Archive for the 'Ideas' Category

Evolutionary theory of intellectual property theft

Published
by
Distraction
on 14/10/2007
in Ideas and Mind
. 0 Comments

I’ve been reading a lot of Pinker, Dennett and Dawkins (P.Diddy?) lately, so I’m in an evolutionary state of mind.

Here’s a question that’s been troubling me for some time now:
Why do people find it so easy to steal intellectual property? (This is a loaded question, I know.)

Photocopiers enabled us to make copies of copyrighted documents and books. Tape recorders and cassette recorders enabled us to make copies of copyrighted audio recordings. Then came CD’s and DVD’s and suddenly it was possible to make very cheap copies of audio recordings, and, because these media are digital, without any loss of quality. Today we don’t even have to make the copies, we just have to know where to find them on the Internet. (Yes, someone has to make the copies, but if you wait long enough someone else will.) Even the less tech-savvy among us usually have a friend, or a friend of a friend, who can get them what they like. In general, it has become cheaper and easier to make high-fidelity copies of copyrighted material, while a lot more material has become accessible to a lot more people. I suppose everyone knows this story.
I think that most of us will agree that we have an aversion to theft - I feel a wave of guilt washing over me even at the thought of stealing something. (Here we go again…) Is this nature, nurture or a bit of both? Maybe it’s just bullshit, in the philosophical sense, of course, but I believe research has been done that suggests the latter. (Dear reader, I’m too faineant to look it up for you.) On the other hand, when I duplicate a file on my hard disk, I do not feel guilty at all. Does that make me an intellectual property sociopath, an infopath? (Sadly, the term InfoPath has been trademarked by Microsoft, so I don’t think it will catch on.) Actually, I believe most of us, if not all of us, do not feel any guilt when we make copies of intellectual property.

So why do people find it so easy to steal intellectual property?
Let me propose two evolutionary conjectures to answer this question.

Maybe evolution has failed to catch up with us. Physical property has been around much longer than intellectual property. (The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.) Maybe we do not feel remorse when we make illegal copies of intellectual property because we are not built that way.

But there is another evolutionary way to look at this. Perhaps this inability of ours to acknowledge or even register intellectual theft has nothing to do with us. Perhaps “information wants to be free” is true in an evolutionary sense. Perhaps, memes suppress our remorse for intellectual theft so that they can spread more easily. Perhaps we have co-evolved, and there is nothing to suppress. It may even be to our benefit that memes procreate easily and uninterrupted - or not hazardous enough to cause any evolutionary reaction.

The Tattoo conjecture

Published
by
Distraction
on 01/07/2007
in Ideas
. 1 Comment

I had a few minutes to kill, so here’s my conjecture on the evolutionary history of tattoo’s.

A long time ago, before the dawn of civilization, a big strong guy, at the prime of his life (he is probably all of twelve years old) is out on a stroll, minding his own business.

Suddenly, a tiger appears out of nowhere. She’s a formidable beast that triggers his instinct to flee. But what would be the point? He reckons, the moment he turns the back to her, he’s dead.

So, our man stands his ground. The tiger jumps. Our man pulls his colt and plants one between her burning eyes (tiger, tiger…)

However, the tiger does land on him with her full weight , throwing him on the tar-covered ground (the road had just been paved) and her fangs tear at his shoulder. Our hero manageth to push the beast off of him, but not before his wounds soak the tar in.

In the weeks to come, the wounds will heal, sealing in the tar, marking our man forever as a tiger-slayer … and a ladies-man. The man killed a tiger, and he can prove it. Lo and behold, Tattoo’s are born.

And they’re a Good Trick. They give this guy a biological advantage: He’s got something the others don’t. Soon, men everywhere will be tattooing themselves. First it’s fangs, then it’s dinosaur teeth. Before long, it’s I HEART SARAH, a song, a Buddha and some pornography.

So there you go.

Tamakickas

Published
by
Distraction
on 17/06/2007
in Ideas and Technology
. 2 Comments

Another interesting idea I’ve been playing around with:

The Tamakicka (plural: Tamakickas), the anti-social networking device.

It’s a melt of Tamagotchi and kickin’ ass.

You wear a device on your key-chain that beeps when you are close to a person whose ass needs kickin’, aka the target. The target’s thingy beeps too, but with a different tone so that it’s immediately known to both parties who’s attacking whom.

If you kick the target’s ass, you get points that you can use to have someone else’s ass kicked. If the target kicks your ass, he (or she, let’s not be, like, sexistic about this) gets to choose between points or finding out who put a contract on him (or her).

And if you’re wondering who decides who’s ass was kicked, it’s easy: it’s the one who gets to punch his code in the other’s Tamakicka.

Obviously, the Tamakicka will have to be able to stand a few blows. And, of course, we’ll need the mother of all disclaimers to cover this baby internationally.

Now, if this isn’t a million dollar idea I don’ t know what is. Imagine the spin-offs and the merchandising!

The first rule of Tamakicka is: You don’t talk about Tamakicka.

Rest in greenpeace

Published
by
Distraction
on 16/05/2007
in Ideas, Mind and Politics
. 3 Comments

While driving the other day, I had a revolutionary idea:

Each one of us, as an individual, could offset our own carbon emissions by paying a poor person in a developing country to commit suicide.

By doing so, not only would we help solve the problem of the greenhouse effect, we would also help provide a steady income for developing countries and tackle the problem of global overpopulation. The wealth of participating developing countries would increase at a rate proportional to the lessening of their populations.

I expect the interest within a developing country for “green” suicides to eventually taper off once the remaining population becomes rich.

And, to avoid people being fooled into committing suicide by environmentally friendly bastards who won’t pay out, an independent organization could be setup that transfers the funds to the inheritors once the suicide has been committed. And I have a name for it: RestInGreenPeace.com. The url is available.

How about it?

Of course it’s outrageous. But - what’s wrong with this picture?