Meeting notice: The 00.10.17 meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave. If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the manager. He'll probably know where we are. More details below. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Suggested topic: Voluntary payments NT buffs are likely to be following the current battles over intellectual property with special interest, since we tend to think that the role of IP in the economy can only grow. As desktop manufacturing and assembler-based fabrication develop, more and more transactions not concerning physical space, energy, and nonautomated services will involve an exchange of cash for design or text files. In this society the cash side of the transaction -- the price -- is usually defined by the seller. That model is in a well- publicized crisis that needs no elaboration here. Some think that seller pricing can be rescued by exhorting the public to respect the old system, by finding a technology or distribution platform design that will discourage unapproved distribution, or by using the law to compel respect for established procedures. All of these solutions are speculative and seem problematic. The last remaining alternative, voluntary payments, is discussed much less often. However the system has advantages. Voluntary payments are wonderfully flexible; cheap to support and simple to administer (relative to the options mentioned above); guarantee the largest possible distribution of product, which returns some value in the form of free advertising; represent discriminatory pricing of a sort that no one can argue with; and identify a producer's most enthusiastic customers, each one of whom can be expected to be interested in collectibles, concert tickets, and other special offers. (They also make anti- trust prosecutions impossible, at least as the law is defined today, a point that today's large media companies might wish to ruminate on.) They work with the technology instead of against it. Scheduled improvements in networking (bandwidth, micropayments, P2P) all seem likely to make buyer-side pricing easier and the maintenance of seller-side pricing even harder. Finally, today's media corporations have allowed their relations with their customers to become intensely adversarial. While they do not appear to be bothered by this today, it must occur to the occasional manager from time to time that it cannot be good for a company to have such poisonous customer relations. Voluntary payments would radically lower the tone of the hostilities between producer and consumer, and do so at a stroke. Of course there is a reason why this option is never discussed: sellers would experience the loss of pricing power as a kind of castration. Why wouldn't everyone just take the product and walk away? The core answer is that producers really have no choice: if voluntary payments can't keep them in business then they are out of business. However, a fair fraction of our spending patterns suggest that buyer pricing is not an unknown element in the culture. Why tip? (Especially when traveling?) Why do we donate hundreds of billions a year to charities? Recently I got a note from a shareware author speculating that the sector had grown 10x-100x over the last decade: "I am seeing friends becoming wealthy with just one good idea. What they used to make in a year, they now earn in a month. Even retail publishers are jumping on the shareware bandwagon like never before." (Shareware is not a perfect illustration of buyer pricing, since sellers define 'suggested prices', but it is an example of people paying when they could just pocket the product instead, at least when the product is not crippled.) There are lots of motives that stimulate voluntary payments: because the producer needs it, because he deserves it, because the product broadcasts my tastes and values to the world, because I get an ego-gratifying relationship with the artist, and so on. Voluntary payments allow consumers to 'applaud' their favorite artists or performances as loudly as they like in a context where previously they had been forced to remain silent, hands folded (listening at home or in the car or walking along a street). Why would people give voluntary payments? Why do they applaud and cheer and jump up and down and throw flowers in concerts? In the short run one would expect a culture of voluntary payments to stimulate a more direct and intimate relationship between IP consumers and producers; it is easier to see people giving to Courtney Love than to Time Warner. Products might become more tightly-focussed and customized, since revenue models organized around seller pricing seem to favor large homogeneous constituencies that respond in a disciplined way to a drumbeat of cheap, low- bandwidth, promotion messages. Buyer-side pricing appears to select for intense enthusiasm of a few individuals (who then might give large amounts) rather than moderate enthusiasm in large populations. However, none of these changes would necessarily dispense with most of the services provided by publishing and distribution companies. Someone is going to have to do quality control, production, and payments distribution. Voluntary payments may be even more susceptible to good promotion than conventional sales. Consumers who give because the artist needs the money need to hear about crippled old Peachtree Jones and his elderly collie Juniper; people who give because they like to see truth being told to power need to be told about Alice the Red's righteous battles against corporate nanotech; people who give because they want a personal relationship with the artist need to get letters on their birthday inquiring about their children. Somebody is going to need to do this work. All this needs to be done with a bit of subtlety, but the new world might end up looking recognizably like the old one. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> FYI Tuesday, October 17, 2000 MIT Campus, Edgerton Hall, 34 -101 Refreshments 3:30 PM - Seminar 4:00 PM Title: Electronic "Pick and Place" Technology for Molecular Electronics Speaker: Carl Edman, Nanogen Abstract: Size reduction is not the only goal of nanotechnology; nanodevices with higher order photonic, sensory, chemical, catalytic, and therapeutic properties are also envisioned. Presently, the barrier to such development of such devices and systems is organizing components for this higher level functioning, rather than the availability of the molecular components. This talk will present active microelectronic DNA arrays. These active microelectronic devices have the ability to create almost any electric field transport geometry on the array surface, which then allows charged reagent and analyte molecules (DNA, RNA, proteins, enzymes), nanostructures, cells and micron-scale structures to be moved to or from any of the microscopic test sites on the device surface. This talk will also present two potential applications of this principle of an "electronic pick and place" process: (a) heterogeneous integration of various microfabricated lift-off components (lasers, diodes, etc.) into integrated photonic and electronic devices (displays, arrays, etc.), and (b) a DNA chromophore based optical storage material that uses chromophoric DNA self-assembly for applications in high density optical data storage. In the longer term, the electronic pick and place process will be used to carry out the anofabrication of highly integrated molecular electronic circuits and devices. http://www-mtl.edu/BAMS/seminar.html <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Announcement Archive: http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Legend: "NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group. The Group meets on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, which refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and little else. If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps having received a sample via a forward) send the string 'subscribe nsg' to majordomo@world.std.com. Unsubs follow the same model. Discussion should be sent to nsg- d@world.std.com, which must be subscribed to separately. 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