Two of the major themes of this year’s CHAT—gaming and electronic music—were presented as business interests. The talk’s raison d’être seemed to be demonstrating, for the sake of those who might find these subjects insufficiently serious, the existence of corporations that can and do make money in these spaces. The subject matter was to be the role of collaborations in entrepreneurship, but that topic gave way to general entrepreneurial advice as the ninety minutes went on. All of the companies were founded on innovative premises, and the panelists were intelligent and well-spoken:
Steven Aldrich (the geek: plaid shirt, Carolina blue jacket), President/CEO of Posit Science. Posit creates software to encourage brain fitness. Brain performance begins to decline after the 20s and drops sharply after the 60s. Aldrich’s company uses established science to develop games to help people improve their memory, focus, and mental agility. He emphasized the importance of using customer narratives, not just facts, to promote your brand.
Kip Frey (the suit: tasteful purple shirt, navy jacket), President/CEO of Zenph Sound Innovations. Of the three, Zenph is the easiest company to Google, but the hardest to describe. Their software can analyze a musical piece recorded in any time period and translate it—including, supposedly, every nuance of performance—into a data profile. That profile can then be used to exactly reproduce the performance, or it can become a starting point for re-interpreting the piece by manipulating performance style, instrumentation, or any of a number of other variables.
Eric Peterson (the hipster: green/gray argyle sweater, soul patch), President/CEO Vicious Cycle Software. Vicious Cycle is a major video game publishing house, one of many headquartered in the Triangle. They create console games for adults and for children, under their imprint Monkeybar Games. Peterson emphasized the importance of networking and forming well-rounded teams to succeeding in the games industry.
The subject matter of the talks fell back too frequently onto business advice platitudes: the importance of managing risk, having a well-researched business plan to attract capital, allowing time and fostering internal competitiveness to encourage innovation, being passionate about what your company does. But I can see the talk being helpful to a person from an arts, humanities, or technology background who is interested in capitalizing on their ideas.
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Virtual money: first across the divide
Kant once wrote that “A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers.” (Critique of Pure Reason, A599)
These words might have been true in 1781, but at the time I’m writing this, a US dollar is worth 264 Linden dollars. Something unprecedented is going on with virtual currencies.
Kant’s point was to claim that, given a concept, to claim that the object posited by the concept exists is to add nothing to the concept itself. It just describes a particular relationship between the concept and the real world. This seems like a rather academic argument—and it is—but it points out the futility of trying to prove that something exists by armchair reasoning. Kant was specifically targeting Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.
If we were to set about looking for 100 thalers, we wouldn’t have to specify that we’re looking for 100 thalers that exist. The last bit would be taken for granted. So trying to add existence as an additional predicate to the concept of our 100 thalers is pointless, according to Kant.
That would indisputably be the case, if we only ever approached concepts as necessarily referring to objects in the real world. But that’s not true; make-believe is another way that we engage with concepts. A child at play could indeed be searching for 100 thalers that do not exist. I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to rustle up Gil while playing Final Fantasy XII.
In Kant’s time, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction was clear. But during the twentieth century, mass media allowed fiction to become the jumping-off point for new social realities. Fan communities made the production of entire fictional universes profitable. People began speaking Klingon and invested themselves in social role-playing games.
The social element is key to explaining how virtual currency has broken through to the real world. If I like something, it has value to me, whether it’s real or fictional. If the pool of people who value something is large enough, and trade can occur, than economic forces will come into play. Online role-playing games has allowed the creation of fictional goods that can be traded among massive numbers of people.
It cannot go unremarked that while fictional money has become real, our real money long ago became fictional. With the abolishment of the gold standard and the adoption of fiat currency, our money became nothing but a function of intersubjective perception of value—a move that prepared us to accept the possibility of virtual currencies.
These words might have been true in 1781, but at the time I’m writing this, a US dollar is worth 264 Linden dollars. Something unprecedented is going on with virtual currencies.
Kant’s point was to claim that, given a concept, to claim that the object posited by the concept exists is to add nothing to the concept itself. It just describes a particular relationship between the concept and the real world. This seems like a rather academic argument—and it is—but it points out the futility of trying to prove that something exists by armchair reasoning. Kant was specifically targeting Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.
If we were to set about looking for 100 thalers, we wouldn’t have to specify that we’re looking for 100 thalers that exist. The last bit would be taken for granted. So trying to add existence as an additional predicate to the concept of our 100 thalers is pointless, according to Kant.
That would indisputably be the case, if we only ever approached concepts as necessarily referring to objects in the real world. But that’s not true; make-believe is another way that we engage with concepts. A child at play could indeed be searching for 100 thalers that do not exist. I’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to rustle up Gil while playing Final Fantasy XII.
In Kant’s time, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction was clear. But during the twentieth century, mass media allowed fiction to become the jumping-off point for new social realities. Fan communities made the production of entire fictional universes profitable. People began speaking Klingon and invested themselves in social role-playing games.
The social element is key to explaining how virtual currency has broken through to the real world. If I like something, it has value to me, whether it’s real or fictional. If the pool of people who value something is large enough, and trade can occur, than economic forces will come into play. Online role-playing games has allowed the creation of fictional goods that can be traded among massive numbers of people.
It cannot go unremarked that while fictional money has become real, our real money long ago became fictional. With the abolishment of the gold standard and the adoption of fiat currency, our money became nothing but a function of intersubjective perception of value—a move that prepared us to accept the possibility of virtual currencies.
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