Designing better futures

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

Wow, this is quite a piece of work.  These guys know game theory and aren't afraid to use it.  Although the models are simple and the assumptions crude, there is some interesting territory opened up here. 

The book is not for the faint of heart.  The full game theory was overwhelming for me personally.  I just looked at the assumptions and the model.  The models are crude but provide some interesting gross assumptions and boundary conditions for the emergence, and sometimes submergence of democracy. 

The general consensus is that Democracy is stable when it "consolidates", the general thesis being that consolidated democracy occurs when a an enfranchised "middle class" can fully take part.

The history of ever larger participation in democracy as it occurred in the US and the UK is quite interesting.  The history of democracy emerging and then failing is also and important lesson.  Pre-mature democracy if it can be called such occurs when the governing system either doesn't enfranchise or create the perception of enfranchisement among enough "active" participants.

The book has an interesting thesis and is an interesting read for econometricians and economists.   
Some of the shortcomings of the book are actually more a function of the models themselves and ground breaking work they have performed.  Social modeling involves crude assumptions.  One of the largest assumptions in the model is the concept of "state", state is a belief system combining people and a geography.  Some of the largest assumptions to be left out of the modeling involve people and geography.  Large assumptions were that "state" wealth was land or industrially based. 

This unfortunately leaves out easily extractable natural resources which unduly influence the ability to capture wealth and power, but also can lead to more frequent coups due to the ease of appropriation.  This  "wealth" variable is an important function of enfranchisement and belief in participation in the democratic or ruling process, ask any Nigerian or Suadi Arabian citizen.

The second large concept left out of the "state" model is group belief systems within the concept of the state.  Religion, clan, tribe, or other self identifying groups can deeply inhibit the ability for democracy to consolidate.  The democratic system, even a "partial democracy" is a belief system and requires a concept of equal enfranchisement among some social strata.  The more heterogeneous, a peoples' self identifications are the more difficult effective democratic consolidation becomes. 

These 2 macro variables involving peoples self belief and the ability to distribute or expropriate wealth are important components in the concept of state, participation and the ability to effectively "consolidate" democracy.    It will be interesting to see others build out models that factor in these components.

I do like the consolidation concept put forth in the book, which ties into political and economic stability.  It also applies to many other forms of government.  One could argue that Putin is consolidating government in Russia and the region.  This consolidation unfortunately is less than democratic.  It would be quite interesting to study consolidation of power under various forms of government and then to study the ability for phase changes to lead to steady state "consolidation" and therefore stability. 

Things Change and evolve

Things change and evolve.  This is the nature of keeping up and staying a part of what is important.  Property wiki was originally started with the title Untied-Nations.  The thesis behind the name was that by freeing up property, Nations could untie the wealth and opportunity that was already within them. 

The first attempt at this was www.untied-nations.org

here was the original plan Download PLAN.PDF . 

Lots of room for improvement, but a great start all the same.

glass, a great medium

Chihuly.  You have probably never heard of him, but he is one of our greatest current artists.  His medium is glass.  Have a look at his site, Chihuly.com this guy rules.  My wife and I have watched quite a few videos about him.  He was a hippy artist in the 70's and started blowing glass in his basement.  Truly an inspirational story of someone who started something small and just kept getting better at it.  I like that kind of story simple beginnings that manifest themselves to greatness over time with hard work and faith in themselves.

Here is a flickr photo group of some of his work at the Kew Gardens installation last fall.  super cool flickr photos. I have borrowed an image to demonstrate here.

Now that is cool.  My wife and I watched his videos with fascination and saw on of his larger installations at the Victoria and Albert Museum when we used to live in London.

We spent new years 2003 in Venice and visited Murano, just like all of the other touristicos.  We were impressed by how far Chihuly had taken Glass as an art form.  It was also interesting to see some of the tourist schlock that was still being sold suckers in Venice. 

Please people please stop buying these damn glass clowns... it is simple economics folks.  You stop buying them and they will stop making them. 

Now back to Chihuly and glass, Mercedes and I lived in Sweden during the summer of 2003.  We desperately wanted to get up to Kosta boda, which is the glass capital of Sweden.  Unfortunately it didn't happen.  Those Swedes know design and they do some cool stuff with the medium. 

at the end of the day Dale Chihuly is still the best alive today.  If you get the chance to see an installation or watch a video showing him at work Video here , check it out.  You won't be disappointed.  You may even be tempted to throw out that clown.

