What Volition Coin Be?

A summary of:
Lanier, J. (2010). You Are Not H5N1 Gadget: H5N1 Manifesto. Allen Lane: London.
Part 2, Chapters 4-8: What Will Money Be?

As Lanier rightly points out, things are alone valuable inasmuch every bit they are scarce. We receive got made it increasingly slowly to merchandise creative products - similar music, films, etc. - therefore reducing their value. When nosotros download an album for free, nosotros are devaluing musical creation on the whole. The swell criminal offence is non so much inwards the stealing of £10, only rather inwards contributing to the devaluation of creative production, as well as thereby, the devaluation of humanity. (An analogy is inwards the means nosotros pass a swell bargain to a greater extent than coin inwards prosecuting as well as incarcerating thiefs than the value of the materials the thief stole, because inwards doing so nosotros are asserting our social contract.) Lanier warns that if nosotros conk on to educate technology scientific discipline inwards a means that cheapens creative products, "...we volition usher inwards a nighttime historic menses inwards which everything human is devalued" (82).

What are nosotros willing to pay for if non our creative human outputs? Are art, music as well as literature non amidst the most highly valued relics of history? Somehow we've tacitly accepted the notion that "if [something] can live on delivered for free, it must live on delivered for free" (99). The lawsuit is that "human inventiveness as well as understanding, peculiarly one's ain inventiveness as well as understanding, are treated every bit worthless" (99).

Consider this: "If coin is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, as well as artists, as well as then a guild is to a greater extent than concerned alongside manipulation than truth or beauty" (83). Unfortunately, the people who lose inwards this equation are "the core flat of intellectual as well as cultural creation" (93).

So nosotros need to devise novel ways of "bring[ing] coin as well as capitalism into an era of technological abundance without impoverishing close everyone" (100). Perhaps the means of doing so is to cultivate scarcity of cultural expressions past times maintaining alone 1 re-create of that particular which people tin pay to access (101). This genius persuasion from Ted Nelson volition vantage character as well as longevity, rather than vantage fads, every bit artists who exercise something that people access over many years volition brand to a greater extent than coin than those who exercise something that people similar for five minutes as well as and then discard. (The opposition to this persuasion is that it would favor the intellectual over the peasant (101). But I don't encounter how this necessarily precludes a peasant from making a profound contribution as well as profiting from it every bit much every bit the elite.)

The message is that nosotros must "agree that it is worth paying for 1 another's elevated cultural as well as creative expressions" (105). Lanier argues that nosotros should redraft the social contract, agreeing to pay a taxation to access these creative expressions, as well as inwards plow nosotros "gain the mightiness to earn coin from our creativity, expression, as well as perspective" (106). In short, nosotros volition live on liberated to live on to a greater extent than human!