He he… I liked the juxtaposed “The net interprets advertising as damage” slide next to the “Thanking the sponsors” slide during the end note. Very telling!

Well, you could say it is ironic, that’s true. But I also think it’s telling. The common sponsorship model for conferences is essentially a form of advertising. In the advertising world, for example, TV, the customer is the advertiser, and the product is the audience - that is your attention. But there is another model - you might call it ‘under-writing’. Sponsors support aspects of their communities they think are valuable, and hopefully, the appreciation for this support is valuable to them. Many people consider this quite different from ‘advertising’.

Aboveall, Mark I don’t think is arguing that commerce is coming to an end, rather the way commerce has been done for a couple of centuries is.

Commerce is not coming to an end; commercial models of barter and trade emerge naturally out of any given population - including (weirdly enough) computer models of agents with things to trade. It happens more or less automatically.

Advertising, on the other hand, is about 150 years old (and that’s being a bit generous). There’s no reason it has to persist, any more than the recording industry - which is headed in the same direction at an accelerated pace, for the same reasons.