The utopian ideals of some of the early internet pioneers are long since forgotten. More recent debates about the rights of avatars have been steam-rollered under “the tyranny of the End User Licence Agreement” (quoting Andrés Guadamuz – although perhaps such an agreement is still more democratic than a unsigned contract with society). So who cares?

Virtual Policy Structure

Who is important:

• Who is no longer dominated by a group of well-educated early adopters. Casual games and similar online services are attracting a far more mainstream audience. Ordinary people live day-to-day based on “common sense”, with almost no awareness of formal statute or the wording of contracts. For example, virtual goods are sold as a highly limited license, but the purchaser generally assumes they own these goods, just like they own other stuff they buy. So there’s a disconnect between “the law” as it is, and the law as it is popularly expected to be. That might be fixed by education (marketing, propaganda), but virtual goods are popular precisely because of the status they convey about the individual purchaser, so such goods have to “feel owned”. Instead this disconnection between law and common expectation risks becoming a governance issue.
• Who is no longer entirely dominated by “players” and hobbyists. Serious socio-economic activity is starting to occur in and around environments which are legally little more than a piece of software, owned by the programmer or publisher. That poses some serious challenges, because now unresolved issues involve significant value (and money). Creative reuse issues become even more poignant, because almost everything is a reflection on the creatvity of more than one thing (individual, organisation, work). Meanwhile, rights that you assumed you had evaporate, because either you signed them away in a contract, or they relate to an abstract concept which isn’t clearly recognised in law. That sounds trivial until, for example, you discover that your online persona has greater economic value than your physical persona, and that the only person that can exploit this value is someone other than you.

Who is important now because who changes the scenario from “some kid in their bedroom”, to anyone and everyone. That brings previously abstract problems into the mainstream, and will rapidly start making the debate less academic and more, erm, real.

Pragmatically, we may seamlessly adjust to the new order. For example, instead of viewing a provider like Facebook as a service, ultimately we will see them as our corporate employer: Implicity accepting their right to make profits out of our work, with only limited regulation controlling the extremes of exploitation. Subtle adjustments to the existing legal structure – especially via case-law precidents and reactionary changes to contracts. In the interim, there will surely be blood: Service providers that previously just had to deal with an irrate “I quit!” forum post, risk finding themselves hauled into court, because that’s what some people in “the real world” do when they get upset. In Jas Purewal‘s “little old lady doomsday scenario”, the defendant can not only hire lawyers to defend themselves, but is likely to be treated far more sympathetically by a judge due to their age. Especially likely where the provider’s internal dispute resolution system is biased by the arrogance associated with the absolute control of their software. Most of the legal profession, service providers, and ordinary people will probably end up here.

Politically, this raises a lot of familiar issues. The fear of a few dominant owners profiting from the labor of the social collective sounds rather Marxist. There are certainly some serious equality issues lurking, even if you reject the notion of collective property. Likewise some of the rights issues feel hauntingly familiar. Why is the physical ownership of another person so abhorrent, while ownership of another’s virtual presence so acceptable? Or to use Peter Yu‘s example, why is fine to impersonate Elvis in the street, but not in certain online worlds? Eventually such discussion turns to fundamental philosophical questions about the role of the individual, and their relationship to other individuals. But this isn’t a Utopian agenda. Rather, it seeks to carry existing social norms and balance forward into a slightly different environment. Good policy makers should find themselves here, biasing the pragmatic free-for-all (above) so that balance is maintained and the infamous 2027 “WeeMee Riots” (in which “we demand our clothes back”) never happen.

But there is a third approach, one better optimised for the virtual environment itself. That’s not as radical as it sounds, because we are still dealing with humans, who are mostly still satisfying primordial needs. Not much changes. But there are facets of the online environment that are important to its success, yet are already difficult terrain for Old World law: Mass-collaboration, creative reuse, emergent outcomes (not known at the start), constant product evolution, many linked identities. The logical structure is one that is natively multiplicitous [from multiplicity] – optimised for many, rather than one. This doesn’t just mean better systems for joint ownership; or devolution of specific laws to specific spaces, without universality: It implies a further re-balancing of governance, away from god-given sovereignity, in favour of emergent chaos. Maybe. Abstract, even idealistic, such a broad approach helps us understand the core issues.

