The Ingenesist Project

The Mastery of Time

On September 4, 2010

When I was in Music School, I learned some very important things about Time.

As a drummer / percussionist the mastery of time is more important than even the instrument itself. My instructor would place a metronome in front of me and ask me to clap my hands to the beep. If he could hear any part of the beep through my clap, I failed.

The expectation was that I must mask every beep entirely at any tempo – indefinitely and seemingly without effort. The truism is that if the instructor could not hear the beep, then neither could I. True mastery of time means that the metronome must become irrelevant.

I struggled with this challenge for an incredible amount of hours over many many months practicing this seemingly simple exercise. One day, my instructor said “it’s not about knowing where the beep is, it is about creating the space where the beep is not”. In other words: understand the space between the beeps – the emptiness, the void, the silence – and let that become the basis of your musical expression.

From then on – I could nail the beep.

When we listen to music, we derive value from the transformation of one beat to the next and the transformation of one bar to the next, one phrase to the next, and one section to the next, etc. Value is what gets created between our actions – but without actions, there is nothing to contain that value.

Social currencies resemble this dynamic in many ways. While money marks the metronome’s beep, the creative expression happens somewhere between the money – the emptiness, the void, the silence. Let this become the basis of human economic expression, not the beep itself. Value is what gets created between our actions – let’s capture it there. The true mastery of time means that the metronome must become irrelevant.

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What’s Your Cut of the $5 Trillion Knowledge Economy?

By Admin

On September 3, 2010

In General Information

People accumulate a wealth of knowledge in their lives as they pass from project to project and industry to industry. Each of our social, creative, and intellectual pursuits and exposures combines to form the person who we are and the contribution to society that we represent.

Your knowledge and experience also helps others predict what preferences you may have and what decisions you may make. Corporations, advertisers, banks, insurance companies, and politicians all want to know this and they will go to extreme and expensive measures to get it – why not just sell it to them?

Peace sells, but who’s buying?

Management of companies, little league teams, Rotary Clubs, even raising a family, is extremely valuable knowledge to a wide variety of situations. Civic service, spirituality, military service, and philanthropy provide a basis for a host of knowledge attributes. Academic accomplishment, physical achievement, artistic expression, manual dexterity, and whole body coordination provides great insight to the application of all knowledge. Physical challenges, grief, personal struggles, and the experience of injustice further add to the wealth of knowledge one accumulates in a lifetime.

Every person is unique with a different set of knowledge than any other; therefore, everyone has something to offer to someone else. Each person’s combination of formal and informal education is valuable in it’s uniqueness. With the proper system and incentives in place, trillions of dollars are on the table to bid for access to your knowledge.

The Den of Thieves:

The resumes that we post on Monster.com are woefully inadequate and so heavily gamed that predictive utility related to your future decisions and innovative capacity is severely compromised.

The credit score also measures past behavior by tracking negative events; many of which are outside the control of the subject such as a layoff, fraud, medical emergencies, etc. Again, the credit score is quite useless as a predictor of future decisions and innovative capacity.

Now we have Social Media and the mad scramble to be visible in social media space. The scourge of marketers, spammers, and fraudsters are close behind chasing your information that they are all too happy to sell to the aforementioned “clients”.

Take a Step Back … and get a grip

We are talking about your information that describes your knowledge attributes which predicts your preferences, your future decisions, and your innovation. Yet complete industries exist to collect it from you for free, organize it, and sell it to others for a great deal of money. There are 5000 job boards collecting resumes, 300 Million credit scores being securitized by Wall Street, and 12,000 social media sites aggregating your creative content, relationships, and knowledge attributes.

Join The Ingenesist Project:

The Ingenesist Project specifies a system where your knowledge attributes are expressed in a packet of code that you control, distribute, regulate, withhold and track as you wish.

The result is that you will be paid to learn, to know, to practice, and to participate in life as you wish. It becomes in your best economic interest to produce exactly what you are best at, and have a talent for producing. It will be in the best interest of corporations, marketers, Wall Street, insurance companies, and Politicians to support you in these pursuits so they can “farm” the knowledge today that will buy their products tomorrow.

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An Economic Paradigm Breaks Down

By Admin

On September 2, 2010

In General Information

Land, labor, and capital are no longer effective proxies for human productivity, creativity and intellect – end of story. We need to stop talking about social media as if Monetization is some kind of mystery.

An Economic Paradigm Breaks Down

The road to monetization is not paved upon on the roadmap of the industrial revolution. Something new needs to happen, we’ve got to move on:

From Wikipedia:

Innovation economics is a growing economic theory that emphasizes entrepreneurship and innovation. Innovation economics is based on two fundamental tenets: that the central goal of economic policy should be to spur higher productivitythrough greater innovation, and that markets relying on input resources and price signals alone will not always be as effective in spurring higher productivity, and thereby economic growth.

This is in contrast to the two other conventional economic doctrines, neoclassical economics and Keynesian economics.

Theory:

Innovation economists believe that what primarily drives economic growth in today’s knowledge-based economy is not capital accumulation, as claimed by neoclassicalism asserts, but innovative capacity spurred by appropriable knowledge and technological externalities. Economics growth in innovation economics is the end-product of knowledge (tacit vs. codified); regimes and policies allowing for entrepreneurship and innovation (i.e., R&D expenditures, permits, licenses); technologicalspillovers and externalities between collaborative firms; and systems of innovation that create innovative environments (i.e., clusters, agglomerations, metropolitan areas).^[2]^[3]

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The True Value Calculation

By Admin

On September 1, 2010

In General Information

In case anyone is wondering if Social media can drive Social Priorities against Wall Street Priorities, they need not look any further than the cover of the New York Times. Here is a story from the August 31st edition about banks that step away from no-brainer money making business venture because of the social risks to their reputations and therefore, their bottom line.

