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  1. Disintemediation (Upsideclown, 13 November 2003)
    http://iam.upsideclown.com/2003_11_13.shtml
    "Nelson pointers: Why copy something when you can just copy a reference to it? Every item of clothing I buy comes with a unique identifier, coordinates in the noosphere that lets me, when I'm working more in cyberspace, locate it. A unique resource indicator, you could call it (although they're no longer unique, as I'll explain). Buying a coat, for example, is a matter of exchanging something for it. (Actually you give money instead of swapping directly, and money is a mechanism of abstracting swapping when we deal with singletons, that is, rivalrous objects, like a can of coke which if I drink you can't. Or the physical slice of this coat, which if you wear, I can't.)
    Anyway, when I buy a coat I get the physical slice and the cyberspace index to it -- these are ubiquitous; we live in a true semiotcracy now so anybody can create signifiers. The index I plug into my class hierarchy, declaring the coat to be an instance of my clothes (it's also an instance of coats of this style, just one of, oh, dozens probably, it was a big workshop, but that comes built in). That's done automatically, the hierarchy (which is actually a meshwork) is updated by the house when I put my coat in the closet for the first time. That's done so that if I get a message it can get routed to my-clothes-in-general, and if I'm wearing my coat, because my coat is-a instance of my clothes, the message will arrive in my pocket and I'll feel it drop in.
    Swapping Nelsons means mucking with the cyberspace index to the coat, with the no-longer-unique URI. Karen gave me the Nelson pointer her clothes superclass, to her wardrobe in other words, and I gave her the Nelson to the contents of my closet, and we merged them.
    Our coats are now no longer simply instances of an uber-coat, but actual manifestations of the same coat. What happens to her manifestation happens to mine. Like Ted Nelson said, years and years ago, when Shiva appears in two temples at the same time, you're not looking at two instances of the god. Hey, he's a deity, he can manifest in two places, you're looking at the same guy!"

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