My interpretation of Chris Cook’s paper Knowledge-based Value and Intellectual Property is that value is a quality a human being feels when he or she receives a good or a service (= Wealth). Since people have different perceptions value is utterly subjective and an objective measure for the Value of Wealth can not be found without further ado. At the same time it would not be so bad if an absolute measure for Value existed, because it could be used compare the value of different goods or services on an open market.

Chris suggested to peg the measure for the Value of Wealth to an International Carbon Unit (ICU). One ICU is defined as the greenhouse effect caused by burning 100ml n-octane at the temperature of 20 degrees centigrade. This unit quasi pegs the value of goods and services to the survival of mankind. The ICU unit has the physical quality of energy (measured in Joule).

Although I like Chris’ approach I do not think that energy is a measure for Value. As said, Value is relative to the subject (a human being) and it also depends on what the subject wants to achieve in any moment. If a human does not want to achieve anything he rests and exchanges few energy with the exterior world. When he starts out to achieve an aim a human needs energy and time.

Each action a human performs on her way to achieve an aim costs time and energy. The physical quantity Action has the unit energy times time.

Action (aim) ~ Energy * Time [~ := proportional]

A thinking and economically acting human being will minimize energy and time and therefore act in accordance with the Hamiltonian principle of least action.

Tools (e.g. a bike, a hammer,…) and Services (e.g. support by another human) can considerably reduce the amount of energy and time needed to achieve an aim. An intelligent human will therefore use that Tool and that Service which minimize the Action to achieve a given aim:

Value (Tool) ~ Action (Tool) - Action (aim)

Hence the Value of a Tool would be maximal whose Action is maximal. Like the Action necessary to achieve an aim the Action of a Tool could be pegged to the physical quantity energy times time (measured in Joule * sec).

Value has the physical quantity energy * time

My assumption is: as long not all humans want to achieve the same aim (e.g. survive through avoiding climatic disaster) not only energy but also time is a measure for value. This goes in accordance with the XEG definition of Transaction: a process by which Wealth is exchanged between two parties. If one subject provides a service to another subject the value of the service only exists in the relationship between the two subjects.

Value (service) ~ Action (service) - Action (aim)

Some forms of Value (goods) transferred between humans are physical matter and can be “stored” in space. Other forms of Value are logical (e.g. words) or digital (e.g. data). Those forms of Value (services) may save time (e.g. the information where the train station is) and thus reduce the Action to achieve an aim. However, it is not trivial to “store” these forms of Value in space.

Credit is time to pay. A subject who wants to achieve an aim may need Value (in the form of a good or a service) now. A Credit can save time to achieve an aim.

Credit (aim) ~ Value (aim) / time

Credit has the physical quantity energy

  
 XEG Entity            phys. quantity        unit
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
 Credit                Work, Energy          J     (kg * m^2 / s^2) 
 Value                 Action                J * s (kg * m^2/ s) 

Assume that a Credit is needed to achieve an aim. Then the Value Unit could be defined as the proportionality constant p beween the Credit and its associated Action to achieve an aim.

Leonardo Chiariglione wrote that “Standardisation is the process by which individuals recognise the advantage of all doing certain things in an agreed way and codify that agreement”.

A standard for a Value Unit would require that many humans agree on a common economical aim. This common economical aim depends on the economical system (e.g. two humans, a group of humans (family, company, state), all humans). If the survival of mankind is the ultimate economical aim then Chris is right when he demands a compulsory levy for goods and services which set free CO2 in order to pay the Action to achieve this aim.

Rather than a Value Unit the proposed ICU is a measure of Credit (energy). Humans could use these Credit Units to achieve an aim i.e. create (subjective) Value.

In his article “Why TV Lost” Paul Graham, an author and Internet pioneer, recently explained that in the contest between different media we referred to as “convergence” computers have finally replaced TV – the Internet won.

Paul gives four reasons for this development:

• the Internet is an open platform – anyone can build whatever they want on it
• there is sufficient Internet bandwidth
• watching shows on a computer screen is more convenient
• the most powerful force: social applications allowed kids to get connected. “Facebook killed TV”

Paul writes that the Internet dissolves the two cornerstones of broadcast media: synchronicity and locality. He concludes that because people who produce a show can distribute it themselves the main value TV networks supply is ad sales. Which will tend to put them in the position of service providers rather than publishers.

I don’t disagree with Paul’s conclusions but my own interpretation of the convergence between Internet and TV is somewhat different.

About 10 years ago I wrote on the LinuxTV.org website:

Only the access to the source code of our future television sets will guarantee the independence of content and technology.

The TV I was referring to is dead since more than 15 years. In my opinion it’s decline started when advertising financed televison entered the scene (I contributed to it during my student job in the playout department of the first German private TV station PKS in 1984).

But the fact that what we once called TV is dead does not mean that TV lost the battle against computers. TV was simply replaced by LinuxTV. In the late 1990ies some people in Berlin founded a dotcom called “convergence integrated media”. This company was never profitable, but it produced something very valuable: free (GPL) source code needed to implement digital television devices (set-top boxes, playout servers) and TV services (video disk recorders, programming guides). An early documentary characterizes the “inmates” of convergence integrated media as Seminarists – learners who are enrolled in an educational institution.

I claim that thanks to projects like LinuxTV and DirectFB the TV industry (Networks, device manufacturers) got the chance to catch up with the Internet’s “hacker speed of innovation” (Paul Graham). This race to catch up may be less visible than the public development of Web 2.0, but it is nonetheless impressive. Today many Seminarists are employed by renowned manufacturers of TV chipsets and devices.

A new generation of hackers have learned the LinuxTV lessons in university courses. Pablo Cesar writes in the acknoledgements of his doctor thesis A Graphics Software Architecture for High-End Interactive TV Terminals:

I am really grateful to every single open-source project (you can make a difference!), especially Kaffe, SDL, JSDL, DirectFB, LinuxTV, LinuxSTB, X-Smiles, and OpenMHP

Today Pablo contributes to a European project named Together anywhere anytime (TA2). The TA2 Deliverables contain a pretty interesting diagram on the future interaction of service providers in so-called value-networks.

These examples indicate that Open Source community and major CE manufacturers (e.g. Philips, Sony, Samsung, Huawei…) will advance TV just like the Web 2.0 community and major computer manufacturers are enhancing computers.

I agree with Paul Graham that what gets distributed on the Internet in 20 years will probably be very different. However, I predict that - if anything will be distributed at all – a substantial part of the viewers will still ask for synchronicity and locality. People who conciously decide for a common experience in physical space are not necessarily dumb couch potatoes. To share an experience (e.g. a theatre performance, a movie) with others may be a precious alternative in a world where the commitment to be always connected with distant people is the normal case.