Negotiated Usufruct, Part II

Ownership and Augmented Reality

By John Taylor; 2009 Sep 10, Izzat 03, 166 BE

The next technological revolution after computers and the internet will be what is now termed augmented reality, or AR. AR effectively makes the Internet and physical computers invisible and integrates what we see on a monitor into the world our eyes perceive as we walk around. A YouTube playlist called "augmented reality" demonstrates a dozen diverse applications of AR, including some pioneering AR advertisements where a model, simulation or cartoon character seems to spring out of a magazine page, and a smart phone which, when you point it at a street points out names of streets and buildings, gives information about them, or offers directions to reach a certain store or other destination. AR displays soon will permit us to navigate the real world with the same interactive, information-rich aplomb that we do when we surf the Internet.

Back in 2003 when I wrote the early draft for the following paragraphs I had never heard of the term "augmented reality," but of course I knew how fighter pilot's helmets projected information feeds into displays right before their eyes, and I had seen depictions of AR in films like the Terminator series. So instead of AR, I used the term "Heads Up Display," or HUD.

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 Dynamically Negotiated Usufruct
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Our problems with ownership today are caused by the fact that owning a physical object is entirely different from owning an intellectual one. Owning a car or house is different from owning the rights to a movie, song or book. In order to use an object you have to take it away from whoever had it before. But if I read a book or watch a movie, the authors do not lose anything. If I pay them, they profit; if I do not, they are not deprived of anything. This was understood as long ago as Aristotle, who pointed out that when a person lights a brand on another person's flame, there is no need to thank the owner, since they lost nothing in the transaction. A flame spreads by nature. It gives itself away freely. Now technology has made it as easy to copy data as an open flame propagates itself.

Our economy today is increasingly based on information services that are free to copy and disseminate around the world at the speed of light. We are becoming accustomed to using Internet services without paying for them directly. Large technology companies like Apple and Google have somehow mastered the trick of profiting from a situation where information spreads far easier and quicker than the most volatile elements known in the ancient world, air and fire. Seeing the success of these new monopolies, owners of intellectual property often want as many people to use it as possible in order to gain market share and advertising revenue.

Our legal system has not caught up with these advances. It still treats a loss of potential profit with the same clumsy severity that it does an indemnity, the loss of a physical object. Government, corporations and other large institutions, who own most intellectual property are profiting while fair use, the public usufruct of intellectual property, is under threat. The subtle strategies that a Google or an Apple have devised to profit from ubiquitous data flow are not, to say the least, being taken up by the legislators, lawyers and judges who handle property law.

I think that the invention of HUD's will allow these guardians of property law to do so. This technology will provide instant visual access to the mass of legal information hiding behind every item of property that we encounter every day. It will allow us to navigate the troubled waters of intellectual property by what I am calling "dynamically negotiated usufruct." HUD's will enable us to negotiate in real time our usufruct, that is, the public use of private goods. It will allow for much more complex and subtle property law.

But what am I doing, you ask, suggesting more complexity? Is modern life not complicated enough? Admittedly, dynamically negotiated usufruct would greatly increase the red tape of owning things.

However, slave-owning societies asked the same question, why trouble ourselves by introducing more complexity? Why spread the burden of manual labor to everybody when we have a free labor pool that toils endlessly for us? History over the past three centuries shows how we gradually learned to get away from chattel labour. We now know that it is not only ethical for everybody to work and profit from their own efforts, it is also more efficient economically.

We have learned to make machines our slaves. As our machines get smarter, the need to sacrifice humans as slaves, or even manual laboururs, seems ever more unconscionable. Modern information technology, we have learned, always makes things more complex in order to make them better and fairer for all. As computing power increases exponentially, complexity every day becomes easier to handle automatically. We find that we can make our way through a crowded scene that would have seemed impassible a decade ago.

Instead of forced labour, our modern taxation system is based on a premise that is the reverse of elitism. Our democratic and meritocratic ideals instil a desire to maximize freedom with the profits of hard work. Morally speaking, we love our neighbour by loving ourselves; we therefore want to spread the benefits of personal thought and effort to as many people as possible. Everybody benefits, and everybody pulls his or her own weight in support of the public thing.

A precedent of universal financial self-reliance was introduced by the invention of universal graduated taxation. This idea approximates as closely as is mathematically possible the ethical goal suggested by the parable of the Widow's Mite. It assures that as many as possible can contribute and sacrifice proportionately for the greater good.

Graduated income taxes are more complex than, for example, the old system of tithing where one tenth of income is paid into a common coffer. Distributed taxation is a modern phenomenon because it would have been impossible in the monolithic, tyrannical, slave-run empires of ancient times. Begun in China, developed in Baghdad during early Islam, and only fairly recently introduced in the West, this complicated way of gathering government revenue offers a trade-off between complexity and equity. Its structure is complicated but the burden of payment is much more widely distributed. When there is universal participation, all benefit from the synergy of each supporting the whole.

Just as the modern nation has learned to rely on complicated taxation, high finance has undergone a similar evolution towards complexity. Corporations and banks are huge, complex organizational structures that would fly apart without complicated accountancy.

Technological advance is making further extensions of complexity and universality possible. A more complex system of ownership incorporating a spectrum of privileges and rights, rather than simple "either/or," I own it or you own it, is becoming feasible. With machines calculating at teraflop speeds we can introduce a very involved system of usufruct. With properly designed displays, it would actually be simpler for users to understand and establish complex uses of property negotiated in real-time.

The breakthrough technology for this is already being tried out in prototype form. Internet-connected Heads Up Display (HUD) helmets and glasses can determine our location and map the world around us. A pedestrian wearing HUD glasses sees dynamically changing labels superimposed on the streets and buildings that he or she is seeing while walking down a city street. A voice gives a running commentary, and a built in computer connected to the Internet, verbally or visually answers questions spoken to it, such as, "How can I get to such and such a place?" or, "What is the history of that building?" The HUD computer interface tailors the display to each person's particular interests; information for tourists differs from what a daily commuter sees and hears.

How can this be applied to ownership and usufruct?

With a live HUD connection I could take a walk through the countryside anywhere in the world. Instead of an absolute "right to roam," including roaming into places where I endanger myself or others, I negotiate my right to be there with automated proxies.

For example, let us say I walk by a garden. A label would pop up informing me that it is now in use by the owners. They are having a picnic now. They are not restricting access at the highest level but if I don't have a good reason for going there I might trample over the little warning light I see at the bottom of the screen, "Possible courtesy violation." If I go further and they are not happy with the outcome of my visit, I may lose courtesy points. So, I walk to the next backyard garden. It is not in use and I am welcome to take a tour. A recording made by the owner proudly points out its features of interest.

Let us say that poor people own the next property I walk by. I agree to pay a suggested donation in micro-pennies in exchange for the right to cross and enjoy the view. If I am on a budget, I can set my touring and visitation program to pay only the poorest owners and avoid touring fully commercial attractions and restricted lands. This spreads my wealth around and gives the means for poor areas to get out of poverty's vicious circle of ugliness and slums. With an income from passers-by, poor peoples' homes and gardens can compete with larger, wealthier places.

Real-time negotiation of non-monetary rewards will attracts tourism in either direction, mixing rich and poor. A poorer person may visit land owned by the wealthy for free but offer reward points for hospitality and courtesy. For other property, if rewards and tax breaks are given for a high number of visits from hikers, there would be no need for payment at all other than registering the visit, as is done by "hits" on a website.

Next time, let us discuss HUD displays of virtues.

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