Cynically, foresight is rare in governance, while protectionism of the past is rampant. Meanwhile, the technology may itself enable a solution.

Flaming Postscript

The text above was originally written last year (including the “WeeMee Riots”), in response to the 3rd Digital Interactive Symposium Edinburgh (27 August 2010), but left unpublished.

Today I started to grow incensed about England’s current wave of youth riots. Not incensed about the riots, but about “popular” (especially political) reactions to them. I’m loathed to write about what I don’t fully understand. But if I hear another, “if looters were protesting against the society, they’d burn town halls and police stations, not high street shops”, I may turn violent myself: Is there no appreciation that the stuff sold in stores is the basis of the society? The aidas® riots…

One unattributed radio commentator casually remarked that many kids were being taught to behave socially by “computer games”. But I doubt they understood why this might be relevant: Not just a proxy for a generational gap or poor parenting. Not just for biasing an individual’s expectations towards winning, when the physical world mostly teaches us how to lose. But also by providing a deep, cynical education in owning nothing – how the things you value most can never legally be owned by you. Combine that with a wider society structured around property, especially owned consumerist property, and confusion abounds. Naturally, if your society is structured around the individual ownership of stuff, and it transpires that the stuff that’s important to individuals isn’t owned by individuals, then your society isn’t structured.

This is commonly expressed as a generational inequality. For example, older generations appearing to price younger generations out of owning their own homes. A very physical case, easily understood by anyone aged over 30. But the intrinsic problem is deeper – that outlined above: A historic social-legal structure that doesn’t natively match the new environment, but is largely being forced upon it. Many un-physical things, that are increasingly important to living – important to the fabric of structured “individual ownership” society, but yet aren’t owned by individuals – from your WeeMee’s cloths to the electronic data generated by your interaction with others.

I have previously mused that generations born into this sort of technology might learn to use it better, by not instinctively applying prior techniques. But if the formal socio-legal structure first demands they learn everything prior does not fit that model, conflict becomes likely. Knee-jerk reactions to that conflict are highly pragmatic – “water cannon and rubber bullets”. Good political policy-making will attempt to smooth a transition. Optimising for the new environment is more logical, but profoundly challenging. Challenging because it requires the “governance of chaos” – the ultimate oxymoron? Challenging because it requires a way of thinking, knowing, even being, among humans that is not familiar to modern Westerners.

The third case suggests the divorce of the individual from property. A fundamental reassessment of Locke‘s, “though the earth … be common to all men, every man has a property in his own person,” and everything built around that.

(And that final sentiment has been stalling me for the last 3 years…)

Nothing isn’t new. The problem baffled thinkers for much of the 20th century. In the 21st we may finally be being overwhelmed by it. Possibly without realising. How society resolves a potentially uncomfortable relationship with nothing is important. And intriguing. It’s possibly the most difficult problem to resolve, yet underpins many contemporary issues.

This article introduces 3 approaches to resolving nothing. They are an attempt to summarise various different articles I’ve written over the past year. Broadly:

• Tangible Renaissance: Physical representations of nothing. Idols to communicate abstract values. Belief in certainty.
• Virtual Illusion: Virtual consumerism. An economy base on nothing, happily sustained in the denial of the meaninglessness. Belief in who cares?
• Post-Existential Skepticism: Understanding built from nothing. Presumption of illusion. Belief in uncertainty.

This text is poorly researched, incomplete, and, well, uncertain. But it might be an interesting summary of the extent of my current confusion. This is written from a Western, especially British-American perspective. Keep these quotes in mind:

“Assume you are wrong (and forecast often).” – Paul Saffro (The Revolution After Electronics)

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” – Woody Allen (My Speech to the Graduates)

Tangible Renaissance

Intangible sectors of the economy increasingly dominant (Socio-Economic Environment, Valuing). Yet we tend to favour physical representations, especially to convey status and action. From the idolisation of most religions, through the grandiose buildings occupied by banks, to cloths fashion.

The pattern continues into political government: The preference of “train sets” in transport policy, in spite of their minimal influence on transport (Railways for Prosperity). The inability of political government to even understand its impact on the intangible economy is well documented. Ironic, given the tendency for government intervention to define the value of intangibles (Valuing, again).

