Matt, I'm not sure what you are saying here, so I'll make some comments, more to show my confusion than to question what you are saying...
On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 8:20 AM, Matt Mahoney <[email protected]>wrote: > On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:15 AM, Steve Richfield > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > HERE we are getting down to the primary question - how to turn ideas > into money. > > Patents and copyrights were designed to do that during a time when > information had positive value. The internet changed that. It now > costs more (per receive, in time) to receive information than it does > to produce and distribute it. Information has negative value. > Once creation is sufficiently facilitated, e.g. my spelling errors are shown in red for my immediate correction, then it becomes easier to re-create than to search and copy. > > It used to be that musicians could sell their songs through record > companies. Now the path to fame is to give away your music video on > Youtube. Fame yes. Money no, unless they become one of the very few who become BIG. > But that's only a temporary step. You should be preparing for > a future where music is generated by AI, internet apps trained and > customized by each listener. There will be 7 billion genres. > Who makes money then? > > It used to be that software developers could make money by writing > programs to do something useful and selling them. Perhaps you noticed > that now, software is free. ... and programmers are broke. > You might be wondering how the industry > survives. It is for the same reasons that we still have music. Writing > code is a creative process, and giving it away advertises yourself. > OK, but where is the pot of gold? > > But again, this step is temporary. Software, like music, will be less > about developing skills with a musical instrument or a programming > language. It will be more about modeling what is going on in > somebody's brain. When somebody uploads pictures of their drunken > party to Facebook, they are contributing to building a global AGI by > providing data to build your models. How do you think Zuckerberg > became a billionaire? By selling stock for a valuation of more than Facebook will make during the next century. > Facebook is free, right? > Sure, but no one seems to have any idea how to make it worth anything. Their click-through rate is about equal to that expected from accidental mouse operation. > I prefer the relationship with my employer. They pay my salary and cover the legal costs and I assign the patent rights to them. A few patents strike it rich, but the vast majority don't make much. This sounds like you literally sold your own soul. You **ARE**, in full knowledge of the damages it causes as expressed in your own words, patenting the technology you develop FOR SOMEONE ELSE. Sure you may eat well for now, but you will never have the financial clout to change anything, because even if one of "your" patents strikes it rich, someone else will get the money. In a way you have validated my approach. At least my approach has a CHANCE of giving me enough financial clout to improve the situation, whereas your approach doesn't. It seems rather hypocritical to sit there and tout the advantages of not patenting and of putting software out into open source, while you are now doing just the opposite. It looks to me like our present economy is imploding - with the processes you outlined above being part of the implosion. Sure there are exceptions. Sometimes a bank is robbed without the robber being caught. Does that mean we should all become bank robbers? Of course not. I suspect that YOU were one of those exceptions, but have since "seen the light" and gotten back into the fold of conventional IP, albeit for someone else. By the above logic, should we follow your path? If you think so, then you should explain why in semi-convincing terms. I think we are in agreement that the present form of capitalism has run its course, and it is time for civilization to move on to a more civilized system. Our challenge is to survive the here and now while this process takes its Darwinian course. It appears that you believe that finding a way to sell our souls is the path to survival? Sadly, perhaps you are right. I agree that there is probably NO career path that will work forever - we must be adaptive. However, the present situation seems to be heading for a dead end, in part because of the effects you described. It would be nice to see SOME way to survive, when technology of all sorts is free, and none of us, not even you, can make enough to pay for our groceries. Steve ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
