$$$ ???
Diving deeper into thinking about double-natured objects, I was strangely drawn towards various topics of economy in the last days. I’m having the feeling that if you want to have objects which live in-between their context in physical reality and the realm of information exchange (i.e. the internet), it might be a promising way to short-circuit that with aspects of economy as the manifestation of the “real” in a wider sense. (Related: The Chinese gold-farmers in World of Warcraft and their reciprocal effect)
Following a hint, I looked up the theory of commodity fetishism which basically leads to a similar assumption: that products have dual properties to them, use and value, which can ultimately even form a paradoxical state in which something useless can be extremely valuable and the other way around. The effect of fetishism leads, according to Marx’ 19th-century analysis, ultimately to a situation where the objects’ users become objects themselves in the process of commodfication as all their relationships get substituted by the exchange of objects/money/capital. Both Baudrillard (The System of Things) and Foucault (With his notion of self-control) have further developed this approach in the second half of the 20th century. What Marx eventually proposes is establishing of an intelligent system which both directly links the (human) effort of production to an objects value and oversees production in general. This is very difficult to do and all attempts of planned economy (which in fact were still monetary systems) badly failed.
In my view, this has also to do with the tremendous complexity that a system of six billion autonomous individuals and their environment has, which must pretty much defy what one can plan. Consequentially, the only thing that has proven to work is the use of a common denominator for all the effort, resources, ideas and what not that moves within the system: money! It never occurred to me this obviously, but the system of the representation of value (which is apparently a still undefined term) through the idea of a universal means of exchange which is both object and virtual instance and represents as well as exists in itself (and is able to act on itself) is in some ways so similar to the ideas sketched earlier. Question is, where to fit the notion of technological networking here, because it is so ultimately networked already. Still there is great promise in coping with this complexity or counteracting the mechanisms with technology without neccessarily trying to flip over the whole western system.
Take for example the idea of an exchange-based economy that is often referred to as the romantic ideal in anti-capitalist literature. This can work only in small tribal communities but at some early stage you need to reference to some common denominator to buffer the complexity which then in turn starts to abstract the whole previous relationship too. The net holds enormous promise for establishing direct relationships and offering platforms from which to facilitate exchange of goods or actions or information while also finding a value for it in the process. (Or is that eBay?). This might also become important with a possible rise of home fabrication. Markus Kison is currently working on a great project based on the idea of remotely exchanging action which is pushing in a similar direction.
Another aspect would be the networked object that knows its own value, because it knows its own history and context as well, which maybe could help in (re)binding different aspects of the immaterial realm to the actual physical manifestation.
Or a networked object that generates value from “selling” what it knows about its surroundings, much like the Google AdSense-object which not only knows about what’s happening but actively acts on it, selling the gathered information or even getting credits for successfully influencing its surroundings.
Thoughts on that please! Is that a promising direction to pursue? The bottom-line is that I’m pretty struck by the fact that we’re using a hypernetworked object day by day without really reflecting on (or understanding) what it represents or how it works.
Good Paper on the “Social, Economic and Ethical Implications” of smart objects.