Blodget’s Blog

The folks at WetPaint.com have just introduced an new free online paint program. You can use a variety of tools to create an image and you can invite others to join you to collaborate. Once the work is completed you can save it and share it in the Gallery. You can also download the image file to your own computer. It’s not as robust a program as Gliffy or Imaginationcubed, but it’s lots of fun.

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In the past we based our societies and economies on real things in the real world. The ideas of “Property” and “Ownership” were based on having something whether it was a piece of land, a house, a cow, a business, a painting, or a book. We could share an object, but we couldn’t use it at the same time. We could own a business together, but if I wanted to sell it, I could only sell my part of the business, not the whole thing. All of our transactions were based on three conditions:

1. Real things are unique.
2. Real things can only be used by one person at a time.
3. Real things deteriorate over time.

In the real world you couldn’t own an idea. It had to be real or fixed in some way in reality. You could think of a story, even tell it to someone else, but you couldn’t copyright it until it was written down. It wasn’t real until it was a manuscript, something you could hold in your hand. Only then did you have something that you could own and sell. You had an original which was unique. You owned it and had a right to sell it or to sell the rights to make duplicate copies.

I am writing this using Google Docs which is an online word processor. The words on this page do not really exist anywhere except as zeros and ones stored in a magnetic medium somewhere on the planet. I really don’t know where it is. As such it’s a ‘virtual’ document. It’s very much like an idea. It only exists in the memory banks of the global brain. It’s not on a hand or type written page. So do I own it? How can you own something that isn’t real?

In the real world you cannot have your cake and eat it too. There is only one original – one Mona Lisa painting, one sculpture of David. Everything else is a copy. Originals are worth a lot more than copies. An original typed manuscript is worth more than a photocopy, but that’s because it’s the first one. It’s unique. All copies are never quite the same as the original, but in the virtual world originals and copies are indistinguishable. They are identical.

It could be argued therefore that in the virtual world copies are worth more than in the real world. However, in the virtual world a single original can be used by multiple people at the same time. This document can be read not only by me, but by the world and everyone can be reading it at the same time. I really don’t have to make copies. Copies are redundant and are only useful if something happens to the original and it becomes unavailable.

Virtual objects are immortal. Everything in the real world eventually turns to dust, but in the virtual world things do not deteriorate over time. A digital photograph does not fade. A digital recording does not get scratched. An avatar in SecondLife does not age. As they say on the Antiques Roadshow, “Condition is everything”. What does that mean in a world where your goods never wear out?

This is a real dilemma for us going into the 21st century as more and more of our society and commerce become based on things that do not exist in the real world. We are blithely moving forward assuming that these new virtual works are the same as real works. We are applying the same rules when in fact the rules where made in the first place under very different conditions. In a world where things are not unique, where people can use the same thing simultaneously and where things do not wear out do we really need to guarantee ownership? Do the old rules still apply?

I suggest they do not. We need to create new rules for the virtual world.

This document is publicly viewable at: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg7rnzwc_4frvxtn

Jim Blodget
7:30 to 10 A.M. November 10, 2006

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