Hacker Society John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow: Let me say something quickly, and then I’ll shut up. Well, for awhile. Years ago, I was addressing a bunch of bank CEO’s, major bankers, several members of the Federal Reserve Board, and I asked them if they had a minute to decide whether they would give up all of their assets, public and private, I mean, corporate and personal, and all of their relationships, which would they chose?
And nobody went with their assets. Because everybody understood that they could rebuild their assets from their relationships, but not the other way around. And I said, “Well, why do you go on placing so much emphasis in economic theory on the thing that is less important to you?” And one of them said, “Because as we can measure it. “
Now, I think we’re actually reaching the point where we can start to measure relationships. In some quantitative way.