It is obvious that new sources of energy will be hugely lucrative in the future – except when blowing up pristine Appalachian mountain tops or releasing vast CO2 emissions cracking oil from Canadian sands – both perfectly legal enterprises.

In the past, the struggle between those in favor and those opposed to, say, a coal extraction project played out largely in private and was heavily biased toward those with the deepest pockets. In the past, the developers had an advantage of vast money reserves to wage legal battles, political wrangling, and public relations campaigns against the lowly community action members. Now, this fountain of money may dry up in the future if banks step away, politicians become wary, and the public becomes increasingly informed of the true value of all alternatives.

“We’re taking a much closer look at a much broader variety of issues, not all of which are captured under state and local laws,” said Stephanie Rico, a spokeswoman for the environmental affairs group at Wells Fargo.

These dynamics are converging on something called a “True Value” Calculation. The True Value Calculation is the expanded ROI of a business venture which includes the positive and negative impacts on a much wider body of stakeholders in the sum total of viability. In the very near future, we may find that the True Value Calculation will become the rational basis of our democracy as social media aspires to the role of social vetting mechanism and politicians become increasingly irrelevant to anyone but each other.

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Intellectual Property In the Cloud

By Admin

On August 31, 2010

In General Information

The Patent system is slow, static, and expensive. Sure it’s great for corporations and wealthy institutions, but what about the rest of us? How do we get paid for our intellectual property? We make rapid fire decisions every day that can make or break markets – who’s got time to patent?

Intellectual Property In the Cloud

Or maybe the last thing that Wall Street wants is for Engineers, Architects, designers, and creative people to get “royalties” on their work. Wall Street is quite happy collecting the royalties of the creative people in America – those people who actually produce something real and tangible. Social media is a social contract and Intellectual Property is our tangible currency. Hello.

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The Definition Of Innovation Must Change

By Admin

On August 30, 2010

In General Information

Innovation is currently defined as “A new idea that has a favorable economic outcome”. The problem is that nobody can solve one equation with two unknowns, i.e., what’s a new idea? and what’s the economic outcome? By this definition, you can only identify innovation after it has occurred. So, it’s not very useful – in fact, it is a tragic definition and it must be scrapped immediately.

The trick is to identify the new ideas and direct them to the appropriate economic outcome, not the other way around as many companies and agencies try to do. Most good ideas can’t find a place to be profitable in a silo, so they are scrapped. This is not the fault of talent or the idea, but invariably both are lost.

The existing definition of innovation is insufficient for use as a way to identify innovation in the present. There is no way to build an innovation economy upon a flawed definition and unpredictable value of innovative activity. This new interpretation will allow innovation to properly behave like a financial instrument.

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An IPO For Humanity

By Admin

On August 26, 2010

In General Information

The term IPO conjures images of empire-making where a hot young company with a great product offers pieces of its future-self for sale to the public as a means of raising money without incurring debt. The money is then used to create the next titan whose new jolt of growth is shared with all who participated.

Today, every annual report to shareholders touts the great team of people whose social, creative, and intellectual capital make it all happen, the worthy and stoic investors whose vision drives sound decisions, and the legions of happy customers who make it all worthwhile.

Essentially, an IPO is people buying into the productivity of other people.

Yet, the IPO is a strict and complex legal and regulatory maneuver that establishes property rights on these small pieces of future productivity – represented by “stock” in the company.

There are underwriters (usually a bank), battalions of lawyers, the securities and exchanges commission (SEC), brokers, insurers, re-insurers, institutional investors, private investors, and retail investors. There is a full infrastructure supporting the facts of incorporation, disclosure, accounting, and proper management of internal “inside” information. And, of course, there is a media /PR campaign. All are integrated to keep the game fair, yet viable.

In the Age of Social Media

I could be wrong but it seems that such vast infrastructure appears a bit awkward if the end result is simply for people to buy into the productivity of other people. This happens everyday in Social Media. At some point, we really need to ask; why can’t an individual or a group of individuals raise money without incurring debt like corporations can?

In Social Media, people own and deploy their relationships, communities, motivation, their knowledge, creativity, intellect, mentorship, leadership, teamwork, their network, and even their ability to form corporations – people own their time. Social currency is backed by the scarcity of time and the availability of surplus knowledge.

All of the structural components of the financial system are appearing in an analogous form in social media; social vetting, social gaming, aggregation, influence, knowledge inventories, communities of knowledge assets, local social, global social, tag search, deep search, semantic search, stream of consciousness search, geolocation, mobile computing, multi-media, and many more innovations are being created and deployed everyday which literally serve the functions of banks, lawyers and legislation in an invisible economy.

The Ingenesist Project tries to string this all together with just enough specificity so that an alternate financial system will jump start itself and become both visible and available to everyone.

We’ll hold an IPO for Humanity

All of the infrastructure and the potential for people to produce things would remain intact regardless of what happens to the currency. Think about what would happen if all the dollar based money system evaporated. The only safe haven for the storage and exchange of value will be in people and their communities.

The only thing missing is a system that can articulate social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital instead of land labor and financial capital. This system can be built today.

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The Last Mile: Social Media Battleground

By Admin

On August 24, 2010

In General Information

Sure Bro…Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin are great for broadcasting across the Ocean, but how good are they for meeting your neighbors? As wonderful as all this global chatter appears, nothing tangible happens until the rubber meets the road.

Don’t Worry, Be Neighborly…

Nothing “Economic” can happen is Social Media until real people get together to build things. Sure, Marketers are trying their hardest to penetrate the last mile, but communities are trying to defend it too. This is the final battleground of Social Media. The end game must be as follows: Social priorities must ultimately drive Wall Street priorities – not the other way around. That is the only sustainable thesis for the next millennium.

