Meeting notice: 05-19-98 7:30 NE43-773 (545 Tech Sq.) Proposed topic: Can a global culture be organized on the basis of a reputation economy? Many people feel that nature of property in a nanotech era will be distinctly different than it is now. Perhaps most forms of real property will become special cases of intellectual property. On the other hand, the contemporary forms and guardians of intellectual property are clearly experiencing stress*, and it is not clear that copyrights, patents, and trademarks will exist in their current form for very much longer. If both real property and intellectual property disappear, the sole remaing mode of personal distinction will be 'reputation property'. While that is not necessarily bad -- 99% of the evolution of the species was spent in reputation economies and look how well we turned out -- it can be argued real property was introduced in the first place because reputation economies don't, or anyway didn't, scale well. Past a certain point in the development of social hierarchy taking stuff became more convenient than waiting for someone to give it you. If recent and anticipated advances in technology have renormalized the society into the equivalent of a global hunter-gather tribe then perhaps a reputation economy can work. And if not?? Nanonews *Design Fraud: A Global Problem Illegal imitation in the UK textile industry, rare twenty years ago but now "rampant", is set to get worse as new technologies develop, according to Keith Dickson and colleagues in ESRC supported research into Design Protection Practices in the UK Textiles Industry. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/esrc-desfr.htm ............................... Transgenic Mice With Widest Known Range Of Vision Among Mammals Created To Investigate Human Vision Problems, Evolution Of Sight. FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Researchers have succeeded in introducing a gene that produces a human photopigment into laboratory mice, creating transgenic rodents that have the widest known spectral range of vision of any mammal. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/uwa-trgmwkr.html ................................ Announcement Archive: http://world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. Warning: Some warning labels should be disregarded. hapgood@pobox.com