Tangible expressions of the intangible historically tend to be used to communicate concepts across large groups of people, especially across language or cultural barriers. The human illusion also seems to be stronger than any virtual creation (upcoming: examination of fame in World of Warcraft), so perhaps tangible things will always be preferred?

Tangible Renaissance is also associated with certainty (Optimism), in spite of growing uncertainty in the world itself (upcoming: why buses should be late – an examination of the paradoxes of denying the existence of uncertainty in policy making). Failure to acknowledge uncertainty compounds an ever-more complex underlying world. The extremes become more extreme, while the population continues to expect everything to be “normal”.

Overall, this traditional approach appeals to human instincts. It’s comforting and reassuring, regardless of its failure to address underlying problems. Unfortunately, it’s wasteful of increasingly limited physical resources, and relies on lucky to counter extremes of variability in the world. Logically, a Tangible Renaissance will eventually fail. Spectacularly.

Virtual Illusion

This approach takes an already predominantly intangible, consumerist economy (Socio-Economic Environment), and transfers it entirely into a virtual environment (Valuing, Adventures in the Invisible Tent). “Virtual consumerism” – socio-economic activity without utility value, without any physical component.

These illusions are still constrained by the uncanny (Adventures in the Invisible Tent), with an “augmentalist” relationship between the physical and virtual self (that they are the same entity). The human emotions behind what is physically happening, simply transfer to a virtual arena (Do You Fish in Real Life?).

There are significant advantages to this approach. Most obviously, the maintenance of civil “happiness” and economic prosperity in the face declining physical resources (Socio-Economic Environment). Philosophically, it’s a practical defense against the “nihilistic epoch” – replacing the realisation of pointlessness with a benign, but self-perpetuating, illusion of purpose.

The legal structure for this already exists with Intellectual Property rights (Poor Gina), allowing a feudal-style structure of sub-society, where everything is subservient to the master right (the Goblin Princes in A Strange Game exemplify the complexity possible).

While such a structure might be sustainable (these are “customers”, not slaves), it evokes many Marx-era fears of the dominance of the corporation over the people. But with some 21st century twists: I am both my right and a right owned by someone else – which conflicting right wins? Values can be internalised within the structure (made non-transferable), preventing conventional income re-distribution of wealth to offset inequality (Animal Farm). The potential evolution of the corporate right-holder into “a god” (A Strange Game). Plus more widely accepted intellectual property and privacy debates, such as restricting re-creativity (Poor Gina).

These conflicts potentially lead to civil tension. Tension which cannot be resolved through the parent legislature, because that government is wedded to the Tangible Renaissance. It will struggle to comprehend its role in this. So the Virtual Illusion might also be flawed.

Post-Existential Skepticism

The fall of the Virtual Illusion raises questions for individuals, which potentially lead to a much broader understanding of the self. Specifically an appreciation of the multiplicity of self (Valuing). That in addition to you, there can be lots of other versions of you:

The structure of law would be an unexpected, but logical, way to challenge the popular perception of the physical and virtual self as the same entity – the unresolved conflict between my right to I and I as a right owned by someone else. Or perhaps the result of the Virtual Illusion is that “reality” evolves to have so little certainty, that the only sane path is to assume uncertainty? Critically, human perceptions need to cross the uncanny Valley (Adventures in the Invisible Tent).

So, somehow, we emerge into what I’ve called Post-Existential Skepticism. An inversion of conventional meta-physics: Notionally starting from nothing, and questioning everything as a series of uncertain assumptions. The opposite of assuming “god created”, and then picking apart reality like a vulture, until there is nothing left to believe. The transition through nothing is widely considered absurd, terrifying, destructive, even apocalyptic. Yet Nietzsche, and many since, have also seen great potential for humanity in overcoming nothing. Chaotic, emergent thought is the most intriguing (Difference and the Same).

However, the popular trend is towards de-immersion and de-canniness (Adventures in the Invisible Tent). People gravitate towards each other (Difference and the Same). And humans don’t evolve anywhere near as fast as technology (Financing Hyper-Virality in the Clouds comment, Do You Fish in Real Life?). Optimism seems to triumph over logic (Optimism). And the pessimists get frustrated.