The following video describes how the components of the next economic paradigm must act locally, but share globally. For anyone wondering what to do next or where the great opportunities are, think about building out the Last mile of Social Media.

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Google CEO Warns of Information Armageddon

By Admin

On August 21, 2010

In General Information

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns of the future consequences of social media and networks, and the vast amount of personal data that users put out there on the Web.

The article goes on to describe how Google is looking for what is next – that is, a world where the Google Icon no longer dominates the center of our lives. He warns future societies about creating a “future” by documenting the past. A future president, CEO, or just a job hunter can be haunted forever by the words and images that are becoming indelible in social media today. Mr. Schmidt insists that information is social currency.

Actually, I do not believe this to be true. I believe that is more likely than not a severe disruption is on the horizon which will deeply impact social media, Google, and Facebook, etc. This disruption will alter the course of the future that Google predicts.

All it would take is for humans to step up one more rung on the evolution ladder.

Think of it like this: a dollar is used to store and exchange value yet it is completely anonymous – you don’t know very much about it’s past or future – you do not need to know much about the exchange device in order to carry out the transaction.

Google is an information company, not a knowledge company. The next economic paradigm will be based on the creation, storage , and exchange of knowledge – not necessarily information. Knowledge exists only between the ears and once it is made tangible, I will not need to know where in the past that knowledge was excecuted – college keg parties included.

Neither Google or Facebook have indicated that they realize how value can be created, stored, and exchanged while maintaining anonymity if the public knowledge inventory were properly coded. Likewise, billions of people who use Social Media are dismally unaware that nobody else needs to posess any of their personal information to execute a knowledge transaction – seriously, noone. In fact, not only is relative anonymity a possibility, it is an imperative to market efficiency in Social Capitalism.

The “next Google” will, in fact, filter out irrelevant “information” as a means of creating time. Time is the real currency. For more on this please see http://ingenesist.com/introduction.

Google needs to figure out how to get the most worthy knowledge surplus connected to the most worthy knowledge deficit in the shortest amount of time. Information brokering alone can’t do this, so it’s Armageddon for whom?

***

Please Vote for The Ingenesist Project to present at SXSW 2011

The Ingenesist Project specifies an Innovation Economy built on a platform of social media as the next economic paradigm. 60 minute solo presentation in the advanced technical track. Your help is deeply appreciated. All comments welcome. Material based on video series here

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Please Vote for The Ingenesist Project; SXSW

By Admin

On August 18, 2010

In General Information

The Ingenesist Project has submitted the following presentation to the South By Southwest Conference in Austin Texas on March 2011. We sincerely encourage our readers to vote for this presentation. It promises to be hugely compelling, deeply controversial, and boldly disruptive. This is for a 60 minute solo presentation to the Advanced Technical Track – the competition is impressive. Voting ends Friday August 27, 2010

Please select the following link to vote

Thank you very much for your support

The Ingenesist Project

Description:

Today, we have one of the most extraordinary opportunities in human history playing out before our eyes. Social Capitalism is no longer merely a band-aid for an amoral Market Capitalism, it is a new form of Capitalism in it’s own right.

In the age of social media, many entrepreneurs no longer allocate land, labor, and financial capital as a primary means of production. Rather, they deploy social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital to the production of a vast amount of “value” that is stored and exchanged in communities. The objective of The Ingenesist Project is to make this value tangible outside the constructs of government and corporate interaction.

This presentation identifies the five essential components of Market Capitalism and demonstrates similar elements emerging in social media. It then specifies how these elements can be integrated to perform the essential analogous functions of financial institutions. Next, we specify three relatively simple social media applications that may create a new class of business plans enabling millions of social entrepreneurs worldwide. Finally, a new financial instrument is described which can be capitalized and securitized to form the basis of a fungible social currency to hedge the dollar.

The net result could create a condition where Wall Street priorities are subservient to social priorities rather than social priorities being subservient to Wall Street priorities.

Questions Answered

What can replace market capitalism when it finally runs out of steam?
What exactly are people producing when they engage in Social Media and why does it create value?
What characteristics must a social currency have in order to be fully convertible or even a replacement for the dollar?
What is a knowledge inventory, how should it be formed, and why should every community have one?
What would be a powerful strategic plan for the Internet in the absence of one today?

[Level Advanced Category Entrepreneurism / Monetization Tags monetization, Social Capitalism, Social Currency Type Solo Event Interactive 2011]

The presentation will mirror some content found in the following video series

Photo credit:

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Social Capitalism and The Innovation Bond

By Admin

On August 18, 2010

In General Information

We know the Venture Capitalists look for returns of 1000% on their investments. We also know that Corporate innovation (as reflected by the S&P 500) enjoys a long term median return rate of about 9-10%

It follows to reason that all of the innovation that could return somewhere between 10% and 1000% goes largely un-capitalized. This does not mean that the innovation does not exist – it only means that it is invisible to any existing financial system, it is accounted as “intangible” – or worse, it shows up as a liability.

Parents caring for children, Children caring for elderly parents, Mentors educating proteges, groups of people organizing, sharing knowledge, and growing families – all increase the net productivity of society. Legions of people creating options and opportunities for themselves and each other in communities, social media, and extended networks – all increase the value stored in communities. Billions of people-hours inventing better ways to do the things that they do, compensating for the shortcomings of governments and corporations – all of this innovation falls into the range between 10% and 1000% ROI, yet, remains invisible and un-capitalized.

Social media as a whole is growing at well over 200% per year where every single interaction creates incremental multiples of social value – otherwise people would not do it (to say that people are irrational is to say that markets are irrational). Where is all that value going? Meanwhile, in the current Global financial debt crisis, institutions that hold huge amounts of cash are scouring the globe for pockets of low-risk productivity as sanctuary from volatile financial markets.

