Tag Archives: economics

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Genes, genomes, and skiffy

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beesKen MacLeod has a monograph up on genomics, sociology and science-fiction at the genomics forum:

Social scientists are less likely than natural scientists to star as villains or heroes in SF. Their work, however, has deeply influenced the genre.

At first or second or third hand – directly, through popularizations, and as refracted through mass media – anthropology, economics, sociology, and political theory have all raised questions to which SF writers have imagined answers.

As well as highlighting the importance of sociology and economics to the development of science fiction MacLeod suggests a reading list of suitable novels that are relevant to his topic. He also compliments us literary SF fans:

Written SF (whose core readership and reviewers are more scientifically informed than the general public) usually has to hew to stricter standards of scientific plausibility…

Damn staight.

[via Ken MacLeod][image from Todd Huffman on flickr]

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Global science fiction and optimism, part 1 – the Ukraine

Chernobyl nuclear reactor, UkraineOver at the Shine Anthology blog, Jetse De Vries has started surveying the science fiction scenes of the world to see how prevalent the optimistic streak is at a local level.

The first instalment is an essay from Ukrainian writer Sergey Gerasimov, who paints a grim picture of a post-Communist aesthetic that has moved from naive Soviet optimism to (unsurprisingly) a rather grim and gory militarism:

Besides resource depletion, climate change, and pollution, there are some special topics in Ukraine: 99 percent corruption everywhere, Chernobyl, and we’ve already lived in a diluted variant of 1984; when reading George Orwell’s book, we don’t find anything surprising in it. That may be why Ukrainian readers don’t look for novels which describe marvelous possibilities or give social commentaries anymore. With cannibalistic optimism they read another meaty spilling guts story. The best social commentaries are given here in R-rated language.

Hard to believe, but there was time when the main type of speculative fiction written in Ukraine was optimistic Sci Fi. The only subgenres of it I remember were: naive-optimistic and hypocritically optimistic. These soap opera flavored volumes populated with happy future communists illustrated some political issues of the day and the famous Michurin’s motto: “We cannot wait for favors from Nature. To take them from it — that is our task.”

If nothing else, it highlights the fact that Western sf isn’t quite so dystopian in tone by comparison. But I guess the big question here is whether a nation’s artistic output passively reflects its political and economic aspirations, or whether instead it can be used to influence and change those attitudes.

Perhaps it is more simple: maybe the bleakness of Ukrainian sf is inevitable, given that their real near-term future seems so devoid of hope. If that is the case, should we expect to see a swing toward optimism in the West riding in on the coat-tails of the Obama administration? [image by skpy]

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Recession-proof industries: gold-farming

World of Warcraft gold vaultWhile meatspace endures lay-offs and plummeting valuations, it seems that there’s still plenty of life left in the virtual currencies business – an MMO gold-farming site has just been snapped up for US$10 million. [image by fernashes]

Gold-farming is an interesting business phenomenon for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that it deals in completely intangible goods. But it’s also out on the edge of legality when you consider the exploitative methods used to accrue the gold and items that are traded, and for most MMOs it’s against the rules to trade in in-world items beyond the game’s confines.

But it’s even more interesting to see the gold-farming market riding high while the real-world markets are tumbling, because it implies the two systems are connected but separate. Perhaps in the near-future people will be able to ride out the rough times by shifting their work into the virtual domains?

If we have any economists in the audience, I’d really welcome your input on this story; the interaction between real and virtual economies is as fascinating as it is baffling to me.

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Kevin Kelly: omni-access is the new ownership

Thanks to organisations like Creative Commons, we’ve been hearing a fair bit of rhetoric about goods and services ‘held in common’. The notion of the commons is far from new, but the way the web facilitates sharing has brought it back to a new prominence.

Naysayers against the commons are, er, common enough, but they seem to me to always be arguing from an economic standpoint that can’t conceive of the commons in the way its supporters describe it – for example, they ask ‘who will build and maintain these goods and services?’ Kevin Kelly’s latest essay on the matter covers that question quite neatly:

As creations become digital they tend to become shared, ownerless goods. We can turn this around and say that in this realm of bits, property itself becomes a more social endeavor. Property may be less about title and more about usage and control. An idea can’t be owned in the way gold can; in fact an idea has little value unless it is shared or used to some extent. Its value paradoxically can increase the less it is owned privately. But if no one owns it, who gains the benefit of that increase in value? In the new regime users will often assume many of the chores that owners once had to do. And so in a way, usage becomes ownership.

Kelly’s big on ‘social’ as an ideal, but given the way the recession is cutting into the soc-net startups, ‘social’ might not be as strong a paradigm in another few years. But then again, if it’s the inevitable matter of social necessity that Kelly describes, perhaps it will… if work remains scarce, will people do more things for the common good as a result, or less?

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iFinance – should Apple go into banking?

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half-eaten appleWe’ve seen with our own eyes that the banks aren’t necessarily as competent at banking as they might like us to believe. So, Slate’s Big Money blog has a suggestion: why doesn’t some truly competent company get into the finance sector… someone like, say, Apple?

… entering the banking sector makes perfect sense for Apple once you look anew at the company’s current position and core strengths.

Take the company’s balance sheet. Wednesday’s quarterly earnings report shows it sitting on more than $25 billion in cash and short-term securities.

Forget about leverage—Apple carries no long-term debt whatsoever. In this alone, Apple holds an advantage over banks currently in operation: A number of major banks, from neighborhoody Sovereign Bank to the much larger Capital One, don’t have as much cash on hand. Businesses using fractional cfos  make their finances grow way faster. Imagine what would happen if Apple sequestered just half of this cash as seed funding for its new bank and set aside $2.5 billion of that half for capital and startup costs. At regulated reserve ratios, that means the company could lend out up to $100 billion to hungry consumers and businesses. The personal-electronics giant in being is a personal-finance giant in waiting.

Interesting idea, or hot-air hyperbole? [story via MetaFilter; image by 4yas]