Nettie, eats, excretes and treats everything

If the ferocious but rarely spotted Loch Ness monster can be called Nessie, then I can anthropomorphize the Internet as Nettie.  Nettie is a curious and interesting beast.  Many people get wrapped up in the servers, acronyms, wires and bits and pieces associated with Nettie. 

Nettie is alive and growing at a scary pace.  Nettie like any organic thing eats and excretes.  Nettie also treats as well, by the nature of the excretions, but I'll get to that. 

Nettie eats and is going to keep on eating.  Here is a small list of things Nettie has eaten:

1. The time spent at a library card catalog system.
2. the oil used to transport people who now telecommute.
3. The cash and resources needed to send a letter
4. the time required to communicate

whole industries have had chunks taken out of them by Nettie:

1. travel agents
2. used car sales
3. second hand shops
4. bookstores

Of course Nettie also excretes and the waste of Nettie is the economic gold most of us get so excited about.

1. shopping on-line (amazon etc.)
2. Discovery whole new ideas and concepts (Google etc.)
3. Efficient 2nd hand markets (eBay)
4. cheap airline tickets and hotels. (orbitz)

The reason Nettie grows is that for everything that we feed her, out comes a solid lump of economic advantage. 

Now why is this so important.  Because the net is going to eat everything.  I mean almost everything.   If you can figure out what Nettie is going to eat next and what or where she will excrete next you can become very wealthy.

Here are some logical points.  The horizon we are looking for is 10 years, sounds out there, but as investors in Multi-billion dollar industries, who bet on share prices on based discounted future earnings 10 years is nothing.  Remember for most people the net is only 10 years old.  It is still growing in qualitative ways such as (reach, complexity, security and points of contact with us)

1. telecoms (cellular and fixed line)  the net will consume this not in 18 months, but in 8 years, surely.  The average cellphone handset has a 12 month lifecycle.  In 8 more design cycles the multi-functional cell phone will pick up a local network protocol.  Your carrier will be just another network, a banal utility like sewage or electricity.  Verizon, SBC, Vodafone etc. will all be eaten by Nettie. 

These firms will most likely run fast to survive, first will come locked in networks, then walled garden "content" and finally consolidation as they get bought up/ or merge with the content guys.  Cell phones are after all just a very narrow distribution pipe, nothing that exciting.  The 90's and 00's excitement for all things cellular will be about as important as transistor radio's and the birth of color television, interesting historically, but technically and from a business perspective a blip.  Think anybody will care about the motorola Pink Razr phone in 3 years?

2. Cable companies will be eaten.  Nettie does this job much better 10 years out from now.  IPTV and fibre built out.  Will consumers really buy "cable" or satellite, supplying bandwidth will be a commodity offering.  The pipes will become interchangeable smart and eventually as exciting and financially rewarding as the telephone pole business today.  Nettie will have consumed them  TV's PC's whats the difference both will be screens and both will be about equally smart and capable.

3. You: what?  yes you.  Nettie will consume more of you than every before.  You spend a few hours creating e-mail, watching TV, speaking with co-workers etc.  Expect more of you to be consumed by Nettie, blogging, searching, shopping are just the beginning.  Time in the car in 10 years will be spent with Nettie (think wi-max 2 way radio, Sattelite radio will be eaten within 10 years). Sorry Sirius.  Attention: Howard Stern, dump those Sirius shares in the next 2 years if you get a chance.  You will sleep and eat like normal but Nettie may start keeping more track of even this for "health" reasons and you will be glad.  Nettie will watch your home for you.

4. your perceptions of reality will be shaped by Nettie.  In the 90's people used to say that if it wasn't on CNN then it didn't happen.  If it isn't or can't be found on the net then it doesn't happen for many people, whose perspective on events is today mostly driven by experiences delivered via one of 2 screens.  Newspapers are nice, but mainly if you are over 30.  The under 30 crowd doesn't trust or have the attention span for anything not digitial.

If you are Chinese, whole section of world events and history effectively never happened.  Nettie shapes and changes perceptions of what is real and what matters will be shaped by the way Nettie regurgitates various inputs.

Now to the treats.  Nettie provides treats, lots of them, closer communication with Friends and family, access to more information about the world than ever before, cheap vacations. Knowledge unavailable from many sources.  And efficiency gobs and gobs of efficiency which means Nettie produces (excretes)  novelty, money, value, payola etc.

