Visual West Bank is featured at the WBI site.
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The popular dream of the Internet as a commerce-free information space didn't last long. The concepts of society and economy are inextricably interconnected, and the evolution of cybersociety brought with it the growth of commercial possibilities. Manifestations of these commercial aspects can be found everywhere on the Web: marketing has become a new financial frontier, companies are selling their products in cybershops, domain names have become virtual real estate, and net surfers are charged for certain services--after all, creating a website involves costs, and service providers don't provide their services for free. While most of the cybermarket environment is an economy with RL (real life) currencies of official status, there are endeavors to promote an alternative economy. One enterprise encouraging the growth of such a virtual economy is West Bank Industries (http://www.westbank.org). The connotations of the name itself point to the project's ambiguities. 'West Bank Industries' suggests Western ideas and conventions--as the banking industry does--but West Bank also reminds us of a history-laden territory in the Middle East that is less 'bankable.' WBI was founded in 1994 by Stuart Rosenberg from Toronto who is now realizing his projects behind the label--crossing the lines of commerce, betting, entertainment industry, military and art. By now, Rosenberg has been joined by at least two other co-bankers, Jo Seiler and Kris Krois.  WBI tries to promote its belief in an alternative economy by using the test cyberbucks of DigiCash B.V.. At the WBI site, you may download the DigiCash software and get some of the 'fake bucks,' or click on the ecash icons throughout the server. WBI suggests that once you have the cash, you should bring it back and deposit it into the system. Anyone who transfers ecash into West Bank Industries is automatically given an account and membership status. WBI's system is founded on the belief in a virtual economy that is to be defined directly by its users. The focus of the enterprise is a self-regulated society and the creation of territories that could grow from within network systems. WBI has transformed the simulation of basic economic entities into an interface to publish these ideas. The WBI site also features a demonstration model--Visual West Bank--that interprets information flow, transaction functions and member decisions throughout the West Bank server. The binological model has the ability to move, shrink, append, and subtract its shape according to the incoming data. WBI has been experimenting with different projects and collaborations on an international scale. The most interesting among them is the Core War Betting Hill, which intends to create a new form of competition and spectating arena within the Core War gaming community. The Core War is one of the oldest Internet games around. In Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash, programmers reminisce about the good old times when data space was to a large extent undefined and open like a desert. This desert was the arena where they would allow the algorithms they programmed to fight each other like gladiators--until the strongest killed the weaker ones or used so much memory that the weaker suffocate. Stephenson's book documents that programmers have been bringing their gladiator programs into the arena for quite some time. Core War is a game played by two or more programs (and their authors) and run in a virtual computer called MARS (Memory Array Redcode Simulator). Warriors are based on a modified simple assembly computer language called "redcode." Originally created by A.K. Dewdney in 1984, it has been designed to run inside the modified battle arena MARS, which is able to interpret the code on a step by step basis. Core War was first described in the "Core War Guidelines" of March, 1984, by D.G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario (Canada). Dewdney published several "Computer Recreations" articles discussing Core War in "Scientific American." The goal of the game is to cause all of the opposing programs to terminate, leaving the winner's program in sole possession of the machine. But for the uninformed spectator the battle didn't look too interesting: the result was basically numerical. The battle itself remained hidden in the microprocessor--at least until 1994. Now everybody can throw an algorithmic gladiator into the arena and observe the fight through a visual interface. The Core War Betting Hill takes an alternative stance to formal Core War practice by expanding it to alternative platforms: it features a remote graphic interpretation software as well as the integration of an online betting system. The spectating section of CWBH introduces a new pMARS interpretation design to the Core War community--this version is designed for the Macintosh platform, modifying the source code from Alex MacAulay, 1994, Albert Ma, Na'ndor Sieben, Stefan Strack and Mintardjo Wangsaw, 1993-1994. Visitors may download and learn the program from the interpretation page. Its design is supposed to offer an alternative way of visually interpreting the Core War battle field. CWBH brings yet another war to your living room, but the automated death tolls and bloodless body counts of this war remain closer to a science fiction scenario. Concerning the betting system WBI explains, "Competition throughout history has always wagered monetary value on its results, thus creating the highest quality level of sport possible and an influx of potential spectators." The money may be virtual, but its traditional effects remain unchanged. West Bank Industries certainly isn't afraid to be commercially explicit or to enter the territory of currently much discussed regulation--right around the corner from the bookie's office, there's the Virtual S&M section, which sells still outtakes of images in GIF format or the corresponding quicktime.mov animations. The commercial aspects of WBI projects (not all of them involve ecash) symbolize the controversial territory that West Bank Ind. is exploring. What makes this enterprise interesting is the attempt to create territories that could grow from within network systems and to allow a self-regulated society a certain freedom from real life rules. Whether virtual commerce excludes RL corruption remains debatable. |