I’m “appearing” at a book-club that meets in an online roleplaying game called Second Life, this Sunday at 6:30 PM. If you’ve got a Windows box, you can get a free seven-day avatar and join the disucssion!

Cory Doctorow will be the debut guest of the
Hamlet Linden Book Club, the first reading
group (far as we can tell!) to be conducted in
a massively multiplayer online world — Second Life.

This Sunday, Sept. 21, at 6:30pm (PST), Cory
Doctorow’s avatar will appear in the main auditorium
of Second Life, the 3D online society where Hamlet
Linden (aka Wagner James Au) is the world’s
embedded journalist. Cory will discuss his
acclaimed novel *Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom* with an in-world audience of Second
Life residents.

Link

Over on the Whuffie blog (yes, there is such a thing; no, I did not have anything to do with it; and yes, I am immensely flattered), there’s a guest-blogger writing good, scholarly critical analysis of the economics of the Bitchun Society, the world in which my novel is set.

The danger, pointed out in this passage from Doctorow’s novel, in having a completely subjective, reputation-based economy is that it is quite possible for someone like me to be made an outsider from the economy due to actions for which I had no responsibility. Granted, similar problems exist in a cash-based economy. The market could bottom out, as we all certainly know, and I could be left with stock in… nothing. Still, there are objective factors, along with the subjective ones that move the market, that justify such occurrences. With a reputation economy, the threat of being ostracized unfairly is very real, and very much free from the protections of objectivity. Thus, this points to a problem with such a system. I do not think it is a problem that would defeat the system, as a general concept, but it is one that may justify eschewing it as a device for commerce.

The subjective nature of reputation is an interesting issue that goes beyond Herodotus. It is one that troubles modern politicians and entertainers, sometimes rightly, and sometimes wrongly. It’s for this reason that I think X’s website, and Doctorow’s novel, are such interesting topics of discussion. Reputation is a matter that merits consideration, because it is a value that, subjectively, has massive impact on our life — and on the lives of the ancients.

He makes a good point. The problem (OK, a problem) with Whuffie is that it lacks a lot of the critical stuff that makes up the fundamentals of democratic infrastructure, like protection for minority opinions. Some of that is elided by the lack of scarcity in the novel: it’s hard to be a well-and-truly oppressed minority when every material want is answered in plenty, but the social effect of the normative pressure of Whuffie is ultimately highly corrosive.

To put it more pithily: “Popular speech never needs defending.” Free speech shouldn’t be a popularity contest.

Link

My first short story collection, “A Place So Foreign and Eight More,” is out. I’m following up on the success of my Creative Commons release-for-free experiment here by releasing most of the stories in the book as free downloads, under the same terms through which the novel was offered.

I’ve built a site for this book at:

http://craphound.com/place

This is pretty amazing: Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder of Amazon, gave my book a plug on NPR’s Weekend Edition today, during a segment on summer reading.

I’ve created a mailing-list for occassional annoucnements of upcoming appearances, articles, stories and books. You can sign up here.

NASA’s astrobiology magazine has a good, in-depth review of the book in the current ish.

In his modernization of wearing your karma on your sleeve, society is governed by reputation and actions. This is not so much an ideal world, as a practical one which keeps considerable adventure and moves in anything but boring ways. ‘The whole point ..was to be more reputable than the next ad-hoc, to succeed on merit, not trickery, despite assassinations and the like.’

Therein lies Doctorow’s thesis: an internet-saavy version of personal capital, particularly one’s success rating with friends and neighbors. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom coins this all-encompassing and frequently updated reputation rating, one’s Whuffie.

While friends’ opinions may matter most in getting good Whuffie, a weighted score also makes room for those both likely– and unlikely– to be compatible. This version resembles a counterpoint system, and is called left-handed Whuffie: respect garnered from people who share very few of your own opinions. This is not a world of sycophants who seek mutual admiration. The future apparently holds true to both majority power, and also minority empowerment.