Immaterial Goods

Discussion

Marc Fawzi on the Cost of Immaterial Goods

Marc Fawzi:

"When it comes to bits and bytes, which, in an information economy, carry both the transactions for (and the information regarding) the goods and services as well as the digital goods and services themselves, some of the the physical constraints [that follow from the first and second laws of thermodynamics] are:

1. The continuous cost of energy for powering the Internet infrastructure at every point, including the the processing hardware and the communication channels.

2. The continuous cost of energy for maintaining and evolving the energy infrastructure for powering the Internet

3. The continuous cost of energy for maintaining and evolving the Internet at every point, including the processing and communication nodes, underground and undersea cables, wireless and satellite channels, data centers, etc. This includes the energy used in the development and manufacturing of new, improved hardware and software or the production of replacement parts for existing hardware and maintenance (bug fixing) of the software.

4. The continuous cost of energy for powering our human bioware, including our information processing capability (our brain) and our communication channels (our senses), which are necessary for the production and consumption of both physical as well as digital goods and services.

5. The continuous cost of energy for maintaining evolving our cognitive bioware, including our information processing capability (our brain) and our communication channels (our senses, which are necessary for the production and consumption of both physical as well as digital goods and services." (email, April 2009)