The American Information Exchange (AMIX) was a platform for the buying and selling of information, goods and services as well as the exchange of information, ideas, and certain kinds of intellectual work product, created by

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

and

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...

Phil Salin Phillip Kenneth Salin (1950–1991) was an American economist and futurist, best known for his contributions to theories about the development of cyberspace and as a proponent of private (non-governmental) space exploration and development. Ed ...

in the 1980s, together with

Chip Morningstar Chip Morningstar is an American software architect, mainly for online entertainment and communication. Morningstar held many jobs throughout his career in the research and development of technology and programs. Most notably was Morningstar's r ...

(chief architect) and

Randy Farmer Frank Randall "Randy" Farmer (born October 16, 1961) is an American game developer, co-creator with Chip Morningstar of one of the first graphical online games, 1985's ''Habitat''. In 2001 he and Morningstar were the first recipients of the Pione ...

, and involvement from

Esther Dyson Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951) is a Swiss-born American investor, journalist, author, commentator and philanthropist. She is the executive founder of Wellville, a nonprofit project focused on improving equitable wellbeing. Dyson is also an ang ...

and

Mitch Kapor Mitchell David Kapor ( ; born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur best known for his work as an application developer in the early days of the personal computer software industry, later founding Lotus, where he was instrumental in deve ...

. Economist Bill Tulloh was market manager. Salin began thinking about information marketplaces in the 1970s, and was inspired by

Friedrich Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Haye ...

's idea of

spontaneous order Spontaneous order, also named self-organization in the hard sciences, is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. The term "self-organization" is more often used for physical changes and biological processes, while "spontaneous o ...

. Starting in 1984, Salin worked on AMIX as a tool with the goal of elevating individual decision making over central planning, and improving human coordination to help reduce transaction costs in the economy. AMIX would be an international network for the exchange of information,

consulting A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

contracts,

computer code A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These progra ...

and

research Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...

. He envisaged a world in which the ready exchange of

expertise An expert is somebody who has a broad and deep understanding and competence in terms of knowledge, skill and experience through practice and education in a particular field. Informally, an expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable s ...

would reduce

transaction costs In economics and related disciplines, a transaction cost is a cost in making any economic trade when participating in a market. Oliver E. Williamson defines transaction costs as the costs of running an economic system of companies, and unlike produ ...

, with wide-ranging beneficial effects. In particular, he predicted that

information market Although information has been bought and sold since ancient times, the idea of an information marketplace is relatively recent. The nature of such markets is still evolving, which complicates development of sustainable business models. However, ...

s would reduce the need for redundant employees at different organizations, so that companies would become smaller and more efficient, relying on each other as external sources of expertise. He also expected revolutionary

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

changes as the markets became widely adopted. The AMIX platform was accessed via dial-up and client PC software written in C. The project originated long before the widespread deployment of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, so the challenge of creating the market was compounded by the technical difficulty of creating the network on which it would run. AMIX developed the early mechanics of

reputation system Reputation systems are programs or algorithms that allow users to rate each other in online communities in order to build trust through reputation. Some common uses of these systems can be found on E-commerce websites such as eBay, Amazon.com, and ...

payment processing A payment processor is a system that enables financial transactions, commonly employed by a merchant, to handle transactions with customers from various channels such as credit cards and debit cards or bank accounts. They are usually broken do ...

, online dispute resolution, as well

smart contract A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the re ...

s. AMIX had markets for information in primarily technical or business-related fields: on products, technologies, companies and industries, market research reports, and software (including

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

). Services offered included consulting, editing, writing, and information brokering. Each product offered was priced between $1 and $500, and consulting engagements could be made for amounts up to $2000. AMIX would take a 30% intermediation fee, but did not prohibit private sales. AMIX shared office space with Xanadu, both part of

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered ...

acquired 80% of the company in 1988 and funded it until shortly after Phil Salin died in December 1991. Among early adopters, the computer industry itself became the source of many early markets such as a network for the exchange of

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pro ...

computer code. AMIX left Autodesk and cut staff in August/September 1992Jonathan Weisman, "AMIX Cuts Staff in the Wake of Leaving Parent Company", The Business Journal--San Jose, Sep. 7, 1992. and later closed its doors.

References

{{reflist * "The market - electronic online market", RELease 1.0, June 21, 1993 Computer network organizations Economic efficiency