[p2p-research] Building Alliances

Sat Nov 7 06:36:15 CET 2009

comments inline ...

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 5:44 AM, J. Andrew Rogers <reality.miner at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > they undoubtedly produce less during this catch-up phase, but that may be
> > temporary, as it was with Japan, which was also accused of copying early
> on,
> > and has been highly innovative, where would the U.S. be without Toyotism?
>
>
> You misunderstood.  The Japanese innovate, indeed they spend quite a
> bit of money on it.  However, almost any way you tally up the
> innovations and technological advancements they produce for the amount
> of money they spend, the *return* on the amount of R&D capital at
> their disposal is not particularly high as such things go.
>
> R&D is hopefully about maximizing useful output for the money spent in
> aggregate, not R&D theater. Productivity of R&D varies widely by
> country and source. China spends less on R&D than Japan, but an
> argument can be made that it is rapidly becoming more productive.
>
>
> > As far as I
> > know, for years, VC's want to go green, but are hampered by mainstream
> > concentrated financial capital, which supports forces that go against the
> > emergence of green capitalism
>
>
> Eh? There is far too much capital chasing green tech in VC-land. They
> are hampered only by the lack of green tech worth investing in.
>

There are very clear statements by VC's that they need massive government
investment to make the transition viable.

> While it is true that Web 2.0 is not capital intensive, very little of
> Web 2.0 is "innovative" by the usual definition of the word.
>

Well let's just say that for millions of people, their lives have radically
changed, and that's a good definition of innovation for me. Before that, the
participatory elements of the web were only available to a much smaller
elite of internet users. What I see is a world of constant improvements
coming from many different quarters, aided by the 'open source' characters
of the process.

>
>
> My point, obviously missed, is that in reality funding does not work
> the way you think it works. You are assuming that some sources of
> funding are less important to innovation than they actually are. Some
> types of funding are far more political and prone to fashion than
> others.
>
> For example, you missed an important source of funding for extremely
> technical startup ventures that is useful: large companies. You can
> get paid to simply finish R&D on a product they can buy from you
> retail if it solves a problem they care about. (It makes economic
> sense for the large companies if that problem is costing them many
> millions or they can improve profits by several millions if that
> problem is solved. The may take no stake in the venture at all, they
> just want to be able to buy the product of it as soon as possible.)
>
>
> > I think it is too early to say, and I've read research by for example
> > Lakhami that says otherwise, pointing out one study for example showing
> how
> > most innovations come from the outside, and that experiments such as
> > Innocentive, and the recent Netflix experiment, were quite successfull
>
>
> I think you are over-generalizing a narrow case. Yes, most innovations
> come from the "outside", but that outside is "inside" somewhere else.
>

The point though, is that the hard distinctions between inside and outside,
between corporate and distributed, innovation are eroding, not hardening.

>
> All of that costs money.  R&D on theoretical computer science seems to
> take several months to a year to produce a successful result. A lot of
> R&D topics in software are related to massive parallelism and
> distribution -- testbeds at that scale don't grow on trees. Turning
> that research into a useful piece of software or code a mere mortal
> can use often requires many man-years of very boring code work that
> you have to pay smart people to do.
>

that would be the case for some innovation, the important think is that we
live in a plural world, needing different ways to  fund different types of
innovation. Perhaps such types as you describe are already well-funded,
other types of innovation that produce very useful social results, are
underfunded, for example pharma research being directed to diseases
affecting a minority of the rich world population, as compared to diseases
massively affecting the masses in developing countries. It is these failures
we need to address.

>
>
> > Take movies, according to your logic, only big star, moderately
> intelligent
> > but very expensive movies would make it and be necessary and count as
> > innovation, as opposed to the many fine movies that have been produced
> > worldwide, often through public funding. Do we really want a world with
> only
> > the Transformers, and without Fellini and the French New Wave.
>
>
> Again, "my logic"?  What does that even mean? You are assuming things
> I never said.
>

You have explicated your scarcity logic in another contribution. It is those
underlying assumptions that I challenge. And much of my reactions are
probably heightened by the incredible certainty in which otherwise
controversial positions are asserted as truth, so I feel that I must
reciprocate in a similar way. One's own experience always has to be put in
the context of other people's experiences, and economics is a field of great
controversy and interests, not just hard and easy facts.

Michel

>
>
> --
>  J. Andrew Rogers
> realityminer.blogspot.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20091107/34d05add/attachment.html>