[Asrg] Tragedy of the Commons

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Thanks to those contributors who mentioned this issue. I found the following
1-page summary useful in understanding the background of the concept:
http://members.aol.com/trajcom/private/commons.htm

An important concept though, is that the scarce resource is not [bandwidth],
but [our attention] i.e. technology can give extra Mbs, but not extra
minutes. This concept is discussed in depth by Harry Rheingold in his 1994
article:
http://www.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/tomorrowcommons.html

	"Attention is the currency of cyberspace. If spammers learn 
	that the Net will turn off its attention in an organized manner, 
	maybe they'll go away before they damage the cybernetic commons. 
	If too many opportunists ignore the social agreements that make 
	the net useful as an online thinktank, the marvelous 
	knowledge-sharing culture that had scaled up so well from 
	the one thousand person ARPAnet in 1970 to the twenty million 
	person Internet of 1994 will be extinct by the time hundreds of 
	millions come online by 1999."

It seems to suggest that the only power we have, is to collectively ignore
the people who abuse our time, or those service providers who allow abusers
to flourish.


Regards, Mike Pearson

Personal: The views expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.

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