Now, suppose that an innovation bond were to come along which produces a risk adjusted return of, say, 15%. This means that human productivity is being reliably increased somewhere in a community by only 15% per year. If this were the case across a broad sector of inter-related communities where productivity were denominated in a fungible currency, investors would seek refuge in the Innovation Bond. If the Innovation Bond returned say, 20% or more – all the money in the world may drop the debt based currency in favor of the innovation based currency by seeking refuge in innovation bonds. Yes, I said it – “all the money in the world”. Now, get over it.

Proceeds would be distributed to organized communities whose knowledge inventory is formatted like a financial instrument in the form of entrepreneurship. Proceeds would go to communities where the probability of success is known long before the bets are made in the form of Cheap Venture Capital. Proceeds would go to communities where productivity is defined by an un-corruptible algorithm through decreased volatility coefficients. Proceeds would go to communities where assets are valued accurately by true supply and true demand. Proceeds would go to less developed communities with the highest social arbitrage potential rather than those with the most powerful marketers and lobbyists. Most importantly, money would go to corporations that adopt the innovation economy. The stronger the institutions of Social Capital become, the greater the value of an innovation bond. New production of goods and services would reflect these social priorities in the True Value Game.

In effect, Social Priorities will drive Wall Street priorities instead of Wall Street priorities driving Social Priorities – that is Social Capitalism

In the future, there will be only one sustainable investment left – people, communities, and their natural willingness and ability to be productive with their time. The rest is history.

***

Material based on video series here

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Social Currency and Time

By Admin

On August 16, 2010

In General Information

I recently published a video suggesting that Social currency is backed by Time as part of my series on Social Capitalism. I made the argument that time is the true scarce commodity because it is not easy to debase, counterfeit, or forge; it is therefore the perfect basis for a currency.

Still, a few people always come back with the idea that influence, reputation, game tokens, tweets and more recently “checking in” (a la Foursquare), are all social currencies – citing the experts, of course.

There are several problems with this. First, none are really scarce – I can find an honest person anywhere. None are actually commodities because nobody is deploying the identical influence as any another person.

The idea that “currency” as the storage and exchange of value is also insufficient – a glass of water stores value as does a digital camera or a even a goat. Nobody in Silicon Valley is twittering feverishly about the latest surprise goat farm acquisition.

Indeed influence and reputation are valuable and may act like a financial Instrument but until the purveyors come out and actually describe it as such, I need to call them on their choice of words – and I have. A typical response is, “Well, uh, you know what I mean”. My response: “…And, uh, you DON’T know what you mean?”

Beanie babies, tulip bulbs, and CDOs were financial instruments too. Seriously kids, clarification is extremely important because the consequences of misconception, especially in this important emerging subject area, are tangible. Real people trying to make the wrong ideas real actionable are wasting their real precious time.

Here is what they mean to say:

a Derivative is something whose value is derived from the value of something else. So when we talk about influence, the value of a person’s influence can be derived from the value of many things. If you are in a burning building, the influence of the firefighter is different than an endorsement from Shaq, yet both may be valuable at different times.

The premise of my argument is that the basis of all currency is in Time. Time is limited for everyone. A good reputation saves people time. The right influence applied in the right places at the right time saves people time. Passion, purpose, productivity and persistence are measures of how someone spends their time. Checking in at the trendy hotspot on foursquare is an expression and commitment of time. Co-location is a function of place and time. Like love, the value of time is in the eyes of the beholder. Valuable yes, currency, no.

Talk about how your product lives in time and you’ll earn all the social currency that it’s worth – not the other way around.

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The Next Google

By Admin

On July 30, 2010

In General Information

Everyone wants to know what “The Next Google” is. From WIKiD Tools, the answer should be obvious: Google is an information company. Their stated objective is to organize the World’s information. The next element up the human development ladder from the Information Economics rung is Knowledge Economics rung. Therefore, the next “Google” will deploy technology that can organize the World’s knowledge.

A State of Mind

Unfortunately, knowledge can only exist inside the minds of people, so consequently, “The Next Google” must also engage in the messy task of organizing the World’s people as well as the knowledge contained in each one of them. Not an easy task in dog-eat-dog Global Market Capitalism.

The Facebookie

At first, it seems that Facebook may be converging on this – they are certainly trying. The problem with Facebook’s approach is that they continue to insist that Market Capitalism is valid (obviously preparing for the killer IPO) when they should be pioneering the hedge fund called “Social Capitalism”. Facebook continues to bank on the suggestion that people really really want to share their personal details and will tolerate invasion by armies of anonymous data miners in order to do so. Facebook’s best shot may be for one of their gaming currencies to become a black market currency so that when the dollar collapses, people would gladly sell their privacy in exchange for food.

Since a gaming currency can only be created by people performing frivolous tasks, at best, gaming currencies – phenomenal growth or not – are no more robust than the dollars it seeks to displace. Sustainability? Uh, no.

Anonymity rules

Think about it this way. Real human productivity is stored in a dollar bill; otherwise nobody would “work” for it. The recipient does not know or care if the dollar bill was last used by someone to buy cigarettes or Girl Scout cookies. The dollar bill is completely anonymous. Likewise, value is stored in the brains of every living person – there is no need to know who they are until the transaction is exercised and profits are distributed. Everything else is unnecessary invasion of privacy and certainly not something to build a currency around let alone the next economic paradigm. The Next Google will treat people like the currency, not ‘like’ the Girls Scout Cookies.

The “Next Google” will be a percentile search engine that will return odds – or probabilities – based on an anonymized public knowledge inventory. Search results will predict the likelihood that any combination of knowledge assets can produce or execute any combination of products or services at a known cost based on the supply and demand for those known knowledge assets. End of mystery.

