Archive for February, 2012

knowledge economy

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

In the content of the previous blogpost I used the word knowledge economy. In an Interview, which was given at the Innovationsforum 2010 Prof. Wurzer of the Steinbeis Transfer Institute gives an introduction to the difference between classical industrial economy and knowledge economy.
Citation form the transcript of the interview (without guarantee that I heard everything rightly):

[…] da erleben wir eben, das wir heute immer weniger Geld damit verdienen Produkte herzustellen, die man sozusagen anfassen kann [..gives examples for tangible products…] all die Hersteller, die Dinge produzieren, die man anfassen kann die haben eine relativ geringe Produktivität [..thats what I understand he probably menat Profitabilität…] und die Unternehmen die weiter hinten in der Wertschöpfungskette stehen also zb der Telekom Provider, die haben schon eine etwas höhere Profitabilität und Unternehmen, die dann ganz hinten stehen, wie zb Research in motion, also Blackberry, die haben eine extrem hohe Profitabilität. Und so ein Unternehmen wie Blackberry das betreibt bestenfalls noch Rechenzentren, wenn sie das überhaupt tun, genaugenommen ist alles was das Unternehmen macht einen Übertragungsstandard zur Verfügung zu stellen, ihn zu lizensieren und insofern also ein vollkommen immaterielles Geschäftsmodell zu betreiben. […]

Translation without guarantee:

[…] we see here that we earn less and less money with tangible products [..gives examples for tangible products…] All those producers which produce tangible products have a relativ small productivity [..thats what I understand he probably meant profitability…] and companies which stand at later stages of the value chain, like the telecom provider have a higher profitability and companies at very later stages, like research in motion, i.e. Blackberry are extremely profitable. And a company like Blackberry operates at best data centres, if at all. Strictly speaking all what the company does is to provide a broadcasting technology, to licence it and thus to provide a completely immaterial business model.

There is eventually more to hear on that issue at the trendforum 2012 for those who want and can pay the conference fee of 1980 Euro +tax for march 21 and 22 in 2012 in Berlin.

Energy demand, economy and virtual values

Saturday, February 25th, 2012

There is now a new subsection Energy demand, economy and virtual values to the section Economic growth and limitations of the article draft: New economic schemes in games at Azimuth, which adresses the different uses of intellectual properties.

focus and context, part II-2: brain childs and their evolution

Monday, February 20th, 2012

This post is a follow-up to the last post. There is also a copy of this essay at the Azimuth project.
If you read the essay you will in particular understand that I profoundly disagree with most of the key concepts as formulated in the video by Kirby Ferguson, who also investigated intellectual property in the context of evolution.

Feb22: some additions to the essay in orange more additions eventually on Azimuth
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strange car

Friday, February 17th, 2012

strange car as seen by tim

Tracing intellectual properties and a lockable patent archive

Friday, February 17th, 2012

randform reader Sheila asked:

Nad wrote: “In addition I proposed to the people at arxiv to introduce a closed pre-preprint section for the arxive for timestamping works (something I am going to talk about later in more detail)”

Why did you write to the arxiv people? You should have made that public!
The recent protests against journals could have started much earlier if all people would have published their ideas earlier!

With “protests” Sheila is probably referring to the current protests against the publisher Elsevier and the increasing discussions (see e.g. the forum math2.0) about different models for scientific publishing and mathematical software.

My answer to this: I actually “made this public” in a comment on the math blog n-category cafe. The search button at the n-category cafe doesnt work to good, so I currently can’t find the comment. It must have been something like in 2009. In this n-category cafe comment I explained that it would be good to establish a “lockable section” at the archive (see below) with review function, so this kind of discussion has been prevalent for a while within the math/physics community. As a major application for such a “lockable section” I had actually the review and guidance of Ph.D. thesis’ in mind (a “pre-preprint section”), rather then, whats currently more discussed, the review of finalized articles. Apart from the n-category cafe comment I explained the concept also in this randform post. It may sometimes take a while for a discussion to grow and gain importance.

The underlying concept for these kind of software solutions and in some sense also for the discussion itself is what I would like to call “the traceability of intellectual properties”. On the Azimuth project wiki I recently tried to explain this concept a bit more. Moreover I transferred the concept also to other intellectual property issues, in particular to patents. This resulted in a proposal for a lockable patent archive.

After the click you may find a copy of the current Azimuth project wiki entry.

Short comment: In the above mentioned randform post the revocation of Germany’s former minister of defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s doctoral degree following accusations of plagiarism was mentioned. Despite the revocation of his degree it seems he may still be a rather good law expert (at least thats what I understood from the comments of his coworkers). In addition he seems to be an expert on some internet software related issues . I could imagine that the legal subtleties of such online legal facilities could be an interesting subject for a new Ph.D. thesis, but of course I am not his advisor :)

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MIMIRIX

Friday, February 10th, 2012

The past 6 months I was involved in a student software project at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (University of the applied sciences). The project is called MIMIRIX. It is going to be presented today at the school in building G Room 007 around 1.30 pm. As you may know there is currently the filmfestival Berlinale in Berlin, hence there are many wellknown actors in Berlin. So actually the latest gossip here was that Angelina Jolie comes together with Shah Rukh Khan to the MIMIRIX presentation. But these are of course blatant lies. More about MIMIRIX later.

supplement 11.2.12:
Short comment to the above logo:
The term MIMIRIX was coined by Martin Bilsing,
the logo was designed by Igne Degutyte
using the font Petita by Manfred Klein.

metamorfix

Monday, February 6th, 2012

It is currently very cold outside here in Berlin, which lets one feel like sitting in the warmth and do some crafts. At this place one should probably mention the blog of Tim’s sister Hanne called metamorfix. Hanne is a dominie in Stockholm and surroundings. In her free time she does stitchings and sewings and other crafts. Some of them are published on her blog.