Where I work, we think Nettie is going to start delivering.  No, not a baby, but rather start delivering more and more stuff.  Instead of you, poor user, searching and typing URL's and clicking away, we think Nettie is going to start delivering to you.  Today small pieces of text are mostly delivered, within 2 years a lot of audio and video etc. in a big way.  Nettie is going twist a little bit and start producing content, like never before.  Yahoo today has 15 million video clips.  Mostly bad, but with some good stuff in there.  Google is in the game, mountains of content are slowly building behind today's giants of the net.  A dam is ready to burst and you poor user are on the other side.  If this sounds a little like TV on steroids, yes Nettie will eat television.  Why hook up your TV to a set-top box delivering "pre-programmed" channels?  Sounds a little boring.  Nettie will have millions of channels some fat, some slim.  Friends re-runs etc. will be fat, How to fly fish in the Himalayas will be thin, but whatever floats your boat is what Nettie will deliver.

Searching for video today stuff is a pain.  Google search for video, I dare you.  You type, click and wait.  Occasionally something good comes up in the "single image screen shot, what a time waster.  Want to pay $2 bucks for a rerun, didn't think so.  Google for video is different from regular text google searches.  That one difference being...it sucks.  Each medium has a different subtlety.  For video it hasn't been sorted out yet.  Video search in the early days of talky movies, this means a door is wide open for whomever gets it right.

The most successful way to date of searching for video is channel surfing or letting TiVo do the work and then channel surfing from the couch.  At inclue! we are thinking about replicating that TiVo experience imperfect as it is for video and audio.  Well OK not really, but we make it a little better and help nettie deliver cheaper and faster.   The trick....is to have Nettie deliver in advance so you can surf fast, getting to good stuff faster.  Stay tuned we are going to help Nettie deliver.

On the way to that delivery, a few things may get eaten in the next 10 years, mainly the business model of network television, cable television and few other tasty morsels.....but Nettie must be fed.

technology that disappears

There is an irony in the fact that best technology disappears.  Like air it is missed only by its absence.  Consider electricity (light, heat etc), bandwidth, e-mail, cell phones. 

We live in an age of unbelievable capabilities for the average person, assuming you live in the developed world.  The most successful technologies are to use the over used term ubiquitous.   Why is this important? to understand?  2 reasons, one is to understand the nature of our hidden dependencies and the other is to understand the impact of today's and tomorrows technology.

I am the founder of a technology company inclue! that uses something called RSS to deliver web information to people.  Our thesis is that a fair amount of the web will be "delivered" to people.  Today we are all used to searching for things.  In the future we will subscribe to or "tell" various sections of the web to come to us.

Today's delivery of the web is text, some audio and a little video.  The functionality is growing as people start using this delivery to include richer media and perhaps more importantly services.

Using inclue! for example in conjunction with most major websites means people can be kept up to date about "happenings" or new things at those websites, such as a new journal entry to a blog.  No reason to go out and search around for things when they can be delivered. 

Services and updates are now available as well.  Craigslist now allows a person to keep informed about any new offer they have available.  Orbitz now clears a lot of travel inventory via delivery using RSS.  Any person having inclue! now gets things delivered to them.   

The often talked about rich web (all singing all dancing) and web services will show up very quietly using what for now looks like a small technology called RSS.  I am excited to be a part of the fast growing :delivered web experience.

design means understanding the materials

Good design means understanding the true nature of materials and the how they will be used.  Understanding a medium and realizing the applications can be great thing.  Here is probably the most interesting list of new physical materials available full stop  www.transtudio.com download or by the book.  There are some incredible materials to work with.  Really this is probably one of the coolest blogs from a creative design perspective you can follow.  Think transparent concrete,

Another interesting materials or medium to design with is software.  It is infinitely malleable, scalable and responsive.  As an amthropologist, combining software with people is endlessly fascinating.  I help work with a great team at inclue!  We make a simple RSS pipe that delivers content to people, pretty amazing really as blogs and more online content come online, the nature of people, content and communication means exciting things.  Soon more text, audio and video will be flowing from individuals to individuals than ever before.  We can all hope that more communication fosters more understanding.

Out there! Science

I used to be Chief analyst at a place called Starlab, best job I ever had.  I am a huge science and engineering fan. I use the word fan, because I am only a bystander from the sidelines.  I have a deep love of structures, order, pattern and relationships in things and people.

