« On The Serio | Main | 1984 2.0 »

Jan 14, 2009

Comments

1.

Ted,

Appology accepted. I will resume sending you emails, but only as needed - as always. :-)

Best of luck with your Serios - please be sure to write up your lessons learned and share them with us!

Randy

2.

I tried a very similar experiment not too long ago.

There was this game called "World of Warcraft" and I created a currency called "dollars" which could be used to evaluate the relative value of each piece of loot or gold that dropped in the game. Then I used this system called "Ebay" to post the values (and even let marketplace forced determine the relative value of the goods) and allow people to make choices about which kinds of loot were important to them.

I remember someone complaining that this ruined the game and that it was a pretty serious matter.

I can't for the life of me remember who though . . .

3.

I described Serios to my wife last night. She was unimpressed. After a bit of discussion, we decided we'd much prefer a virtual currency from a company called Ridiculosity; Ridiculos.

The idea being that you attach on include something absolutely Ridiculos to an email in order to add spice, shake things up, etc.

My first Ridiculos to her had the subject line:

"Lobster comb."

That is all.

4.

Due to scarcity of spectra, broadcast television has been the subject of extensive regulation. The Internet is generally not regulated and now as a result, there is a scarcity of attention. Are serios a market based form of regulation to deal with this new scarcity?

5.

Due to scarcity of spectra, broadcast television has been the subject of extensive regulation. The Internet is generally not regulated and now as a result, there is a scarcity of attention. Are serios a market based form of regulation to deal with this new scarcity?

6.

Just as well that post wasn't an email, Peter, or it would have cost you twice as many Serios.

Richard

7.

@ Richard - hehe yes and like errors on credit card statements, it would take months to get a refund

Peter

8.

Please, don't e-mail me. I'll pay you if you want. I have a lot of Serios ;)

9.

Друг дал на вас ссылочку. Благодарна. Стану постоянным читателем или читательницей :)

10.

Long delayed response...

It occurred to me that I may have been unclear on exactly how the Serio works, and that this unclarity relates to the reaction you received.

Here's the point on which I'm not clear: When I attach 10 Serios to a message, does (a) the receiver actually receive those 10 Serios into their own account to spend later? Or, (b) do those 10 Serios get "sunk" back to Seriosity and the receiver simply sees that 10 Serios were spent?

I think most of the reaction was assuming that the system worked like (a), thereby "http://forge.ironrealms.com/2009/01/09/seriosity-what-the-hell/>I don’t pay people I have relationships with to talk to me." That's very different from paying a third party to wrap a message with a virtual shiny bow, as (b) implies.

Reading over the Seriosity material, this fuzziness remains. I'm not sure if (b) would change people's attitudes or not, but I'd be interested to have it clarified.

11.

"(b) do those 10 Serios get "sunk" back to Seriosity and the receiver simply sees that 10 Serios were spent?"

No, it doesn't change a thing for me. All the social meanings that come with paying for my attention are still there. Also, serios will cause a new status-position to emerge: To be the one who writes emails that get read with no serios attached! We know having a hot line to power trumphs quantifiable resources at any time. Having played golf together is more important than putting the letter in a pretty, shiny and expensive envelope.

Sorry, but all I can see is just another way to play power-games and exploit your position, while excluding those low on resources.

12.

I do have to appreciate the Freakonomics aspect of the idea. Platform lock-in issues and Austrian versus Monetarist debates aside, there is something to the notion of finding a valid store of value to represent the true scarce resource implied: the recipient's time.

I don't think you were wrong. There is something to this. The devil is in the details of practical implementation, not the lofty philosophy of the thing. (I say, as I write on my MacBook Pro running Parallels because true Outlook ((not Entourage)) is a requirement of my reality.)

The comments to this entry are closed.