Digital money - a resurrection?

In its issue of February 17th 2007 the Economist reports on new developments in the area of digital money, which had more or less vanished from e-commerce (PayPal is a notable exception). Apparently, the convergence of mobil phones, contactless near field communication, smart cards, and the Internet may give digital money a new lease for life.

The last time around, payment systems suffered from too many systems competing for a relatively small market. No standard eveloved and the systems folded. It is not clear that a common standard will evolve more readily when the systems comprise more components.

Andrew Odlyzko has a useful paper on micropayments.

RAEM

New media and new media institutions are different things

Chris Anderson reminds his readers of an important distinction which is sometimes forgotten: new media, like the Web 2.0, and new media institutions, like Web 2.0 business models, are different thngs.
The distinction implies that the failure or success of the Web 2.0 does not logically depend on the success or - moste often - the failure of Web 2.0 business models.
RAEM

Web 2.0 explained

Lawrence Lessig has published on his blog an extraordinary video explaining the Web 2.0. Watching and reading it - much of it is fragmented text - is disorienting and a bit weird. But somehow the video gets the message across quite effectively.
RAEM

Farmers's main concern - everywhere

I always thought the key concern of farmers were the 3Ps: Precipitation, prices, and pests.
This seems to be too narrow a view. There is a 4th concern: finding (a) mate(s).
Luckily, the web helps. In the US it is Farmersonly.com, in Germany it is Landflirt.de.
If there are similar dating sites for farmers in other countries, let me know.
RAEM

The power of blogs

Perlentaucher.de reported on Feb. 06, 2007 about an Egyptian blogger who published video evidence of torture by the Egyptian police.
The story was made public in the West by the "The Nation" on Feb 1, 2007.

RAEM

IPCC Report: Science or propaganda?

Hardly anybody who reads newspapers or blogs will have missed the news that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published this week the first volume of its 4th assessment report on climate change. The IPCC tells its visitors that more that 2500 export reviewers were involved, that more that 800 authors and that more that 450 lead authors form more than 130 countries contributed to the report which took 6 years to complete.
I was wondering whether there really are climate change researchers in more than 130 countries, but that is a minor point. The German weekly newspaper "Die Zeit" pointed at a major flaw of the report.
The large number of scientists who are involved in drafting the report could be taken as an indiaction that the IPCC-report is a scientific report. This it is not because its lacks political independence. First, the scientists who contribute to the report have been selected by governments. More importantly, however, the "summaries for policymakers", writes "Die Zeit", are drafted by committees consisting of government reps and juristis, and scientists also. What gets published in the summaries must pass muster by the committees run be government reps and jurists. "Die Zeit" quotes a German scientist: "This is a report of governments, not of science".
It is difficult to see how the goverments that run the IPCC show will learn as much about climate change as they possibly could when govenrments can select the scientists who draft the report chapters. It is a bit like the students dominating faculty search and examination committees. Much of the mass media shows little or no concern about how the summaries - which are the parts of the report which will be read - are put together. Few seem to notice that the IPCC-summaries apparently lack scientifc credibility. If "Die Zeit" is right, the summaries are government propaganda, irrespective of the number an honesty of the scientists who have conributed to it.

RAEM
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More than half of Web 2.0 users regularly or always fake their identiy on the web

There was the old New Yorker cartoon where one dog sitting in front of a PC display told another: "Nobody on the Internet knows you're a dog." Now Read/Write Web tells us that more than half of Web 2.0 users use a "nom de plum" on the Web.

RAEM