Everyone can now make their bets and play their games with real productivity because, in effect, the percentile search engine will match most worthy knowledge deficit with most worthy knowledge surplus and throw the rest of it in the trash bin.

The only thing people want to know is what they want to know, and nothing else. Now that’s what real productivity is made of, that is what real money is made of.

Please Vote for The Ingenesist Project to present at SXSW 2011

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Social Capitalism; The Scarce Resource is Time.

By Admin

On July 29, 2010

In General Information

The difference between market Capitalism and Social Capitalism is that factors of production are reversed. In Social Capitalism, creative capital, intellectual capital, and social capital are the “tangibles” while land, labor, capital become the “intangibles”.

But the currency for social capitalism must still represent productivity – otherwise nobody would “work” for it. Productivity is defined as “all the stuff we can make within a certain period of time“. Market capitalism is built on “stuff” while Social Capital is built on “Time”. Waste stuff and you’ll lose money. Waste time and you’ll lose social currency. Every living person is allocated a certain amount of time on Earth. Time is impossible to forge, debase, or otherwise counterfeit – unless stolen from someone else – as such, Time makes an excellent currency.

What is the ROI on Land, Labor, and Capital in Social Capitalism? ROI is wholly dependent on the knowledge assets deployed upon that Land, Labor, or Capital.

So what exactly is the underlying asset that supports Social Currency?

WIKiD Tools introduced the idea that everything we produce will ultimately come as a result of transforming data into information, or transforming information into knowledge, or transforming knowledge into innovation, or transforming innovation into wisdom. We can articulate a very powerful Equation to model productivity in Social Capitalism. This equation can be translated as follows:

Wisdom is proportional to the rate of change of innovation with respect to time. Innovation is proportional to the rate of change of knowledge with respect to time. Knowledge is proportional to the rate of change of information with respect to time. And Information is proportional to the rate of change of data with respect to time.

Note that in each case, the “rate of change” (hence, time) is the underlying asset.

The creation of Social Currency:

Sounds complicated? Well, it happens every day in every city where a person sees an important issue and convenes a conference where they invite relevant speakers and guests into the discussion. It happens when a manager notices people talking about something important to them and incorporates it into their job description. It happens when a teacher helps a student to the next level. It happens when someone spends some of their time so that you can enjoy more of yours. It happens with stay at home moms. It happens with volunteerism. It’s created by mentors, parents, neighbors, civil servants, and everyday citizens. It is created in Communities, not factories. It is created by time.

***

Please Vote for The Ingenesist Project to present at SXSW 2011

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Bizarro Capitalism

By Admin

On July 27, 2010

In General Information

In the 1960’s Superman comics, Bizarro World was a place where everything was the opposite as Normal World. On the planet Htrae (Earth spelled backwards) lives Bizarro Jimmy Olsen, a Bizarro Lois Lane, Bizarro Superman, etc. Of course, Normal World is the standard bearer for all that is great and good to the reader.

Normal Capitalism:

In the study of Normal Economics, currency always represent productivity – otherwise nobody would “work” for it. Productivity is defined as: all the stuff we can make within a certain period of time. We measure it with expressions like “dollars per hour”, “miles per hour”, “5% compounded annually”, board-feet per minute, etc.

Abnormal Capitalism:

Suppose we were to describe a Bizarro currency as: All the Time that can be produced within a certain amount of stuff.

After all, every living person is allocated a certain amount of time on Bizarro World. Time is a scarce resource whose value is determined by supply and demand. Time is not easily forged, debased, or counterfeited. It makes for a perfect Bizarro currency. Of Course the Bizarro Currency would be called the Rallod (Dollar spelled backwards).

Bizarro Capitalism:

In Normal Economics, land, labor, and financial capital are the factors of production called “Tangibles” while social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are called “Intangibles”. By contrast, in Bizarro Economy, social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are Tangibles while land, labor, and financial capital are the Intangible factors of production.

Of course in Bizarro World, it takes rallods to make rallods. So if you want to get rich, you need to invest your time in one of two things: Saving time for other people, or reducing the amount of stuff they need to consume on their time.

Likewise, in a Normal Banking, an entrepreneur assumes that they have the Knowledge to execute a business plan and they borrow the money. In Bizarro Bank, the Entrepreneur assumes that they have the money to execute a business plan and they borrow the knowledge.

In Normal World, money is backed by debt. In Bizarro World, money is backed by innovation.

What if we got it backwards?

Probably the most immediate concern is whether the Rallod can hedge the Dollar, or will the two planets collide?

Material based on video series here

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Social Capitalism: Meet The New Intangibles

By Admin

On July 26, 2010

In General Information

Today, land, labor, and capital make up the “Tangible” assets allocated by entrepreneurs in the production of all products and service. Meanwhile, Social Capital, Creative Capital, and Intellectual Capital of people and communities are called “Intangible Assets” on the corporate balance sheet.

As soon as you leave the Corporation, this condition reverses. What if the new generation of corporations were built on this reversal?

Suppose it is already happening.

The next economic paradigm will be built on Social Media as soon as people start getting together to build things. Social Capital, Creative Capital and intellectual capital will be allocated by entrepreneurs in the production of all products and services. Meanwhile land, labor, and capital will be the intangible assets.

This may not be so far out.

LAND: with Social media, Mobile internet, geolocation applications, mobile applications, and speed blogging – most activity is independent of physical land. Instead, Public “land” or private “land” behave as the intangible component where people assemble and produce things.

LABOR: no longer means that two physical parts are assembled into a machine. Instead two ideas are assembled into a third idea and redeployed as data, information, knowledge, innovation or wisdom.

