Planning for the Surprisingly
Slow Dawning of a Golden Age
Executive
Summary: It has been argued elsewhere that the development of
self-sustaining robots will someday undermine the commercial potential of
various industries. The current paper develops a theory to explain the economic
dynamics of such situations and examines evidence that Microsoft’s competition
with open-source software is an example of such dynamics in play now. It
also examines evidence that those same dynamics are currently at play in the
information publishing and music record industries. According to the theory, the
dynamics will continue to spread slowly, but we would not expect it to include
all industries until at least 2015 (or later)
This
paper examines the obstacles that have to be overcome for the dynamics to spread
to various other industries. The results of this investigation suggest that the
dynamics will likely de-commercialize the following industries over the next ten
years in roughly the following order: software development, information
publishing, music recording, graphic art (i.e. images), invention (i.e.
patents), literary publishing, information processing services (e.g. education,
financial, sales/marketing), film/TV and communication. Nearly all modern
companies will be impacted directly, since they have some investment in at least
one of these industries. In addition, increased anticipation of the spread of
de-commercialization will affect the stock market and thus impact nearly all
companies indirectly. Thus, although the dawning of the next “Golden Age”
may take many years to complete, its coming should figure heavily in corporate
strategy right now.
Different strategies for coping with the dawn of the next golden age will be appropriate for different kinds of companies. Those with sufficient investment in limited resources (e.g. real estate) and non-automatable services (e.g. prostitution) will benefit by embracing the movements that lead to de-commercialization. Others may decide it best to try to resist such movements for as long as possible, to try shift their portfolio, or to try to become (or be bought by) charities.
Contents:
Executive Summary
Introduction
Non-property of Golden Ages
Unavoidable Philanthropy
Technology’s Impact on Philanthropy
Open Source Software
Open Information
Open Music
Open Art/Literature/Film
Open Invention (Patents)
Open Information Processing Services
Other Open Industries
Permanently Closed Markets
How to Survive in a Golden Age
Appendix
A: The Deductive Argument that Motives
Appendix
B: Sources of Funding for Open