[p2p-research] measurement of mind assets

Tue Jun 10 10:54:40 CEST 2008

Dear Yihong,

Thank for this very clear argumentation. I need some time to ponder them.

In the meantime, I would like to post them on our blog. I'll post-date it
already so I can remove it if you object.

Michel

On 6/10/08, Yihong Ding <yihongd at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Michel,
>
> Thank you for blogging my post and raising these questions. Web evolution
> is an interesting, but also very important issue that is still less of well
> study until now. I expect that my thoughts may bring a few momentum for the
> exploration of this topic.
>
> According to your arguments, I have the following comments.
>
> 1) how can something that exists in abundance (zero marginal reproduction
> costs in an open environment), have a tension between supply and demand, as
> required in a market for pricing purposes?
>
> mind asset may not necessarily be "zero marginal reproduction costs in an
> open environment". What you described is what I called the low-quality mind
> asset, or the static aspect of mind, such as the explanation of a term as if
> an entry at Wikipedia. On the Web, these mind assets are presented in
> digital forms that can be easily copied and pasted anywhere. As you said, we
> can hardly make charge on this type of asset. The charge is not about the
> potential value of the content, but is about the quality of the
> presentation.
>
> At the same time, however, I want to emphasize that this low cost charge on
> the basic mind asset forms is the fundamental for allowing mind being public
> circulating asset.
>
> Now let's watch some other types of mind asset, which I call the higher
> quality mind asset. For example, a Web widget is a portable Web service that
> describes certain dynamic aspect of human mind. Although any user may freely
> embed the widget in his own site, the service provider still has the control
> over this piece of embodied mind asset. Moreover, based on the "mutual
> consent of producers and users", the producers of this high quality mind
> asset may select to charge the users and the users may select to take the
> charge or switch to other free or low-cost services. Then you start to see
> that somehow the "free-market" phenomenon is also effective on measuring the
> value of mind asset.
>
> But these Web services are still not the really high quality mind asset if
> we watch it in the grand picture of Web evolution. Humans are going to
> produce new forms of mind asset with higher and higher quality that is more
> and more costly to reproduce even in an open environment. Actually, it is
> similar to our real world of capital. Many of us know how to produce a car,
> but it does not mean that many of us can successfully produce a car because
> it requires so many capital input that is out of the capability of ordinary
> people. Just the same, the Web evolution is to produce mind asset with new
> quality that can serve people better and better. But at the same time, these
> high quality mind asset will become harder and harder to reproduce because
> it requires so much mind input that is beyond the capability of any single
> person.
>
> By this mean, you can see the tension between supply and demand of mind
> asset. This is what I say that by presenting mind in Web resources, we are
> able to objectively measure its value. Superior mind that knows how to
> continuously produce higher quality mind asset will be granted the high
> value. Through this way, the respect of humanity becomes realized since the
> eventual value of public asset is bound to the thinking ability of human
> brains but not the amount of money that the human bodies own.
>
> 2) how can you measure the value of an idea, with its implementation in a
> marketplace? Can any  idea really be 'uniformly be measured as capital?', as
> you claim?
>
> I think I may have already answered this question by the answers I made
> earlier. But I would like to explain it in more details.
>
> Measuring the value of a mind asset is not about measuring the value of an
> idea. If you perform a mind asset measurement in this way, you are treating
> the mind to be a type of capital asset but not a mind asset. By contrast,
> measuring the value of a mind asset is about how much this mind asset has
> the ability to produce more mind asset. Such an ability is also the
> mentioned "quality" of mind asset. The reason you get confused is that you
> still used to think of a mind to be a capital asset but not a mind asset.
>
> In free market, how do we measure the value of a capital asset?  We
> actually measure it by seeing how much more capital asset can be produced by
> owning this piece of capital asset. Stock and bond are typical examples.
>
> In similar, the value of mind asset is about how much more mind asset can
> be produced by owning this piece of mind asset. By contrast, the value of
> mind asset is not measured by how much capital can be produced by owning
> this piece of mind asset.
>
> By this understanding, you then may easily see why I tell that static mind
> asset has less value because they have less ability of producing new mind
> asset (but not about its own capitalized value). By contrast, dynamic mind
> asset often has greater value because they usually have greater ability of
> producing new mind asset (again it is not about its own capitalized value).
> Also, what I called Web-1.0-quality resources generally have less value than
> Web-2.0-quality resources because the former ones have less ability to
> produce more mind asset than the latter ones. By contrast, it is not about
> Web-1.0-quality resources are less valuable (in the sense of capital) than
> Web-2.0-quality resources.
>
> Hopefully these explanations help.  And please feel free arguing more on my
> comments.
>
> best,
>
> Yihong
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I reread your quote just in time to see that I had misinterpreted it, but
>> have mentioned it in a blog item nevertheless:
>>
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-measurement-of-mind-assets/2008/06/08
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
>> Date: Jun 8, 2008 7:53 PM
>> Subject: measurement of mind assets
>> To: yihongd at gmail.com
>>
>>
>> Dear Yihong:
>>
>> In your recent post,
>> http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/2008/06/we-are-in-new-transition-part-2.html,
>> you claim the following:
>>
>> "By presenting mind in Web resources, we are able to objectively measure
>> its value as if we measure the value of capital asset. As we know, there is
>> a large variety of capital asset (such as stocks, real estates, etc.). But
>> we can uniformly measure the value by testing the capital asset in free
>> market. In similar, we may objectively measure the value of a mind asset
>> presented by Web resources. On the free Web, the value of a Web resource can
>> be arranged completely by the mutual consent of producers and users."
>>
>> I find this a very strong claim, and have serious doubts:
>>
>> - two arguments:
>>
>> how can something that exists in abundance (zero marginal reproduction
>> costs in an open environment), have a tension between supply and demand, as
>> required in a market for pricing purposes?
>>
>> how can you measure the value of an idea, with its implementation in a
>> marketplace? Can any  idea really be 'uniformly be measured as capital?', as
>> you claim?
>>
>> Your statement goes against the grain of much thinking that the largest
>> part of the informational 'economy' is beyond measure, beyond marketable
>> exchange value.
>>
>> I'm putting this in our blog as well,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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>>
>> --
>> The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
>> alternatives.
>>
>> Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
>> http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
>>
>> Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
>> http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
>> BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
>> http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU
>>
>> KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>>
>> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
>> http://www.shiftn.com/
>>
>
>
>
> --
> ===================================
> Yihong Ding
> Department of Computer Science
> Brigham Young University
> Web 1.0 residence (Homepage): http://www.deg.byu.edu/ding/
> Web 2.0 residence (Thinking Space): http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/

-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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