Since it seems -- for the time being -- Eric was the first person to figure this stuff out and talk about it publically (so, what else is new? :-)), we should give him credit for it.
While we do need a shorter name and I don't really care what name is used to describe it, I do think somebody needs to figure out exactly what "it" is. Since I don't know what Eric Hughes was talking about at DEFCON IV, I can't know whether his "it" is the same thing I'm talking about. Especially since everybody else I've seen talking about "it" seems to leave out what I think is the most important part -- value added. So far I have yet to see anyone write a clear and concise article describing the economic system we've been discussing. I've tried, but to date I haven't had the time. I'm too busy trying to steer my business in that directon to write about it. I leave as an exercise for everyone, describe the difference between a recursive geodesic auction market and a chain letter or a multi-level marketing scheme (which I might add are rampant on the net). What prevents the latter from being a subset of the former? Jason Cronk
A whole bunch of people are now talking about these cash-settled recursive auction processes, and they're a direct, and now obvious, consequence of bearer (or at least instant) settlement markets for information on geodesic networks. When you add anonymity to the transaction, you pretty much have the final straw for "rights" tracking. Watermarks just tell you who the information was stolen from, for instance. So, one more industrial information process bites the dust.
And, since a lot of people, like myself :-), claim that anonymous bearer settlement will be the cheapest way to effect a transaction in an internetworked environment, then this kind of market process should approach ubiquity sooner or later, and we should have a nice short name for it. :-).
So, I propose that we call these things "Hughes markets" or "Hughes auctions" or something. At least until we find the apocryphal 1940's Atlantic Monthly article, like they did with hypertext. :-).
If it *does* turn out that Eric was the first person to see this, he might end up with a trip to Stockholm someday...
Cheers, Bob Hettinga
----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>
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