There are many ways to analyze 2003. You can sift through major news events. You can chart best-selling books and top-rated TV shows. You can dissect the stock market. But if you want the gestalt of America - the unified essence of this nation at this time - there might be no better place to turn than the massive databases that run eBay.
Though government numbers show the economy is rebounding after more than two years of doldrums, the eBay economy suggests something different. In fact, it seems to show a lag effect. People and companies downshifted as 2003 wore on.
“EBay is the perfect manifestation of everything the Internet makes possible,” says Aliza Sherman, a Web pioneer now teaching and writing in Laramie, Wyo. “It is for and by the people. It is organic.”
full story by By Kevin Maney in USA Today
Comments
@ 15:29
An open marketplace is inevitable on the internet, and for the time being, eBay is inevitable. It was such a runaway success! The poster child for the “first mover advantage” and portal-envy that drew billions into the Internet bubble.
If there is ever a decentralization of the marketplace eBay will not look so inevitable. it will look like a speedbump, as everybody abandons it. For now, however they remind me of the card services network. A thin simulation of freedom and utility, provided as an illusion on top of a totally controlled, top-down system.
there seem to be many
types of decentralization, these are independent dimensions
- the data,
- pointers and indexes to the data,
- other metadata i.e. useful metadata like document schemas,
- the encryption keys and certificates,
- routes taken by data content across networks (P2P variations),
- routes taken by the pointing, indexing, metadata information,
- incentive topology ($ Corp, $hierarchic/MLM, $peer, mojo, volunteer…)
- capital structure (pooled/central, decentralized, or hierarch. steps)
- political and social rulemaking topology /hierarchy,
- actual technical control (actual sovereignty)
- content creation (added by Mitra)
It’s amusing to consider different combinations. e.g what if the
data stays central but the indexes are distributed? Or what if
the economic incentives are only positive for centralization? how can
we make them positive for decentralization in a way that grows a
physical network that maximizes effective sovereignty at the
nodes etc. (if that is one’s goal)
The number of permutations are fairly numerous considering that
decentralization has so many additional colors and flavors, and can
exist in separate universes or contexts like wireless networks, dialup
BBS universes like FIDONET, as well as the cisco/telco IPV4 internet
or the PSTN.
Too often on this list, messages assume a particular context. We need
an organizing principle. That principle is, what result you’re trying
to accomplish. Then, the discussion is more productive.
[see http://www.ledgerism.net/P2Paxes.htm for more elaboration of this.]
@ 20:19
Fascinating, Todd. I followed the link to your site and on to First Monday. It is obvious that you’ve been doing a lot of thinking about decentralization economics. I’m rather slow in understanding, would welcome explanations with some contect — like mini-scenarios. What, example, would buying and selling look like if eBay were to decentralize? How would that happen? How would people start adopting it?