When you think you're buying a piece of software from Microsoft, if you read the license carefully, what you find is that the license is a legal agreement that says you actually didn't buy this. You really have just given us money for a license to use, and here are the conditions of use. You may not sell it separate from your computer. You may not make two copies of it. You can't give a copy to your friend while you're not using it because it's part of your computer. And the actual content changes; it goes through release one, release two, release three. It goes through forced upgrades where you have to buy it again and again even though you've already bought it. And it comes on floppy disc, hard disc, zip drive, compact flash, it comes downloaded off the Internet.

And that breaking apart of an information property into its three essential components — media, content and license — has rendered it a very, very important moment in understanding the human condition. What we think of as property, as ownership, is about to change. Instead of being gold and jewels, property is just information about usage rights, which is transferred in a non-duplicative and non-lossy way. The only difference between a poor and rich man ­ besides the quality of their dental care ­ is what the bank computers and brokerage computers say!

We're now watching new licensing models arrive, like ESD (electronic software download) in which there is no disk. Like the ASP (the application service provider) where instead of actually buying a shrink-wrapped piece of software, a disc to put in your computer, you go to a Website, give them your credit card, and use some computer time served off the Website. We're seeing rental licenses like Divx, which only failed because the machines were overpriced. . We're seeing "read once" licenses, like what Bill Gibson had envisioned: You buy an "ebook," read it once, and it self-destructs. Jim Phelps's tape in Mission Impossible was an earlier harbinger of the read once license.

The fact that the three components of a book have been broken apart means that there are great opportunities for wealth, in terms of selling the same content over and over and over again, and there are also great opportunities for abuse. Both the Digital Rights Management and the File Sharing movements operate against property (as something you own until you sell it). I think the greatest threat to human condition is not my cheaper robots, but the end of property, when our books, records, videos, software can no longer be owned.

EDGE: Civilization has states, just as matter does. Why haven't we pushed this idea so far?

POLLACK: There is a very interesting thesis by Henry Plotkin, who tries to get Darwinism to operate at the level not just of individuals but of species, ecosystems, cultures and language. It is true that we can understand the states of culture and civilization as we understand dynamical systems.

We see the acceleration both of culture and the communication of cultural change. It's faster than evolution of species. Human language has developed in the blink of an eye from the point of view of the species. All of a sudden language evolved, and then human culture evolved much, much faster. Language and culture co-evolves, and the texts and connections which fuel this arms-race have jumped onto the internet.

Electronic Culture has been growing for 15 or 20 years now. When I talk with my parents and inlaws I tell them that the reason that they should go on the Internet is because all of human culture, every bit of human culture, every idea, every book, every thought, every hobby — everything that we do, everything that people think about — is now part of the Internet. Now there is somewhere in your house where you can find other people who engage even in the smallest niches of human interests.

What's interesting is because business, industry, and economic activity are parts of culture, now places in the third world that might have wanted to prevent people in their culture from being exposed to other ideas have no choice. If they want to participate in the world economy, then they essentially have to get their economy up on the Internet. And once they get up on the Internet, it's very, very difficult to stop ideas from coming in.

As we move into the age of being wirelessly connected to the internet, I definitely see a new age of civilization.

EDGE: Civilization isn't what it was; it's something quite different. One example: I have an office but I never have to be there. In fact, I am there less than half the time and I believe I am far more effective in this mode. Instead of sitting in one spot waiting something to happen, I'm out talking to people, making things happen. But at the same time while I am sitting in a hotel suite talking to you, I am setting up a video camera and sound, checking email, answering the phone, the door......I've never been so busy. A lot of the work normally done by the staff at my office I now handle myself.

POLLACK: Here's the question: Is this new economy something in which we're all just making more work for each other? Is the great boost in productivity in America just because we've out-psyched ourselves? People working in huge companies acting as if they're working in start-ups and working sixty hours a week instead of forty. And not getting time and half, but getting stock options. Everybody I know is stretched to the limit and missing their families. The opportunities are so great. If you don't take advantage of the opportunities, you're falling behind. Yet I don't think the fundamental opportunity of the technology change is going away anytime soon.

