Monthly Archives: January 2009

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Funny money – what might we use as alternative currencies?

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assorted currencyDavid Birch at kashklash has been thinking about alternative currencies. He’s decided that local currencies, while their hearts are in the right place, are not the solution their advocates claim them to be:

They’re wrong because their notions of locality are too backward-looking. So while I buy the idea that some form of localisation of money it might be part of an overall trend, a reaction against globalisation and so on, I think that localisation in the coming online world means something different from the slightly romantic, slightly unworldly, geographic notion of locality that is at the heart of many current schemes.

So what might we use as alternative currencies instead of localised money?

People don’t seem to have a problem holding World of Warcraft money, or iTunes’ money, in addition to money in their bank accounts. Given a free (or, at least, vanishingly small marginal cost) choice, what would they prefer? We’ve already touched on gold in the earlier discussion about alternative currencies and the price of oil. But I’m curious about other non-commodity suggestions: telecommunications bandwidth, mobile minutes…

As a commenter points out, bandwidth and mobile minutes are commodities to most of us… and the more I think about it, the harder I find it to think of anything that would make a practical currency that isn’t a commodity. Calories; water; kilowatt/hours… can you think of any more? [image by bradipo]

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The descent of phone

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lilypadsGlancing back in time at the evolution of electronic gadgets like mobile phones you realise what futurist Ray Kurzweil means by the intuitive linear perspective (described by Kurzweil here) – the difficulty we humans have with intuitively grasping the impact of exponential growth (as exemplified by the water lily story) and improvement, from 10 Great Geek Gadgets:

Cellphones have evolved so fast even last year’s models are already uncool. Go back a few more years – or watch most any 90s sitcom like Seinfeld – and you’ll be reminded of how things used to be. Rewind back to the beginning and behold the behemoths: how did we ever walk around with those things?

Kevin Kelly has some thoughts on the nature of the exponential growth of knowledge, most notably that as we learn more our ignorance increases (SRSLY check it out).

[via Bruce Sterling][image from BinaryApe on flickr]

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Friday Free Fiction for 16th January

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It’s Friday once again, and Friday is Free Fiction time here at Futurismic… a somewhat smaller batch this week, but still plenty to keep your eyeballs busy.

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A couple of novels at Manybooks:

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A lonesome short classic at Feedbooks:

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Polu Texni presents “Very Truly Yours, Part I” by Seth Gordon

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Strange Horizons presents “Greetings from Kampala” by Angela Ambroz

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Tor.com presents “Errata” by Jeff VanderMeer

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Jeff VanderMeer himself has a fictional snippet from his Ambergris world: “Zamilon in Waiting”

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Via Jim Steel:

Blood, Blade & Thruster is pulling the plug on itself on January 19. If you haven’t done so yet, go and download the pdfs of the magazines before it’s too late.

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Here’s Memory #31 by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

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And now for our regular collection of stuff that SF Signal‘s all-hearing ear caught the rumblings of. First off, they’ve got a round-up of the latest additions to the Free Speculative Fiction site , which is probably big enough to keep you reading until summer arrives.

Then there’s an assortment of stuff they linked to through the week just gone:

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And finally some Friday Flash Fiction:

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And that’s about all we’ve got this week. Keep your plugs, tip-offs and recommendations coming in; deadline is 1800 GMT every Friday. Have a great weekend!

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How to Communicate More Effectively, Part 6 – Generate Action

[How to Communicate More Effectively is a series of guest posts from Gareth L Powell. In case you missed ’em, here’s part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.]

Having got your audience wanting to subscribe to your magazine, read your blog post, or sign up to your email newsletter, you simply have to close the deal.

You have to tell the reader what you want them to do. Would you like them to contact you? Would you like them to support your cause or buy your book? Or simply check out the other posts on your blog? In order to get them to act, you have to tell them exactly what you want them to do, and how to go about doing it. Keep it simple, direct and to-the-point. You’ve got them wanting your product; all you have to do now is to tell them how to get it.

In addition, you should make sure that what you tell them to do is easy and straightforward. It’s no good asking them to fill out an eight page online questionnaire in order to access your site, because they’re unlikely to bother. Instead, make your download available with one click. Allow them to subscribe online to your magazine. If necessary, give them a phone number and an email address for queries. Make it easy for them to contact you (or take the action you want them to) and they will.

For example:

  • Order online by March 1st
  • Download the new issue FREE by clicking here
  • Send your completed order form to this address
  • Follow this link to buy “A Guide To Space Monsters” on Amazon
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Will Obama usher in the age of Digg democracy?

inauguration site construction notice, Washington DCOne of the more interesting sections of the Change.gov website built by the incoming Obama administration is the Citizen’s Briefing Book. It’s essentially a kind of Digg-like system where registered users can pick policies and issues to vote upwards or downwards on an ordered list, the idea being that the matters that matter the most will rise to the top, presumably to have attention paid to them by policy makers. [image by ajagendorf25]

It’s an intriguing idea, very typical of the Obama crew, and a tentative step toward a more atomised and participatory form of democracy that might effectively engage those who, traditionally, have been least engaged by politics in recent times. The downswing being, of course, that it’s effectively a crude kind of popularity contest, as Steven Johnson pointed out at BoingBoing:

Right now, the top three most popular proposals are: 1) Ending Marijuana Prohibition, 2) Bullet Trains and Light Rail, and 3) An End To Government Sponsored School Abstinence Programs. In other words, what the people want are stoned kids having sex on bullet trains. Sounds about right to me!

To be totally clear, those are three policies that – were I an American citizen – I would certainly support; it’s just that given the current state of the world in general and the US in particular, I don’t think they are really the hot-button issues that most need to be addressed…

Of course, the Citizen’s Briefing Book is only a type of polling mechanism rather than a direct lever on the policy machine. I only hope for the sake of all Americans it doesn’t become as farcical an echo-chamber of petty idiots as the Downing Street Petitions site. Or Digg, for that matter.