On Monday, the Bitcoin rate reached its all-time high at US$750. At the beginning of this year, it was US$13. Bitcoin is the most recognised of the so-called virtual currencies, digital money with no relation to central banks. There are many other varieties with different set-ups, but Bitcoin is the most popular. It was the main currency for Silk Road, the infamous black market website that the US government has tried to close down.

The principle is that the amount of Bitcoin in circulation is fixed and the value is decided by traders on a free market. Servers distributed across the internet keep track of the money, and each Bitcoin is encrypted. There has been controversy around the money-laundering and organised crime opportunities surrounding virtual currencies, but so far it seems most criminals prefer hard currency, and virtual money remains the domain of geeks and risk-hungry investors.

Like any money, the value of virtual currencies is decided by the market—in effect, what somebody is prepared to pay for or trade for it. Just like normal money, its value changes over time according to a lot of factors, and it relies on a silent agreement about the value. The difference is that there is no central bank involved that monitors and influences the value by increasing/decreasing the amount of money in circulation or buying/selling hard assets like gold. Virtual money is normally disconnected from the “real” economy, but it also exists in virtual worlds, like World of Warcraft Gold, which can be traded against a US-dollar rate decided by the market (transactions are a little complicated as Blizzard, the company that operates the game service, tries to limit this practice).

What a civilisation decides to use for money is a question that has intrigued economic historians since the subject started about a century ago. The Mayans used cocoa beans. Gold and silver are familiar to many cultures. Edward Castronova is a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University. He uses game worlds to experiment on what object becomes money in an economy. There is no law of nature that decides that!

The practice of virtual currencies is older than Bitcoin and World of Warcraft, even older than the world wide web. The most influential virtual currency so far was the European Currency Unit, or ECU, the precursor to the Euro in the 1980’s. It was a “basket” of member state currencies and traded by banks like a real currency, but had no bills, coins, or other physical representation. It was, however, used for international financial transactions in some cases.

The ECU spawned the Euro, and while Bitcoin may be the digital anarchist fantasy, it is actually the opposite. Currency is the foundation of an organised economy; once that is in place, many other functions of society (including regulation) are very likely to follow. So while Bitcoin might look like a threat to existing power structures, it might just as well be a seed for a lawful online world. Who knows, it may be just what the doctor ordered to cure the current Euro-crunch. That, or it could be just a fad.

XKCD’s “What if?” is the place for curious questions about science and computers. It’s similar fun as the Urban Dictionary (“Friendscaping” – The act of trimming ones friends lists in various social media sites), but as enlightening as Wikipedia. It’s any geek’s favourite hang-out and no question is too stupid to deserve a dead serious answer. Like this one: When – if ever – will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx? The answer may be surprising!

As discussed in Netopia’s new report 3D-Printing: Technology and Beyond, today’s technology allows 3d-printing in many different materials, plastic and metals of course – but also concrete, cookie dough, sugar, sand, sawdust, potter’s clay, textile… even living cells to create human tissue. Also composites and complex combinations of materials are possible to print. The possibilities are simply jaw-dropping and this is just today’s technology.

The blueprints that prints are made from can be designed in a computer using 3d-modelling software, or downloading objects from various online sources (potentially making adjustments before printing). It is also possible to scan objects, using specific hardware (such as the MakerBot Digitizer) or even an app for your smartphone camera. Once the object has been scanned, it can be printed of course in as many copies as you like (and can afford the raw materials for!). But you can also make changes to the object, add or remove parts, change surfaces or materials. This is called hacking objects. Cue another jawdrop: the physical objects around us are not permanent. We can change them.

The maker-community Realize, that took part in Netopia’s 3d-printing seminar, has about sixty members. This time last year, it had not yet been formed. Gartner expects the sale of 3d-scanners to increase 49% in 2013. The future will be here in just a moment. Don’t blink!

Today Netopia launches its first report in English, on 3d-printing. It is a fascinating technology, almost magical: to create new objects from nothing. It breaks down the barrier between the physical and the digital space. But it’s not the technology itself that sets up the paradigm shift, it’s the dissemination. The technology was first developed in the Eighties and was limited to industrial applications for decades. For the past five years or so, enthusiasts have been building 3d-printers of various kinds but more recently 3d-printers (and scanners!) have become more like consumer products: better designed, more user-friendly and cheaper. The cheapest 3d-printer on the market sets you back around $300. So it’s personal 3d-printing that is the news here.

If this technology follows the same trajectory as for example photo printers – or smart phones for that matter – they will be in every home and work place within the next few years. Market disruption is a phrase often used in relation to technology and that is of course applicable also in this case: industries will change, just like the photo printer put a lot of photo labs out of business. But the implications of wide-spread personal 3d-printing goes further, it’s time for a new phrase: government disruption. Several parts of government will have to adjust, it seems. Intellectual property rights are obvious, the current distinctions of patents, copyright, trademarks and designs may not be valid in a world of personal manufacturing, but these are different types of law and separate departments in government. Consumer protection is another example, what if someone gets hurt by a 3d-printed product, who is responsible? The maker? The designer? The printer-manufacturer? We may have to change the way consumer protection is set up. Gun control is a topic I have written about before, very important to most societies in the world. And the core of government: taxation. How to collect tariffs, fees, VAT and other sorts of taxes when manufacturing is ubiquitous? When there are no hierarchies for government to interact with? It’s an anarchist’s dream come true.

Today was a big day for Netopia, our first ever live event in Brussels.

