[p2p-research] abundance and scarcity in second life: market vs. other incentives

Mon Feb 16 20:42:12 CET 2009

To follow on my comment below re: "p2p energy costing model for digital
goods and services"
To be more accurate the electrical energy part of the p2p energy costing
model would be based on joules per "cpu hour" (for processing during
production process and during replication and delivery) as well as joules
per hour (for powering storage units [if separate from server] and for
routing [cable/dsl modems])
And to be more realistic when it comes to the cost of transporting bits, we
do not co-own the transport infrastructure (the big telecom corporations
do,) and we ,as p2p producers (i.e in a p2p setting, not like Second Life
which is a centralized server farm and has a different cost-of-transport
calculation), simply pay for the monthly ISP fee, e.g. $40, so need to
figure out the maximum amount of upstream and downstream data we can
send/receive per month (for that $40) and figure out the dollar cost per
each bit based on that then knowing what each dollar buys in electricity
today we can come up with a total estimate for electrical energy use for
transporting each bit of data from/to ourselves (remember there is a two-way
data flow happening with each send or receive because of how the internet
protocol works and it adds up). So with the transport cost figured out and
the cost in work energy for maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure
(which in a p2p setting is our personal PCs, Macs, Linux boxes, and our
houses i suppose which replace the data center) can be based on some
universal constant (numerically derived) and knowing the electrical energy
needed to power that infrastructure (per "cpu hour" for processing during
production process and during replication and delivery as well as per hour
for storage and routing) ... and of course there is the "man hour" to joules
calculation for producing the given digital good or service

consider this a brainstormed and rough version ... but i think it's quite
possible to measure total work energy for producing and delivering open
digital content ...

the difficult challenge is that digital goods and services are not as easily
standardized as physical ones... a tennis ball is a tennis ball.. but a
digital model of a building may cost 100 Giga joules or 1 Mega Joules to
produce depending on resolution of rendering and model size, so the
categorization of digital content (as good) and their production processes
(as services or factored into the cost of the goods) has to be much more
finer grain, e.g. based on number of polygons a second and size.. So that's
only for digital models of 3D objects.. how about all sorts of digital
content? It can be done but the development of costing models may take years
to nail down, but the benefit is that we'd end up with a way to account for
our own energy use and for energy use in general... For example, do we know
how much more CO2 is released into the atmosphere or how big is the
environmental impact for hundreds of millions of people watching porn? Not
to make out porn to be the bad guy, but we just don't know how energy is
spent in the "Internet" We don't even know how it's spent in the real world.
More importantly, to enable sustainable abundance in goods and services, be
them physical or digital we do need to to have equitable exchange between
peers, so everyone recoups the cost of their production, and so we encourage
more efficient use of energy (the positive profit motive.. the only profit
allowed under the model is one that leads to higher production efficiencies)

one key thing about energy as money is that it's not money anymore, i.e.
it's not a means to ownership but a means to production and delivery

This means that if I "pay" someone for what it cost them to "produce (and/or
replicate) and deliver" a digital good then I can "resell" that good at the
cost it takes me to "download, replicate and deliver" it .. money is no
longer a means to owning things.. it becomes a means for production and
delivery..

I'll expand on these ideas later ...

Should be back to this thread in a few days

Marc

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 10:24 AM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com> wrote:

> <<
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Martien van Steenbergen <
> Martien at aardrock.com> wrote:
>
>> Measuring energy to store, transport and compute data/information/wisdom
>> sounds very much like *conscious computing* as exemplified by:
>>
>> AardRock » Wizard Rabbit Treasurer<http://wiki.aardrock.com/Wizard_Rabbit_Treasurer>
>>
>>
>> If we can 'socialize' this way of working and specify and implement the
>> appropriate protocols, then we're well on our way if you ask me.
>> Succes en plezier,
>>
> >>
>
> Awesome! that's exactly where I'm headed with the P2P Energy Economy.
> I'm glad to know it's not just the voices in my head :-)
>
> In a _simplified_ version of Energy Costing Model, we can assume that the
> cost of acquiring the infrastructure (processing, routing and storage
> hardware and transport links) is a sunk cost, i.e. outside the calculation,
> the cost of upgrades and maintenance of the infrastructure, which includes
> human energy, can be based on a universal constant (to be figured out,
> numerically, from data analysis) and electrical energy to power all that is
> directly measurable.
>
> http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Energy_Economy
>
>
> Patrick,
>
> In the P2P Energy Economy model the trading happens at the median cost in
> work energy, which is to say that most producers will trade AT cost but more
> efficient ones will trade a little above cost and less efficient ones will
> trade a little below cost (which would eventually kill the latter group of
> inefficient producers unless they become as efficient as the majority of
> producers or more efficient)
>
> Creativity is rewarded when it hits the right spots in the market, but
> that's another aspect outside of the context of what I mean to ask you:
>
> Can you elaborate on "trading at cost except for decentralized growth" ?
>
> Marc
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Martien van Steenbergen <
> Martien at aardrock.com> wrote:
>
>> Measuring energy to store, transport and compute data/information/wisdom
>> sounds very much like *conscious computing* as exemplified by:
>>
>> AardRock » Wizard Rabbit Treasurer<http://wiki.aardrock.com/Wizard_Rabbit_Treasurer>
>>
>>
>> If we can 'socialize' this way of working and specify and implement the
>> appropriate protocols, then we're well on our way if you ask me.
>> Succes en plezier,
>>
>> Martien.
>>
>>
>> On 16 Feb 2009, at 18:19 , Patrick Anderson wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 11:59 PM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Why not come up with a currency that lets us measure the cost of
>>
>> storing a single bit in absolute terms, based on the total work energy it
>>
>> takes to record and then replicate and deliver each bit?
>>
>>
>> I agree that energy is part of it.
>>
>> Hosting any 'virtual' community has real physical costs that must be
>> (re)covered else the organization cannot be sustained.  This is the
>> same problem with physical communities.
>>
>> Some costs are periodic, such as a hosting service's monthly or yearly
>> charge while other costs depend upon usage, such the hosting service's
>> bandwidth limits, CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, electricity. The various
>> 'loads' a user puts on the game server should weight his price to
>> incent thrifty users and insure heavy users pay for excluding others.
>>
>> It seems our thinking oscillates between either of:
>>
>> 1.) Users should pay absolutely zero price (free as in beer) - which
>> is BELOW cost, or
>> 2.) Users should pay a priced somewhere ABOVE cost for it to be "worth
>> it" for the initial investors, and for (centralized) growth.
>>
>> But there is a place right in-between those two.
>>
>> 1.5) Users should pay a price exactly EQUAL to cost except in cases of
>> (decentralized) growth.  [The growth would only be decentralized if
>> any price above cost were treated as user investment.]
>>
>> I wonder why this middle-ground seems taboo or ignored or avoided...
>>
>> So, (case #1.5) if we abundance seekers were to begin such a service,
>> we would need to connect the real 'impact' each user has upon the
>> physical sources needed to host that community with the price that
>> user pays - for then there would be nothing to stop it's continuation.
>>
>> Otherwise, (case #1) we have well-intentioned individuals attempting
>> to offer zero-price services that finally must give up because they
>> cannot afford to cover those costs themselves.
>>
>> Or, (case #2) we have for-profit corporations charging more than cost,
>> and yet still winning because they are able to continue and grow.
>>
>>
>> Patrick
>>
>> PS: You might be interested in a (now idle) game project with those
>> goals at http://EcoComics.sf.net
>>
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>
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