatever that means),ı move quickly to bring products to market, get rid of physical stores and move your business to the digital domain, eliminate the middle man, and use digital tools to help customers solve problems for themselves. And weıll all get rich in the morning.
So why do CEOıs do this? Your Donald Trumps, your Lee Iococcas, your Bill Gates-- why do they agree to sit down with a ghostwriter and churn out these banal best-sellers, with their generic advice, and bland, self-serving stances. Well, thereıs the money, I suppose. Though youıd think that the day-to-day routine of their money making lives would make them more money in an hour, than these time-wasting prose bombs would make them in a year. And thereıs the prestige of being a published author, even though the books are usually written by somebody else.
One thing you never get is actual useful advice. After all, every reader is a potential competitor. Never give away what you can sell.
As for Mr. Gatesı book-- well, I spent as much time reading it as he spent writing it. His bottom line? As near as I can tell, Mr. Gatesı solution for the businesses of tomorrow to thrive is to purchase and use Microsoft products. Thank you, Mr. Gates! As if we had a choice. I gotta go.
A new book by Ray Kurzweil, 
The Age Of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, makes the case that human beings will soon abandon the meat bags that presently house their souls and minds, and become some kind of cyborg-robot. This will occur when computers become more intelligent than we are; at that point, out of a kind of computer envy, we will become computers ourselves.
He writes, ıWe will be able to reconstruct any or all of our bodily organs and systems, and do so at the cellular level.... We will then be able to grow stronger, more capable organs by redesigning the cells that constitute them and building with far more versatile and durable materials.ı
In short, he says, ıWe will be software, not hardware... There will not be any difference between us and robots.ı
Iıve read a lot of this sort of thing over the past few years, in the pages of WIRED and MONDO. The idea that weıre going to leave our bodies behind for new rugged ABS plastic versions with state-of-the art sensors to make sex bigger and better is always greeted seriously and with an odd gung-ho kind of enthusiasm.
Iıll say it here. This is just silly. First of all, the idea that computer consciousness is ıintelligentı in the human sense is just ridiculous. Sure Deep Blue gave Gary Kasparov a run for his money, but does Deep Blue even know what chess is? Or is it just manipulating the symbols that its programmers dumped into it?
And why are we so eager to want to abandon our smelly little vessels? We can always take a shower. Iıd prefer a shower to cleaning myself twice weekly with a damp static-free cloth. If I had any kind of system breakdown, I couldnıt visit a doctor. Iıd have to call tech support. And how would I be powered? By battery?
Dentists would go out of business. I would imagine that travel agencies, motion picture industries, and television would all fall by the wayside as well. After all, all pleasures would be virtual. Weıd spend our entire lives (which could be infinite) standing in one spot gawking at our inner monitors with our mouths half-open.
I suppose to some people this beats standing in line for two hours for the new STAR WARS movie, or walking away from Starbucks with a mocha, when you ordered a double latte. In this new virtual world, everything will be just as we want it!
Well, my perfect world would be cyborg-free, I can tell you that. Sure, I could do without this whole getting older business, but if the alternative is being some dreamy drooling immortal robot, Iıd rather have the wrinkles and bad feet. I gotta go.
Over the course of a long career in sarcasm, I must confess that Iıve never
really ruffled as many feathers as I would have liked. Iıve insulted
presidents, old girlfriends, Supreme Court justices, and erstwhile
employers, with nary a peep. I wouldnıt even know that anybodyıs paying
attention, except that every once in awhile, I get an angry response about
some obscure point I hadnıt even known Iıd made. ıThe waltz wasnıt even
brought to England until the 19th Century, you idiot!ı someone will inform
me. ıThe bat is not a rodent, you illiterate moron!ı ıLearn the difference
between coniferous and deciduous before you open your fat mouth about
telling the forest from the trees, you synapse-impaired maggot!ı
This hasnıt bothered me. I have a pretty thick skin. Besides, as my fourth
grade report card showed, I do not play well with others. If I really cared
what others thought, Iıd shave more than twice a week.
Ever since I got a computer, however, things have changed a little bit.
Every once in a while, you see, I am commissioned to write something. Since
this is the Digital Age, I am often asked to speak or write about digital
issues. But whenever I am critical of the World Wide Web, I am asked to tone
down my criticism. I can understand this to a certain extent. The people
asking me to speak or write about the World Wide Web generally work for
digital companies. Theyıre designing portals and web sites. Theyıre trying
to bring high quality video to your computer screen. Theyıre service
providers. Theyıre trying to attract investors.
On the other hand, when I wrote for one such piece, that there is a certain
amount of frustration in surfing the Internet, that often one has to wade
through a wilderness of links, banners, and error messages, to download a
plug-in that doesnıt work, then get put on hold by tech support for six
hours, all to obtain a tiny bit of information you could have got from a
book in three minutes, tops-- well, my sponsor told me that I was being
ımean-spirited.ı
Mean-spirited? Towards whom? Well, nobody. Towards what, then? The World
Wide Web? Oooh, did I hurt the Internetıs feelings?
Is the Internet so fragile, despite the hyper-inflated worth of its
denizens, that a few grumbling remarks by a wretched scribe like me can
cause the whole infrastructure to tumble to dust, cause the whole Web to
unravel and spin away to nothing like the strands woven by an unstable
spider?
If I really had that kind of power, do you think Iıd waste my time writing
puff pieces for nail-biting corporate types. No. If I had that kind of
power, Iıd use it. Wisely, of course. I gotta go.
They say that William Gates has giant screens on the walls of his home, on which he can summon up reproductions of the Old Masters, a photograph of a sunset, or a picture of a cute little kitty cat, each just a click away. But he also ponied up thirty million for one of Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks. How analog can you get? And last year he snapped up, as they say, the Bettman Archive, a collection of over 16 million photographs. These are being digitized, and are already available over the Internet-- for a small fee.
Isn't that just like a mogul though?
He doesn't wants a Picasso because it's a Picasso; he wants a Picasso because it matches his neo-Cubist rattan sectional. He claims that he wants technology to be fun, but making a profit, I have a hunch, runs a pretty close second.
And hey, that's fine with me. I don't begrudge a buck to anybody. Or rather, I begrudge everybody's bucks equally. A buck you make is a buck I'm not making, isn't that right?
Apparently, Microsoft has poured over 400 million dollars into what is called content, for lack of a better word. America On Line and Microsoft, in fact, seem to be throwing talent into cyberspace with nothing but money between them and dry land.
USA TODAY recently ran profiles of some of the executives who are leading what its calls new media's new wave. One executive producer of the Microsoft Network was a dancer in A CHORUS LINE, and composed the music for the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES soundtrack. Another is described as a cyber talent scout, who screens pitches just like a television or movie executive. Alien invasion concept, she says. Why is that better on the computer screen that on my television? Good question! Another says, there are some really interesting projects that I've seen that reach out to the same cultural demographic that we are trying to market to. Uh huh. Whatever. Another is developing a cyber drama with full motion video set in a sorority house. And one was the co-creator of The Spot, the Web soap opera, and first on line hit.
Their idea of interactivity is just television, with voting. Should Judy go out with Bob, or Bill? Should Policeman Dave go into the dark house or call for back up? Should the aliens destroy the earth as we know it or should we destroy them? Double click on your avatars now. It's just pennies a day for desktop delivery of mindless drivel, and best of all, you control the outcome!
I'd stick with Quake, my friends. At least if you're left hanging on William Gates' wall, you could maybe fight your way out.
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