Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has been integrated into the coursework at a Stanford university Information systems course:
Choose one of he following projects, or devise something of your own by Jan 15th, and let us know….
3) Reputation systems: this is the most speculative of the three project suggestions. Identify what kind of reputation systems would be important in the context of online communities and market places of the future, what their vulnerabilities are likely to be, and how these vulnerabilities can be tackled. Alternatively, read the science fiction book by Cory Doctorow, “Down and out in the magic kingdom (available for free or on amazon.com, bn.com etc)�, and architect the reputation system used in that book. Remember to address the issues of whether data needed to compute the reputations is stored centrally or in a distributed fashion. In the absence of any real currency, how would you provide a guarantee to the average Joe and Jane that the “system� does not shortchange them in terms of their reputation? If you decide that the reputation system used in this book is not realizable or has significant internal flaws, then make a cogent argument to this effect.
