X-Message-Number: 10940 Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 08:06:50 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #10925 - #10930 Hi everyone! If we are going to live for a very long time, then we might think about the proportion of our lives in which we will use money of some kind (I did point out early in this discussion that we are coming close to a situation in which that use is all kept track of by computers, without any physical objects changing hands --- so we'd have SOME kind of medium of exchange, but not one many people would now recognize). So will that proportion go up or down, for any given time and over history? Fundamentally (I suspect) it will stay more or less the same --- which to a presently short-lived human being might LOOK as it was being used less and less. I suspect this because I think that our desires and our ability to satisfy them will grow with time. It takes a long-lived being to think about owning his/her Solar system. This isn't to say that the recipes for cheesecake might not also become quite valuable, too. Linux is, of course, a case in which programmers don't directly get money from what they do. But training remains an issue, and so does documentation. As for the programmers, it provides a means for them to demonstrate their skills, and thus increase their ability to get money by other means. That's why it is PUBLIC. If some programmer merely wanted to devise his/her very own operating system, complete with the major computer languages, then there's no logical reason why he could not simply go off and do so, alone. I note, also, that OS's such as Linux have been quite successful; but there are many other kinds of software --- even software not sold by Microsoft, surprise! --- which have NOT been produced and distributed as Linux has been. (I like the ideas behind Linux, but seriously wonder if that model would extend to all kinds of software). The real value of money is that it lets us buy and make something NEW, which did not exist before. Just how it is new does not matter; and we may well come to a state in which most of what we have is virtually free. But then there are things that we do not NOW have (and at any time there will be such things). Even if we can make it ourselves, given the design, the design becomes the valuable part. And no, such designs are NOT going to be given away except for something in return. And then, some form of money provides the best form of that something in return. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10940