DIGITAL FREEDOMS
Vittana: the biggest waste is people. Microfinance can get you stability but stops at the survival level. In the end you need education to get to the next level. Microfinancers want to help with education but haven’t been sure how. Vittana is microfinancing for students.
Chris Anderson: The notion of non-monetary economics. The attractive price for those without money is $0.00.
What does an abundance of information create? A Scarcity of attention.” – Herbert Simon, 1971
(Econ 101): every abundance creates a new scarcity.
Scarcities: Time, Money, Happiness, Attention, Reputation
Adam Smith: the science of choice under scarcity
Non-monetary economics would look like: Measureable and finite
The Google data center would be an example of a non-monetary economy. It measures what we do. It’s based on the hyperlink, which is the monetary unit. When you link to someone, you link some of your reputation to them. The reputation economy is built by me linking to you and vice versa which builds both of our reputations. Incoming links are reputational assets. Then Google turns that into a page rank. The currency of attention is traffic and the currency of reputation turns into links with turns into traffic and ads.
Video games are closed economies. Second Life is run as an economy. They know how to control the economy by only introducing things that can retain their value. Mabel’s Store is a Korean game that has an attention currency.
It all comes down to time. What is our time worth and what are we willing to pay for. We’re all doing personal currency conversions based around our own time.
Clay Shirky: Book – Here Come’s Everybody
Clay teaches at NYU in the interactive telecommunications program.
Josh Groban sings Popra. Fans are teenage girls and their grandmothers. There is no radio that plays that kind of music. The fans found him through the internet. In 2002 one of his intense fans – the Grobanites who hang out on the fan boards said, “let’s get him a birthday present.” Wrote a check for the David Foster philanthropy for disadvantaged youth. The fans wanted to continue doing this. So, the Josh Groban lawyers started a non-profit. But the fans realized that they could raise money better than anyone else. So they started their Grobanites for Charity. “It looks like 1996 just threw up, hey, they’re fonts here!” There is now a subset of this called Grobanites for Africa.
He posits that it’s better to separate the amatuer and professional. It’s easier to design for generosity among people that you know. Napster started all of this because it was sharing among friends or peers. Sean Fanning of Napster made it easier to be generous and made it payoff.
Howard’s Forums started by a cellphone geek. He is in Canada and just started dissecting instruction manuals so others started asking him questions and he finally said, “I don’t know the answers, you all talk to each other and answer each others’ questions, so he opened a discussion group.” There is a collection of subjects for every handset manufacturer, etc. The technical conversation has gotten so good that technical engineers at the manufacturers refer customers to Howard’s Forum. They will do 1 billion page views this year. Howard is allowing customers to talk to each other. Engineers at competing companies cannot talk to each other. Howard’s Forum isn’t a business it’s a community to share.
Design for intrinsic motivation. Designing because they want to do the right thing and be appreciated. Love and fame are not on the same dial. Being appreciated by a small group of people who know you well is different than being appreciated by a large group of people who don’t know you. Automony is so essential.
Matt Mason – former pirate radio DJ. Author of The Pirate’s Dilemma. He posits that piracy isn’t always a problem. It used to be a one way street. Now it’s a two way street. Some people look at kids as criminals and pirates. Pirates often create solutions. Pirates may be some of the greatest innovators on the earth. The way to beat it is to emulate what pirates do.
There are about 150 pirate radio stations in London. Some of them have millions of listeners. Matt used to DJ on a station that the police used to shut down every weekend but the police also advertised with them. The Pirate stations break new music that when it gets popular the commercial stations start playing that music and hire the popular Pirate DJs.
Steve Jobs learned the principle of emulating pirates by starting iTunes.
“Good business is the best art.” – Andy Warhol
The art of storytelling is changing because of abundance. The two largest sources of media sold in the U.S. is Halo3 and Grand Theft Auto IV.
“Don’t let legal ruin a good remix without talking to marketing first.”
A few kids did this video with pieces of all the Die Hard movies. The legal movie execs saw it and asked them to take it down. Then the marketing dept saw it and called them and asked, “how much would it cost us to buy this?”
Hollywood is being ravaged by pirates. Canal Street in nyc is where all the pirated DVDs are sold. The people selling pirated DVDs are complaining about people downloading pirated movies on the web.
“In an economy based on abundance, your business model needs to be a virtuous circle.”
Heroes is one of the most pirated TV shows on the web. But they have revenue streams like shows that don’t appear on tv are sold as printed pieces. They made 50 million dollars through other revenues besides the tv shows.
PopTech fellow – Ken Banks, connects mobile devices to organizations. FrontlineSMS turns a laptop and a cellphone into social messaging.
Leetha Filderman. Project Masiluleke. utilizes the power of mobile technology to address the gravest public health crisis.
Project M. An amazing program that is working, a little at a time, to help with the South African Aids Crisis.
Tags: chris anderson, Clay Shirky, Google, Howard's Forums, Josh Groban, Matt Mason, Napster, pop tech, PopTech, Stanley Hainsworth, Tether, Vittana