From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jun 15 2002 - 13:48:33 MDT
This issue will keep coming up, of course, as we move
more and more into a society in which the "primary"
property (I use the quotes to differentiate my use of
the term from that of the late Andrew Galambos) is in
fact data or ideas. We are seeing now, for example,
people selling characters from on-line multi-user
games on ebay.
(At what point do the characters get to take part in
the negotiations? Suppose you had a character that
was not actually conscious, but was programmed to
react with a simulation of ego, and had a memory
stored in a way similar to neural nets - for
versimilatude as well as independent decision
capability. Suppose that to disable that or in any
way directly alter that memory or capability was
either nearly impossible without destroying or
damaging the characters or would violate the
proprietary agreements with the MUD?
So, suppose someone slips the information to the
character that it's goind to be sold, and it doesn't
like it, or decides to bring its own bargaining power
to bear? Suppose it "realizes" it's just a character
in a MUD? None of this is very much beyond present
technology, as we're not considering "real
consciousness," just a "smart" character that can
learn.
Suppose the game was a simulation of present day
society. What if you created a character "Dubya"? Or
"Osama"? What if you and your character came up with
a way to defeat U.S. security around the White House -
in the simulation, of course?
There are reports that this may have already happened.
I speculated on the possibility that 9/11 might have
been "gamed" on the day of the attack. So, imagine
teams of players - thousands (millions?) of them
running game and counter games based on the real
world, with intentions far beyond just gaming.
BTW - a plug for Brin's "Kiln People," which does a
marvelous - and funny - job of warping itself around
our concepts of personal identity, while also
presenting as background Brin's idea of the
transparent society.)
I suggest that a key element of a society that becomes
more and more based on the value of information will
be "credibility." In case anyone is interested and
has the capability to go to implementation and the
willingness to sign binding non-disclosure, I have
been sitting on the basic design for a credibility
based search system that can evolve into a
credibility-based currency for a long time - since the
early '80's or so, when I first worked out the design
for a world wide web - not that my design was the one
that was implemented, of course, but my stuff would
work, with minor adjustments, on the net today.
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