One of the more interesting projects I have been watching over the last few years is Black Light Power .   The thesis begs us to question classical quantum mechanics and the nature and state of some of the constants that make our model of the physical universe.  For those of you with a deeper Physics understanding, I would be fascinated to hear a critique of Mills Grand Unified Theory. 

The concept of a compressible state and fractional Quanta seems pretty wild.  The impact for physics and our understanding of a lot things could be profound.  So far the larger world at least Nature, Science etc. seems to be ignoring the work, albeit the less skilled popular press has picked up on it.  Almost free limitless energy tends to attract the press.  Anyway it is fascinating stuff and Dr. Mills has promised some major announcements in the coming months.  I am interested in seeing peer recognition and of course applications as the could be profound.

A life's project: Property Wiki

Some things or ideas germinate, percolate, resonate and finally dominate a life.  They may not always be at the forefront, but they are nonetheless omnipresent for a person.  Property wiki is most likely one of those things for me. 

The objective behind property wiki is to do as much "good" as possible while allowing individuals to determine what that good is.  Property, the access, control, security and stability it brings is one of the foremost concepts in cultural civilization.  Amthropologists don't study it too much leaving it mainly to economists, but the recognition of property, the anthropic claim of "mine" in the fleeting moments that are the individual persons moment has determined more about cultures, society and history than almost  any other driving force with the exception being the concept of self "religion" and the natural human sex drive.

Property wiki is an attempt at helping more people in more parts of the world effectively claim property in a more organized way.  Here is a video synopsis of the problem according to Hernando De Soto World Bank Video (91 minutes but worth it)

The problem is estimated to measure in the Trillions of dollars and affect the poor, even if that sounds a bit tautological.  There is enough wealth in most poor countries to allow them to realize strong economic growth and a leap out of "relative poverty"  The book recommendation is The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else   If you are interested in making a difference using economics, then this may be the path for you.

Property Wiki will use open source software, the web, grass roots participation to frame the problem, qualitatively, quantitatively and most importantly, publicly. 

I came up with the idea for Property wiki over 2 years from 2001 to 2003.  I wanted to isolate what the biggest impact could be for the poor in terms of ROI and non-intervention.  The only other case for high ROI and minimal intervention was micro-nutrients and Iodized salt, both of which lead to higher IQ's and more thinking individuals in the world.

Property wiki seeks to capture the processes and cost associated with formalizing property ownership, management and transfer for small holders in countries across the world.  The thesis being that over $9.3 trillion exists as dead capital , or non fungible assets.  Squatters in small homes, plots and areas around the world, have no security or incentive to develop or increase the value of their holdings.  Freeing these assets would allow for capital to be made available in times of emergency, for personal investments in education or simply to rationalize un-economic assets.  Efficient markets mean more security for individuals, access to opportunity and a larger tax base for governments to build out infrastructure.

Property wiki aims to combine the power of open source wiki's and reporting to capture the steps required to secure property rights.  Property wiki then seeks to use the behavioral aspects of social pressure and ego to facilitate change, albeit slowly.  Property wiki will organize the steps required to secure property rights into a quantitative index so that countries can be compared.  After all the securing and managing of property rights is service and should therefore have relative comparable costs in terms of GDP/capita in various countries. 

Finally it is hoped that by publishing the costs in each country and ranking them from top to bottom, pressure from inside these countries may change these procedures for the better, allowing more people to participate in the "formal economies" within these countries.  A good example of social pressure via ranking can be found in the excellent indexes  published on corruption by Transparency international.

hola! from La Jolla

Here is an irony, I am CEO of inclue!  we make software that helps bloggers and RSS publishers get revenue and understand their audiences better, yet this is my first weblog.   

good stuff, this blogging, a healthy mix of ego, vanity publishing, digital narcissism and maybe just maybe some value for the reader.  That of course remains to be seen. 

If you want to get this or any other blog delivered directly to you, try out the inclue! RSS reader at inclue! I hope you will like it.

A little bit of info on me, I am an amateur anthropologist, by degree, a finance person by masters degree and a design HCI fan.  Two of my favorite books in terms of design are Don't Make me think  and Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things   These kind of sum up what and how to make things for people.

As an amthropologist (the m reflects amateur or armchair) I think that if you are going to make something for you fellow human you better think a lot about how they experience and respond to those things.  Good design is good Karma or at least my wife and seem to think so. :) I spent a about 10 years living and working in a few different European countries and have decided that the Scandinavians have very good design and very good Karma to along with it.  If you don't believe have a look here...Flickr keyword Sweden