The topic was 3D printing technology, and its legal and policy consequences. The event featured a live 3D printer demo by maker network Realize, report presentation and speakers from the European Commission as well as think-tank ECIPE.

You can watch the video from the event below, and the report can be found here.

3D printing technology points to many challenges in terms of law and policy, not least in the field of intellectual property rights. Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman, authors of the book Fabricated (Wiley, 2013) write “Intellectual property law will be brought to its knees”.

One of the findings in Netopia’s report 3D Printing: Technology and Beyond is that the recent boom of low-cost personal 3D printers is to do with patents on this technology from the Eighties expiring, allowing other manufacturers to use these inventions. It seems those who would prefer more lax intellectual property law have a great case with the 3d-printers. However, the crux is that those patents are the reason this technology exists in the first place. The research behind 3D printing technology could be paid for thanks to the commercial exclusivity provided by the patents.

It seems that rather than a case against IPR, 3D printers are a good illustration of the way IPR is supposed to work. By introducing some restrictions on distribution, it is possible to make money from investment in research and development. Those who prefer different systems for IPR ought to explain how costly R&D should be financed in their vision.

This blog post is the content of the Netopia Newsletter which was circulated today, November 12. To subscribe, please add your address in the box to the left.

Welcome to Netopia, where technology meets society.

The conventional story of technology and government is that regulators have difficulties keeping pace with the development. But the opposite is also true, government creates technology. The basic research for what is now the internet was done by the US military in the sixties, the world wide web was developed at CERN (paid for by EU member states) and much of the national infrastructure (=cables) is from public investment. This is also true of November’s main topic for Netopia: 3D printers. This year, the US launched a US$ 30 million initiative, the UK invests GBP 14,7 million this year, and Singapore no less than US$ 500 million over five years – to give just a few examples.

Personal 3D printing is on the threshold of a paradigm shift also because the first patents on the technology from the eighties now expire. As hardware prices fall and distribution increases, 3D printing technology promises democratised personal manufacturing. The flipside are policy challenges like trademark and patent rights, consumer protection and even gun control. Here is when the regular wisdom of government and technology come into play: how should regulators approach these issues?

Netopia invites to an event and report launch on 3d-printers tomorrow at 10.30
AM at the THON Hotel EU.

The UN campaign on women’s rights is provocative and deserves all the recognition it gets. It features a photo where a Google search box covers a woman’s mouth, the search phrase is “women should not…” with auto-complete suggestions like “vote” and “work”. The impression is that a lot of people search for these phrases and that women’s rights are far from universally accepted. While Netopia agrees with the cause, the logic seems to be a bit flawed. As BBC’s Tom Chatfield points out, these auto-complete suggestions are not the same for all users: location, previous search patterns, popular topics and many other factors go into the invisible algorithms that produce these suggestions. Users are well-advised not to take them literally. Chatfield also points to the problem that auto-complete suggestions can limit our searches, rather than the opposite. In my experience, there is yet another challenge is that they may suggest information – true or false – that we’d rather not have. I once googled the name of a writer and auto-complete suggested he had been in prison for domestic violence (ironic considering the topic of the UN campaign). I would have much rather not known about his potential wrong-doings, but now that’s all I can think about when I read his stories.  What has been seen cannot be unseen. Sure, you don’t always find what you’re looking for when you surf the net, but you always find something interesting. Except sometimes you would much rather not find out at all. This example speaks both to the information-centrism of digital technology, and to the detronisation of truth: the predominant ideology for how technology is designed is that more information is always better (and enough information could save the world). Personal DNA-tests are a good example, information-centrism says it is better to know than not but it turns out that reality is much more complex, like how “false positives” can be misunderstood by us laymen. The detronisation of truth of course is the fact that I will never know whether this writer actually hit his wife or not. Finding out for real would require a lot more investment than I am prepared to make (like getting the public court protocols). Conclusion: too much information is more than enough, not least when its unreliable or hard to understand. As always, Netopia’s suggestion would be to make Google’s algorithms transparent so we could make informed decisions on the reliability. Until then, I guess we’ll just need to have faith in the machine.

Of all the funny jokes on the internet, this may be the smartest. It has been said that the Jester was the only one who could talk straight to the King. The bells and stupid hat protected him from anger. This is certainly true in our digital age, when the most stupid pranks (yes, genitalia-pics sent to social media CEO) say the most profound things about surveillance, intermediary privilege, editorial responsibility and, well, ourselves. Read the Forbes-story or just follow @ProfJeffJarvis on Twitter (it’s not THAT Jeff Jarvis).

Silicon Valley’s desire to escape the national domain is short-sighted and ill-informed, writes Farhad Manjoo in the Wall Street Journal. While many prominent tech entrepreneurs have expressed a wish to shed the chains of legislation and bureaucracy through such means as floating islands or, more realistically, putting servers in faraway jurisdictions, Manjoo reminds of the needs to sell to consumers inside the regulated markets and the fact that Silicon Valley’s success relies on government R&D and pension fund investment to a large extent (one could add free content from the entertainment sector). But it is easy to recognise the lust for not having to deal with the rest of the world, is that not everyone’s fantasy from time to time? If I could only be left to my devices, not having to consider other people, just as long as they keep sending me money, wouldn’t that be great? It has nothing to do with technology, it is only human. But most of us are reminded often enough that the world would be a boring place if we did not have interactions with other people, and those will inevitably have wills of their own. Compromise is required, and on a larger scale democracy, politics, institutions. All those things are only consequences of us humans having different priorities and wishes. What is that saying again? No man is an island.