The publication of Anasazi-35 has stimulated some interesting conversations, so I think that it deserves a little more attention. I’m posting several exegetical articles, covering different aspects of the story. Previously I talked about the technology. Today, I’m going to talk about how Anasazi-35 approaches economy.
I believe it was back in 2006 that Bruce Sterling talked about spimes at his opening address to SXSW interactive. For the few of you reading this who are not on the inside of cyberpunk theory, a spime is a physical object that’s wired up the wazoo with miniaturized RFID, GPS, geonetworking, mobile networking, and microprocessor technology.
The day after, I was sitting in the Flightpath Coffeehouse, listening to a downloaded MP3 of the speech. When I tried to explain the concept of a spime to my girlfriend of the time, I illustrated it with the first consequence that came to mind: with ubiquitous computing, property becomes a data set. Which means that theft becomes practically impossible, and any object could be rented out on a second-by-second basis. The application I came up with off the top of my head was, supposing you needed a sweater, you could find the nearest available sweater (as informed by Google), and when you were done with it, you could simply toss it into a tree for the next user to find as needed.
This was all seat-of-the-pants theorizing mind you, hardly a developed prediction of the world to come, but there was a heated argument. I was accused of having reckless hippie ideas, voices were raised, and the customers of the notoriously tranquil Flightpath got up and moved to the other side of the cafe.
A version of this cooperative spime economy is a little more developed in the story. Traditionally, there hasn’t been much success with collectively-owned property systems, but when you add the element of ubi-comp, you can have collectively owned property that automatically bills you for its use at fair free-market prices. Aside from the convenience of having networked consumer goods, they could conceivably be cheaper than mass-produced goods because the market is colonizing the time that the product is not in use. The same sweater (or roll of tape) that served the needs of a single consumer, could now serve dozens or more.
Considering that economy of scale manufacturing thrives on profits that can be measured in pennies per unit, it’s not inconceivable that a system that can multiply the consumer benefit will out-compete capitalism itself.
