X-Message-Number: 10897
From: 
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 12:45:24 EST
Subject: virtual money

All of those recently commenting on the role of money in the future have their
points, and most of them recognize that the reality may be outside our current
ability to  guess. However (unless I missed it) nobody has recently mentioned
the role of virtual money.

In the relatively near future, as Mr. Smith has noted, very likely everyone
will have his own thinking/actuating machine (partly integrated into his own
nervous system), capable of providing nearly all important goods and
services--even though there may remain some societal/market forces as applied
e.g. to scarce real estate and self defense. (In MAN INTO SUPERMAN I
speculated that, at this stage, individuals or families may be very nearly
autonomous.)

But we still (will) have to look at the basics underlying satisfaction and
dissatisfaction, and the means of dealing with them. As far as we know now,
EVERYTHING that concerns you DIRECTLY happens inside your own head. That
doesn't mean you can ignore the outside world, or other people, for many
obvious reasons; but it does mean that satisfaction/dissatisfaction is at
bottom a matter of optimizing the signals in your brain.

Enter virtual reality and virtual money. If you want to experience the
satisfactions of owning Mars, and competition doesn't permit your sole literal
ownership, you could still obtain most or perhaps all of the satisfaction by
arranging for appropriate signal input, possibly (just one possibility) by
trades with someone on the spot.

This again reminds us of another of Mr. Smith's suggestions--that, at least in
some situations, instead of money we have barter, or social intercourse
equivalent to barter, e.g. your conversation for mine, or your thoughts for
mine, or your experiences for mine. Some aspects of this could also be called
"friendship." This would require no exchange of paper or credits; the
"accounts" would be kept in rough form in each individual's developing mental
history. If someone doesn't think he is getting enough out of it, he just
stops doing it; or if he likes it enough, he tries to get more by asking or
offering more. 

If "uploading" ever proves feasible (I am skeptical) then of course we have
virtual money with a vengeance, since all of "reality" will be in some sense
virtual, more so than now--certainly more manipulable.

Now the matter of scaring or boring potential immortalists/cryonicists by this
type of speculation. Very few people are comfortable with, let alone motivated
by, the prospect of a radically different future. It turns them off either by
its remoteness or by its strangeness and "inhumanity." So what do we do?

One recourse is just to say that the future is coming, like it or not, and it
is indeed going to be drastically different. You can choose life, and try to
make the best and most of it--trying in particular to appreciate the
unprecedented opportunities and rewards--or you can shut your eyes and turn
off your brain and find oblivion.

A better recourse, perhaps, is to note (as Donaldson has often said) that
there will not be just one future, but many. It is unlikely that any advanced
person or society will be motivated to attempt to impose rigid doctrines on
individuals, except the minimum required for mutual safety. Those who prefer a
future much like the present, with longer life and better health and more
wealth and fewer annoyances, will probably be able to enjoy that for as long
as they choose. 

Potential fellow travelers: Please don't close off your options just because
you dislike or can't comprehend some of the possible futures. YOUR future, to
a substantial extent, is for you to build--or to forfeit.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org 

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