Gizmo pelmanism: Difference between revisions

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===[[Emergent]] standardisation?===
===[[Emergent]] standardisation?===


But shouldn’t the unmediated forces of competition work so that common standards emerge by themselves? If not, ''why not''? What incentives are at play that prevent it? Our nascent view: the modern notion that “utility text” has commercial value as [[intellectual property]] leaves us all — including the owner — poorer, as we spend our days playing Gizmo pelmanism with each other and not listening to each other’s Walkmans. Walkmen. Walkpersons. And really — are you really charging £900 an hour for your ''superior [[boilerplate]]''?
But shouldn’t the unmediated forces of competition work so that common standards emerge by themselves? If not, ''why not''? What incentives are at play that prevent it? Our nascent view: the modern notion that “utility text” has commercial value as [[intellectual property]] leaves us all — including the owner — poorer, as we spend our days playing Gizmo pelmanism with each other and not listening to each other’s Walkmans. Walkmen. Walkpersons. And, really — are you really charging £900 an hour for your ''superior [[boilerplate]]''?


Where commerce has worked this way, helped by the enlightened unselfishness of people like Tim Berners-Lee<ref>The World Wide Internet.</ref> and Jimmy Wales<ref>WikiMedia.</ref> ''staggering'' things have come about. Where it has not — and we are bound to note legal practice as being such a place — everyone remains mired in complication, chaos, cost, delay and, above all, ''[[tedium]]''. ''Imagine if a contract were a universal API for all commerce''. This is what it ''should'' be: a contract ''is'' a transfer: it is a connection point between two nodes on a network. Why are we so far from the [[end-to-end principle]]?  
Where commerce has worked this way, helped by the enlightened unselfishness of people like Tim Berners-Lee<ref>The World Wide Internet.</ref> and Jimmy Wales<ref>WikiMedia.</ref> ''staggering'' things have come about. Where it has not — and we are bound to note legal practice as being such a place — everyone remains mired in complication, chaos, cost, delay and, above all, ''[[tedium]]''. ''Imagine if a contract were a universal API for all commerce''. This is what it ''should'' be: a contract ''is'' a transfer: it is a connection point between two nodes on a network. Why are we so far from the [[end-to-end principle]]?  

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