CAPITAL: Seriously; what exactly is Capital these days except the thing that banks play with and politicians argue about? Capital is created from debt. The continuation of Capital Markets as we know them exists more as the absence of a reasonable alternative than an actual proxy for true value or productivity.

Instead; 500 Million people flock to Facebook, Twitter, Google, Linkedin, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc., to collect options and store social value. Uhm…Why?

The next phase for social media will become user generated productivity. That is when people get together outside the construct of government and corporations to build something. If we are lucky, this transition will happen before we are forced to “rebuild” something.

***

The Ingenesist Project specifies an Innovation Economy built on a platform of social media as the next economic paradigm. Material based on video series here

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What is Social Capitalism?

By Admin

On July 19, 2010

In General Information

July 8, 2014 Update:

Wikipedia defines Capitalism as an “economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled”.

Factors of Production (from classical economics) are presumed to be some proxy for land, labor, and capital. Suppose, however, the factors of production for modern society were something like “Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and Creative Capital” of people and their relationships? After all, these are the assets that are deployed in order to produce the proverbial basket of goods upon which most currencies are compared.

Since these factors of production exist between the ears of each individual person, they are, by definition “privately controlled” and readily exchanged among other people in social networks. If the US Supreme Court can rule that Corporations are people, then it is equally valid that people are corporations. Therefore, Social Capitalism refers to the economic and social system in which the means of production are social, creative, and intellectual assets.

In order for Social Capitalism to become the dominant form of social organization, quite literally, society must reorganize itself to trade “abundant intangibles instead of scarce tangibles”. Then, all the decentralized innovations can integrate. The following video describes a system for reorganizing society so that the new economic paradigm; called Social Capitalism, may emerge.

Reorganizing For The Era Of Social Capitalism

Social Capitalism is similar to Material Capitalism with the exception that society would trade in abundant intangibles instead of scarce tangibles….and, everything changes.

***

The Article below is from 2010 – more than 4 years ago – when Social Capitalism was just beginning to enter the lexicon of the social media practitioners. This article below quotes the Wikipedia Article on “Social Capitalism”. That article has since been removed by Wikipedia for failure to be a real -ism; I suppose. That is, Wikipedia does not yet recognize the movement as a real form of Social Organization. It is interesting, if not historic, to watch the progress of a social movement from its tenuous inception:

The Adaptive Cycle: Holling, C. S. 1986. Resilience of ecosystems;

Social capitalism is an old idea taking on an new form in the age of social media where social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are deployed outside the construct of the prevailing corporations or governments.

Throughout human history, societies have reorganized themselves in response to tyranny, innovation, environment, new wisdom, etc. I believe this to be the root of what Social Capitalism is, and therefore, how it should be defined.

In The Shadows:

The dominant definition of “Social Capitalism” from Wikipedia reflects a social cause cast against the backdrop of market capitalism. This definition acknowledges that economies work better when everyone participates; specifically, the so-called tier 1 and tier 2 people. Tier 1 individuals have steady financial incomes that allow them to function without private or government support. Tier 2 individuals cannot meet the prevailing standard of living and rely on private or government support. Therefore the prevailing definition of Social Capitalism often refers to efforts to bolster tier 2 persons as a means of reinforcing the economy for everyone.

Conflict:

There is an inherent conflict where tier 1 is held responsible to support tier 2 as a means of protecting their tier 1 status. Traditionally tier 2 included poor families dependent on food stamps; children who depend on public education; elderly people who are no longer able to work, and low-income criminals who require police intervention, etc.

Ideally, getting more people from tier 2 into tier 1 is the desirable objective. Indeed political division is marked by the theories and practices on how exactly that objective would best be accomplished.

A worst case:

What happens when tier 2 is simply forgotten; they are simply allowed to fail in the mainstream economy? What if the government becomes too weak to bolster their economic prospects? What happens when a critical mass of tier 1 people involuntarily enter the tier 2 environment bringing along their substantial knowledge inventory. They are otherwise very productive people that had been laid-off, outsourced, underemployed, or otherwise marginalized.

The Special Case:

What happens when Tier 2 deploy new technologies that responding to their priorities, not necessarily Wall Street priorities. What happens when tier 2 people trade a social “currency” among themselves? What happens when tier 2 swells to a size and scope that they are able to bear broad political and economic influence. Many great human struggles emerged from under the hand of a Tier 1 constraint using their own manner to store and exchange value (currency) represented by their own knowledge inventory and productivity. Why would that not happen internally in American Society?

Structural Capitalism:

Social Capitalism is where factors of production in an economy are purely human and technological and less structural:. Specifically, social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital deployed outside the construct of the prevailing corporations or governments. Maybe it should be called “structural capitalism” because that is what is actually changing. We are at an extraordinary time in history where an extraordinary structural reorganization is taking place.

That’s Social Capitalism as it’s always been.

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The Next Great Leap for Social Capitalism

By Admin

On July 17, 2010

In General Information

The Knowledge inventory will become the most important element of Social Capitalism. Today, knowledge is largely sequestered behind the walls of corporation in the form of titles, skill codes, resumes, job descriptions, certifications, and college degrees. In order to predict the future, we point to the things that we have done in the past.

2nd Place is 1st Loser

10% of the country is unemployed and less than 10% are fully actualized in their profession. Competitive forces drive the hiring manager. The consequences of all business decisions eventually lead to win-or-lose market scenarios. People compete with each other for promotions, the boss’s time, the corner office, or just staying off the unemployment line. That is the only future anyone can truly predict based on the past. It’s easier to predict the loser than the winner – so that’s what happens.

Social media is very different.

