Whuffie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Whuffie is the ephemeral, reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow's sci-fi novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. This future history book describes a post-scarcity economy: All the necessities (and most of the luxuries) of life are free for the taking. A person's current Whuffie is instantly viewable to anyone, as everybody has a brain-implant giving them an interface with the Net.

Contents 1 Explanation 2 Other Whuffie-like Concepts 3 Etymology 4 See also 5 References 6 External Links

[edit] Explanation

The usual economic incentives have disappeared from the book's world. Whuffie has replaced money, providing a motivation for people to do useful and creative things. A person's Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation, and Whuffie is lost and gained according to a person's favorable or unfavorable actions. The question is, who determines which actions are favorable or unfavorable? In Down and Out, the answer is public opinion. Rudely pushing past someone on the sidewalk will definitely lose you points from them (and possibly bystanders who saw you), while composing a much-loved symphony will earn you Whuffie from everyone who enjoyed it.

A gross Whuffie score looks the same to everyone viewing it, but a weighted Whuffie score is subjective. This meta-Whuffie takes into account right-handed Whuffie (the amount given by people you like) and left-handed Whuffie (given by people you dislike). Another variety is pity Whuffie, given to those who are down on their luck.

In Down and Out, some judgments based on Whuffie are automatic and require no conscious thought; the same technology that allows brain dumps is used for weighting and for finding interesting things. As brain dumps allow machines to carry consciousness, the machines can do the thinking for the people and allow them to know automatically.^[1]

There are few details in the book about how this system actually worked; most of the explanations given are very general, like this one: "Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn't starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented - your personal capital with your friends and neighbors - you more accurately gauged your success".

A primary difference between Whuffie and money is that a cash-based currency system is zero-sum: as long as the money supply is constant, nobody can gain money without someone else parting with an equal amount. In Down and Out's system, a person with a score of 0 is just as capable of giving and revoking Whuffie as someone with a score of 1,000,000. The person with the million-point score would be invited to a lot more parties and shows and other exclusive and elite events, while her bottomed-out counterpart would get dirty looks from people on the bus and would probably not be allowed into any reputable clubs or restaurants. But both of their opinions on somebody else would count for the same amount of gross Whuffie.

Some people have perceived flaws in Doctorow's conception of Whuffie. For example, it might tend to favor popular speech at the expense of public discourse, and it could be frequently uninformative: if a person has a high Whuffie score, is it for guitar playing or auto repair?

A defender of Whuffie might respond to the first argument by saying that the situation described is already the status quo under the money system, and that the concept of weighted Whuffie helps make better decisions on a person-by-person basis, and thus is more flexible than rating someone by their bank account. A possible response to the second argument is that other information besides a raw score would presumably be available on the Net, such as how a person attained each of the individual points that make up their rating.

Note that Doctorow is not the first to posit such a system. Howard L. Myers wrote of a similar system based on admiration in his story "All Around the Universe", written between 1967 and 1971.

[edit] Other Whuffie-like Concepts

Currency systems similar to Whuffie include LETS and the Ripple monetary system.

Although Whuffie is a thought-experiment and was never intended for real-world implementation, many community-oriented websites are built around Whuffie-like concepts of reputation management (Slashdot's karma system, for example, or eBay's feedback ratings). Google's PageRank algorithm scores the relevance of a web page according to the number and relevance of other web pages that link to it, a measure roughly equivalent to reputation.

The karma system in Delta Tao's Clan Lord MMORPG (originally a Macintosh-only game c. 1999) is a similar system. Both good and bad karma are on record, but both decay with time. Both individual and group vendettas of "bad karma bombing" and organized and unorganized counter campaigns of "good karma bombing" occur. Since karma has relatively little effect on the game mechanics for most players, many players don't care much about it (or at least claim they do not) and both good and bad karma levels for most players stay fairly low.

The online game MapleStory has the concept of "Fame" which was meant to be a whuffie like system, but which has become very close to a second currency. Players can increase or decrease another player's fame, ostensibly for helpful or anti-social actions. However, trading of fame for gold or items has become so common that it is now the rule rather than the exception to acquire fame by these means.

[edit] Etymology

Doctorow has indicated that the word 'Whuffie' is a made-up word he used in high school, and is not a vocalization of an abbreviation (in the style of 'Gazoo' – GSU, or Grad Students Union) or of Wi-Fi as is often believed.^[2].

Whuffie is mentioned in Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe, but appears to be in the general sense of building reputation.

[edit] See also

• karma (Slashdot)
• egoboo
• social capital
• The Attention Economy - Michael H. Goldhaber's paper concerning "a new kind of wealth [viz., attention], its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms of property"

[edit] References

1. ^ Richard Koman; Cory Doctorow (2003-02-27). Cory Doctorow's Bitchun' World: P2P Gone Wild. O'Reilly Network. Retrieved on 2006-09-23.
2. ^ Cory Doctorow (2003-01-14). Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Frequently Asked Questions, Part 1. Retrieved on 2006-09-23.

[edit] External Links

• 'The Bitchun Society', a prototype internet gift economy that follows the Whuffie system mentioned in the book.
• 'Whuffie World', Whuffie World is operated by the Open Reputation Exchange Alliance (ORXA).