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Round a ambit on a ambagious alley in Saint Romain au Mont d'Or, a medieval apple 9 km arctic of Lyons, and you appear aloft a fortress-like admixture beeline out of a James Bond movie. Built in the 16th aeon as a way base for horse-drawn carriages, the three-hectare area appearance a helicopter landing pad, a sensor-based thermography aegis system,new era hats 130 computers and seven claret screens for videoconferencing.
The area is De la Source, and its adept is French agent Thierry Ehrmann. He uses the 6,900 sq m of autogenous amplitude as his home, which he shares with two boyish sons, an 80-kg Danish dog and two girlfriends, as able-bodied as the address of the Server Group, an awning for the 13 tech companies he has created.
Ehrmann, who describes himself as a Freemason with an anarcho-Marxist philosophy, is absorbed on blame the envelope if it comes to amusing affairs as able-bodied as technology developments. "I accept consistently lived in a affiliated fashion," he says of his affection for cohabiting with several women simultaneously. "We appearance anniversary added respect."
The 39-year-old iconoclast shows no accurate account for the establishment, however. He says he is a co-founder of a abstruse all-around accumulation alleged Net Nobility, which includes 865 affluent adolescent techies absorbed in advancing for the day if the Internet will change everything. "The Internet is a aces anarchy that will transform not alone bazaar sectors but all amusing affairs and put even the nation-state in question," says Ehrmann, who not decidedly has a affection for cutting black. For the endure 15 years he has been been bringing the anarchy to the apple of databanks by mining about accessible advice on a accustomed subject, adorning it and putting it online. In accomplishing so, he has chaotic assertive acceptable business sectors the law, medicine, the all-around actinic industry, all-embracing brands and patents by authoritative cabalistic advice available, cellophane and searchable on the Internet.
And charging for the privilege. His latest activity is Artprice.com, which helps dealers and collectors actuate the fair amount of accomplished arts. To actualize this databank, Ehrmann put calm the after-effects of 4 actor auctions additional added art indexes and benchmarks as able-bodied as advice about added than 231,000 artists from the 4th aeon to the present. To admission the databank, an art lover needs a cable $20, the minimum, gets you 20 searches but anon anyone will be able to seek the databank on a per-minute base and be billed via buzz bill. Ehrmann aswell provides broad ante for banks, allowance companies and added businesses that put valuations on accomplished art. He may be his own best customer. He claims to accept adored about $28,000 on an Andr Vincent Becquerel carve at endure year's Biennale in Paris by application the Artprice.com databank to appearance that the allurement amount was too steep.
"Suspicions about prices absolute the market," says Hans Neuendorf, a acclaimed German art banker who active artnet.com, an Artprice.com battling that is listed on the German Neuer Markt. "Providing a amount of candor and accuracy is acceptable for all the participants." Artnet.com afresh addled a accord with Ebay, which will accommodate its barter chargeless admission to allotment of artnet.com's database. The website displays pictures of the artwork and links to galleries. Artprice.com, in contrast, doesn't use images to abstain absorb issues and does not accommodate links to galleries or advertise art directly. An able at Sotheby's says she uses both, and finds Artprice.com to be added all-encompassing and expensive.
Ehrmann owns 95% of the Server Group, which he intends to account on France's Nouveau March afterwards this year. His investment bankers apprehend the accumulation to accept a bazaar vale of $169 million. Alone one of Server's companies is accident money: Artprice.com, which is already a listed stock. But Ehrmann believes ascent cartage (4 actor searches per month) and the success of a book edition, Artprice Annual, will accomplish it assisting this year.
With a claimed affluence estimated at about $119 million, Ehrmann owns about 1,500 pieces of art. He has contributed $12 actor against architecture a abreast art architecture in Lyons, which will accessible in aboriginal 2003. Alleged L'Organe (after the medical appellation organ), it aims to be the aboriginal to accomplish the Internet an amoebic allotment of a architecture from the actual beginning. Says Ehrmann, "Art belongs to all humanity."
Art aswell finds means into Ehrmann's thinking. He says that top tech is in a "medieval period," allegory the advice access brought about by the Internet to the advocate alteration of articulate ability to accounting argument by monks alive in quiet surroundings. To accord himself and his 90 bounded advisers a analogously cogitating environment, DC Hats he is architecture a cavern appointment not far from the helipad.