People are organizing themselves in a new form outside the construct of the corporation. Linkedin aggregates intellectual capital, Facebook aggregates social capital, and You Tube aggregates creative capital. Millions of blogs, Twitter, and a generation of search engines reassemble all these parts in ways that create social value. People are not competing with each other, instead, they live on a bell curve. They are seeking cooperation and collaboration. People use “like” buttons, tweet counts, and analytic data to “value” the quantity and quality of another person’s knowledge. There are fewer losers, hence more winners, because there are a greater number of markets – not just one corporation. Everyone is a corporation.

No Governance, no anarchy, no problem

Since social media is outside the construct of a corporation, there is no governance. There are lots of people trying to control only to experience diminishing returns. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook must tread extremely carefully on the landscape of public opinion precisely because of their dominance. People use Facebook to attack Facebook, PowerPoint to attack Microsoft, YouTube to attack Google, and Twitter to attack everyone. Retribution would be suicide.

The Last Mile of Social Media

Now, geo-location services are filling in the Last Mile of Social Media where communities will form to produce things that are tangible and real. As a result, there is a sharp increase of interest in a form of currency that can represent this social value. Some of this is because the dollar is losing its ability to represent people’s productivity. So they engage a different economic system.

Social Productivity

The next great leap in Social Media will happen when people reorganize themselves in an external knowledge inventory, outside of corporations, and segmented in high granularity of knowledge assets in close proximity to each other. Entrepreneurs can then assemble people in unique, efficient, and productive ways. People will then build things for profit using a new currency – a new social currency.

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War Is A Social Agreement

By Admin

On July 15, 2010

In General Information

I often make the point that a currency is simply a social agreement. People need to agree that a monetary unit represents their productivity so that they will use it to trade their productivity with the productivity of another person. The test question for any so-called currency (coined by Jay Deragon) is: “Yeah, but can you buy groceries with it?”

I am now seeing a SHARP increase in the social interest for an alternate currency to the dollar. The dollar does represent productivity – albeit future productivity in the form of debt – that’s why it is still exchanged for the work that we do. My suspicion however is that the social agreement regarding the dollar is, in fact, increasingly becoming a social disagreement.

People have a deep seated unease with what the dollar is and what the dollar represents. To escape the dollar is to escape a tangle of influence that impacts everything we say, do, and think about ourselves and about each other. It almost seems that to escape the dollar is to escape ourselves.

That’s just the idea that came to me after watching this video about a soldier questioning the occupations. He is saying something very interesting:

War is simply the soldier’s willingness to fight it. It is a social agreement.

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Stock Harmony; Exchange of Social Value

By Admin

On July 14, 2010

In General Information

I came across an interesting business model for the deployment of a social currency. Stock Harmony, quite simply, sells itself to interesting people. Those people then interact with each other adding social value to Stock Harmony. The more social value is created, the more the original shares are worth. The more the shares are worth, the more interesting people will join further increasing the value of the shares. From that position to deploy social value, Stock Harmony can amplify the voice for social priorities over Wall Street priorities, effectively re-allocating factors of production.

Actually, the same thing happens all the time in typical social circles, networks, affinity groups, and political action committees. However, I am not certain that anyone has yet been successful (ethically) in using social circles as a way to store and exchange value. That is why Stock Harmony is interesting.

It sounds so simple, right? Well, … not really….

It’s all about structure. The way that a process or system is structured determines how people interact with it. Structure also determines how governments, markets, laws, politics, and even public opinion interact with the process or system as well. Interestingly, the structure of facts often keeps secrets tight. In short, structure shapes human behavior and human behavior shapes structure.

Companies sell shares to raise money. Per SEC regulations, the “sale of shares” must comply with certain disclosure and accounting standards. The SEC regulates companies in the sale of shares as a means to safeguard investors. In other words, it is illegal to sell shares without government oversight.

Raising Money

The possibility that anyone can sell shares in themselves or their private enterprise as a means of raising money is, by default, relegated to the banking system. A person essentially sells shares on their productive time on Earth to buy a house, a car, or a business, etc. The structure begins to crumble when the employment contracts begin to crumble. As people leave the old system, they take their value with them and tend to create new ones. This is where Stock Harmony treads.

What if the shares are issued in non-dollar denominations?

Today we see many non-dollar denominated structures arising apparently at the same rate that the financial system is failing. Google secretly invests 100M in Zynga – a gaming company with a common gaming currency. Facebook established a system of currency-like Credits. Groupons deploy social currency to incite monetary discounts, etc, and PayPal stands ready for the next killer currency app. Any of these transaction systems are poised to hold a black market currency if fiat currencies fail. If the fiat currencies fail to recover, the black market becomes a gray market and ultimately a legitimate market. So, there is a lot at stake.

Currency must act as a proxy for human productivity;

So this is what makes Stock Harmony interesting. The successful “next currency” will be the one which best represents human productivity. Only then will someone be willing to trade their productivity for that of another person using a currency note as an exchange mechanism. This is where other alternate currencies fall apart and where Stock Harmony shows greater strength. After all – what would you rather accept in exchange for your services – Farmville gaming currency or a currency backed by the harmony and productivity of real people in real community?

It will all come down to structure.

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Alternate Currencies Ending the Monopoly on Money

By Admin

On July 9, 2010

In General Information

Hundreds of community currencies are forming across the globe. Gaming currencies are jumping back into reality. Europeans communities are calling for the authority to print their own money arguing that the fractional reserve system is like trying to recover from a war by waging more war (a novel thought).

Many people doubt that the dollar has more than a decade or so of steam left as the interest on debts mythically exceeds the total amount of money on Earth. Yet banks march on, heading straight for the cliff.

Governments are polarized against themselves to solve any problem – except by reducing services to the people. Do the math: Interest on debt can approach infinity while austerity measures can only approach zero. You don’t need religion to predict that outcome.

But isn’t this why Governments exists in the first place – to provide social services? Are politicians suggesting their own elimination? Of course not, so they issue press releases and have tea parties worth about as much as the photons they are broadcast on.

