Capitalism 2.0

Gartner Warns Corporations Away from Second Life

By Randolph

File this in the "sorry you're late, but glad you're finally here" category.  Gartner, after blindly gushing about Second Life only a few months ago, now says:

Companies that are sensitive to brand issues, as well as social and ethical positioning, must exercise particular caution in uncontrolled virtual worlds, such as Linden Lab’s Second Life

Linden dollars, Terrorism and Crime

In "The Linden Dollar Game", commenter, Matt Beam, near the end of the discussion raised a very interesting question which hasn't been discussed very widely.

Just a question:

If anyone around the world can play 'Second Life' and exchange his currency into Linden-Dollars and back, so can two users fake a deal like followed and transfer real money for a real threat:

Sleeper in US builds trivia in SL and offers financier in Middle East for a fantastic prize. Financier exchanges amount into LDs, pays sleeper in LDs, who exchanges them into USDs, commits the crime and no one can prevent this transaction.

Am I right ?

Regards
Matt

Posted by: Matt Beam | Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 02:47

The Linden dollar Game

On Schemes Resembling Objects of Intersecting Trilateral Sides upon a Polygonal Base

In a previous article I asked some very tough questions about the Second Life virtual economy.  That article provocatively proposed a case as to why I believe Second Life's much hyped economy resembles a pyramid Ponzi, or more accurately a type of high yield investment program (HYIP) scheme.  After posting that article I was partially convinced by many respondents that Second Life probably is not a Ponzi scheme as a precise legal definition -- at least probably not in most jurisdictions.  Indeed, after learning more about HYIPs, and in particular HYIP Games, Second Life and the game's system of "virtual currency" satisfy many of the attributes of such schemes.  More about HYIPs later.  First, some background:

Relocating yourself out of your best workers

As the laggards of the mindless cost-cutting euphoria hasten to relocate their companies from higher cost states to lower cost states, they find that they leave their best workers and institutional knowledge behind.  Seduced by the song of lower labor costs, less taxes, and lighter regulations,  the last of the cost-chasing companies are falling over themselves to move from their traditional headquarters to the Midwest or Southeast.

These companies are finding that, along with a higher cost structure, they also leave behind their best workers and often decades of institutional learning, technique and culture.

Do we need yet another new math?

This topic is a bit off-topic for this blog, but it struck me as an area which should interest many of our readers:  High-School Mathematics.  There is no shortage of criticisms and complaints about the deteriorating state of mathematics preparation for US high-school students.  Rodney Brooks has recently written an essay suggesting the need for a new mathematics "that is so revolutionary and elegantly simple that it will appear in high-school curricula."    He claims that understanding biological systems "demands it."  (Thanks to Terra Nova and Nate Combs where I first picked this up).

Our community here is primarily composed of business practitioners -- as opposed to academics -- so I thought we might approach this issue from a bit of a different angle.  We are likely mostly concerned about the "lowering of the bar" that has been occurring vis-á-vis math thinking skills.  Skills which are of critical importance to economics, finance, computer science and related professional success.