EDGE: What hit us? Drive by any billboard on the highway and you see www.something.com. Life has changed. We seem to be in the middle of a phase transition.

POLLACK: Yes! There are certain periods in history that we might call phase transitions, bifurcations, or critical points. With respect to evolution we discuss how there are certain elements that adapt to one another in some state, and somehow they come together and they create a new function. Its called an exaptation. Flying and seeing didn't just happen. There was no goal for something to fly, but there were some existing appendages to some animals that enabled them to jump further, or others that enabled them to balance in certain ways, and that ultimately became flying. The coming of the Internet, the ability for anyone with a computer at home to get a phone number for an ISP and get on the Internet, has led to the formation of very rapidly available markets. You could put up a website, and with ten million dollars of advertising, you can get tens of millions of people to start knowing and start coming to the website. There's never before been a time in history where a few guys in a garage can all of a sudden take credit cards from hundreds of thousands of people. That is really a new economic opportunity.

In November 1984 I was in Japan and bought a pocket computer from Casio. It had a full chicklet keyboard, a little screen, and a basic programming language inside, and it came with a printer and a cassette deck as peripherals. I was completely amazed. Here was the origin, the beginning of a whole new kind of computing with much smaller form that could do amazing things. And it's been 15 years that pocket computers remained a niche market! And little radio computers have been around for quite some time as pagers and stock quoters. Suddenly you make a pager look more like a pocket computer, and you have everybody in the world using e-mail, and all of a sudden it's a very valuable thing! Sometimes those things just come together; things grow independently and into each other and then you get a critical point, and that's what we really saw with the Internet when gopher and ftp retrieval got graphic buttons, and what we're going to see with wireless data and wearable computers.

EDGE: Where are things going to be in 2005?

POLLACK: They're really not going to be much different than they are now! I am quite a gadgeteer and am comfortable talking about specific kinds of gadgets, rather than about society and culture. For example, I think digital cameras have settled on 3 or 4 megapixel image; when these $700 cameras drop to $250, traditional photography will be toast like LP Records. In computers, we're going to see pretty much the same kind of laptops that we see now, just an incremental increase of power, with more ports built in. In Cellphones, we'll see better integrated PDA's and email systems, and might see some interesting wireless multimedia, especially as Japan and Europe get their investments in the third generation (called 3G) of higher bandwidth devices. But like telegraphy, the entire network will be held back by the slowest common denominator, and text email will be the morse code of this era. I think the telephone system will be radically changed by robotic VOIP technology and unified messaging. I expect disruptions like practical Microdisplays to enable pocket-sized laptops with 10 hour batteries. I think some ad hoc networks might spring up like CB radios for free instant messaging. And some filtering breakthroughs to get my email back under control!

EDGE: What about robotics?

POLLACK: Can I sell you a Lego Bridge? The robotics industry as it exists today caters expensive machinery to very high-profit industries whose production profits can justify such luxuries. I don't see much really changing before 2005 in robotics, but by 2010 I think that we can have some impact. With the right investment and patience, I can see how to create a general purpose robotics industry that can automatically design and manufacture simple machines for industry and entertainment. That's an inversion of the traditional idea, "Let's build a humanoid robot slave that can do everything!" A technology that can very cheaply produce specific dumbots for different kinds of tasks; assembly tasks, military tasks, cleanup tasks, entertainment tasks, even domestic tasks, might actually lead to a profitable and self sustaining industry and a change in culture back towards invention and manufacturing of real stuff instead of just dotcom stuff.

EDGE: You don't expect me to buy this, do you? We know what you're really up to.

POLLACK: No, actually, I'll give you a copy of the business plan. You mentioned earlier that you go to Aspen. Maybe you'll meet Arnold Schwarzenegger up there and he'll be interested!