Meanwhile, corporate media is trying to dominate (and subdue) social media….ultimately, the end game will flip. This short video invites the status quo to look at what people are “doing and saying with their productivity”.

(editor’s note: The language here is generalized to reflect trend not to endorse any system of finance)

Alternate Currencies Ending the Monopoly on Money

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The Secret Weapon of Social Capitalism

By Admin

On July 9, 2010

In General Information

It should be fairly obvious that there are some extreme financial anomalies on the Global Horizon. That legendary, but long-in-the-tooth social system affectionately known as Market Capitalism, is up against the ropes as the debt monster gobbles up everything in it’s path faster than any austerity measures can ever keep pace. Take note that debt can reach infinity but austerity measures can only reach zero … you can do the math on a postage stamp. If there ever was a need for a secret weapon, it is now.

The following 4-minute story-board video is part 3 to the series called “Will Social Capitalism Replace Market Capitalism?“. The video introduces an important futures methodology and algorithm called WIKiD Tools for the management of Social Capitalism. The next few videos will define WIKiD tools more fully while introducing a segment called “The Knowledge Inventory”. Next, the SC>MC series will lay out scenarios for the capitalization and securitization of knowledge assets. Finally, we’ll revisit the Airplane Game to wrap it all up. In other words, within the next few weeks, I should have published a fairly explicit set of functional specification for the next economic paradigm answering the question “What comes after Market Capitalism?”

Hold on to your hats and thank you for joining us on this wild ride.

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Song For The Sea

By Admin

On July 7, 2010

In General Information

I recently received an email from a major on-line publication collecting “Letters To The Gulf”. I wondered, What would the Gulf Say to Us? That question sounded familiar so I dug through some old video tapes looking for that long-lost club gig from my days in the Hollywood Rock Band Circuit back in the Late 1980’s.

This piece is called Song For the Sea and it was written shortly after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and amid controversy over illegal long net fishing practices. Lance McCormick is playing Bass and Keys, I am on Drums, and Phil Felicia is on vox and axe. It is pretty interesting how timeless this theme is.

Interesting features:

Phil uses a can of Tuna as a slide to make the sound of expiring whales and sea life. His guitar solo is an enactment of a tuna fish thrashing in it’s final moments of life. I remember that I could barely contain myself, it was so funny to watch – I almost fell off my seat in hysterics every time Phil did the part – but it was powerful imagery especially in later shows after we worked out the shtick a little better. I think we all took stabs at the lyrics. Keep in mind that this was 20+ years ago in Hollywood California – the objective was to be offensive, shocking and controversial so don’t get too riled up over our choice of words. On the other hand, they do contain an interesting historical perspective from a bunch of kids (transcribed below) in the late 80’s. The band was called “Rage In Eden”, affectionately named after Gulf War 1

So here is a blast from the past in loving dedication to BP and the gang
***STRONG LANGUAGE ADVISORY***

Song For The Sea

Welcome to my Universe
Once the mighty sea
Turned dumping ground
for all the pigs to see

Now I’m left here in your waste
drowning in your own disgrace
(let’s do it)

Spilling Toxins in my Sea
My putrid flesh bears the stench
of your rotting soul

So I put it to you
Mr. Politician Man
Whatever Gave you the right
To come and punish my world

With your – (indiscernible) – high and low
All I live for in my life
Is just a paycheck to you

So I put it to you, Mr. Businessman
Whatever gave you the right to Punish my world

Dogs dig in my shores
Dollar Whores
I need you to taste the decay and waste
we sold you, yeah

So I put it to you, Mr. judgment man
What ever gave you the right
to punish my World.

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Social System Capitalism

By Admin

On July 6, 2010

In General Information

Whether we like it or not, we all live in and among various system; weather systems, social systems, management systems, monetary systems, transportation systems, etc. The easy way to identify a system is to simply remove one of it’s parts – if it fails, well, that WAS as a system.

You can own a perfectly good car, but if one tire is not filled with air, the entire car has NO SOCIAL VALUE. All the other pieces could be perfectly operational, the motor, transmission, brakes, etc. However, you can’t go to a wedding in it, you can’t go play golf in, you can’t even get to the bus stop in it; the car has no social value. Seems a little silly, but compressed air is part of our social system.

Suppose that you have a perfectly good social system and you remove the financial system. Will the social system fall apart? … Well, that’s an interesting question…after all, people will still have education, health, knowledge, ingenuity, empathy, community, productivity, infrastructure, and they will very likely get up in the morning and build things anyway.

Now, look at it the other way around. Suppose that you have a perfectly good financial system and you remove all of the people, does the financial system fall apart? Ridiculously, 100% yes it will fail, who will use money it if there is nobody here? The cows? Duh.

We cannot have a rational discussion about the market capitalist system without also having a rational discussion about the social capitalist system. Yet, Social Capitalism is barely defined. Social capitalism is hidden behind command and control corporate systems and “intangibles” accounting. Social Capitalism is constrained by invisible lines on a map; marginalized, taxed, oppressed and controlled by skin color, gender roles, marketing, politics, and conflict all in the name of my God and Country.

It is interesting to consider an invisible system designed to suppress a visible system that supports the invisible system (say that 3 times really fast….it sounds like someone letting the air out of the tires). The most obvious opportunity for the future is to stop letting the air out of the tires.

Luckily, social media is changing everything by acting as an alternative place for the exchange and storage of value. The weaker the financial system gets, the stronger social media systems will get; but not the other way around. Think about it like a system.

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An Economic Paradigm Breaks Down

From Wikipedia:

Theory:

Intellectual Property In the Cloud

The only thing that fits all of those criteria is ‘Time’

Reorganizing For The Era Of Social Capitalism