Tag: Internet

A Better Way To Occupy Wall Street

On October 10, 2011

What if I told you that we could occupy Wall Street without actually camping out there? In case you have not noticed, Wall Street occupies your house without you ever seeing any suits milling around your driveway. So what’s the plan?

In the Age of The Internet, redistribution of wealth should not be a very difficult thing to do, yet the approach is surprisingly low-tech. Just look at the pictures; if this is going to be our approach, then we’re in deep trouble.

Here’s the trick. Wall Street is built on a foundation where the factors of production are land, labor, and capital. All we need to do is shift the factors of production to something else. We don’t actually need to shift Wall Street, we need to shift ourselves.

The reality is that the today’s economy is built on social, creative, and intellectual factors of production – these are the factors of production of that so-called 99% of the value of our economy. It’s a knowledge economy, remember?

Now, notice how land and labor are constrained by geography, property laws, political districts, and “national borders”. Also notice that the accounting system (capital) is as anonymous as possible, if not shrouded in secrecy. Do you remember how Steve Jobs told us that it’s OK to copy good ideas?

First, we need to build a knowledge inventory of all the useful stuff in our brains and integrated by geographic proximity so we all can find each other. This is how we’ll mimic land and labor. Next, the knowledge inventory must be anonymous until the point of transaction – this is not for privacy concerns, rather, we need to do this to create scarcity (nothing personal, Zuck). This is how we mimic “capital”.

At the end of the day, your knowledge inventory is your personal API – you create your own value and integrate with others or withhold it as you wish…just like Wall Street. Of course, everyone would then need to become a corporation so that we can pay our fair share of taxes (but not a penny more). That’s code for “too big to fail”.

Have you forgotten about Wall Street yet? If so, it’s not too early to coin the term APIcracy.

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The New Value Movement

By Admin

On January 19, 2011

In General Information

I believe that it is important to make a distinction between New Currency and New Value. The potential for confusion is high but the implications of getting this wrong could be catastrophic.

The Storage and Exchange of Value

A currency is a social system designed to store and exchange value. Value is what people make when they do things together. Not so obvious is that a particular type of currency may not be very good for storing and exchanging a particular type of value. It is obvious that dollars may adequately representing the physical value of a computer, however, those same dollars may not be very good at representing the social value of a community using computer systems to interact with each other.

The New Value Movement:

From yesterday’s post: I have encountered hundreds of people developing social currencies with increasingly creative and constructive methods because their community is important to them. People are trying to solve the great puzzle of human division because their community is important to them. People are trying to resolve the constraints in natural resources and the limitations on our planet, because their community is important to them.

The New Value Movement is precisely that; a movement to articulate, store, and exchange New Value arising from technological advances and NOT adequately served by the existing financial system that enabled those technological advances in the first place.

The Total Value is the True Value

The idea of New Value is not to replace the current financial system, rather, the net total of value articulated by both systems exceeds the maximum value that traditional money alone is capable of processing. Convertibility between New Value and old currency will be conducted using a yet unknown New Currency that many now call “Social Currency”. When the total monetary system can articulate the total value of the Earth AND it’s human resources, only then can an organic set of priorities be delivered to a market.

The New Currency Movement:

On the other hand, the image of a New Currency often evokes the wholesale replacement of an old currency brought about by the collapse of a financial system, hyperinflation, destruction of the factors of production, the introduction of some unforeseen peril, induced volatility, political risk, nationalization, war, terrorism, famine, plague, pestilence, etc.,…Obviously, the differences between the two movements could not be more stark…

A Clear and Present dAnger

It is also apparent that the traditional financial system has become fragile and it must never be in the best interest of anyone to benefit from increasing this fragility. The Internet and emerging social media technologies have finally integrated the tools that people need to organize themselves into New Value economic developers. However, during the transition, individual people or groups will hold the power to both stabilize and destabilize.

The danger is that a new currency ideal may seek to benefit from the premature collapse of the old currency system. This is not creating new value, this is the transfer of value by the abuse of power against the very system that supports that power. This is precisely the flaw that the new value movement is trying to correct.

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Dark Net and the Economics of Mutual Anonymity

By Admin

On December 14, 2009

In General Information

In 2001, Michael K Bergman, an American academic and entrepreneur and one of the foremost authorities about the Internet, published a paper estimating the “Deep Web” to be 400-550 times larger than the known Googleverse. What does this mean for everything we claim to know about the web, social media, and social influence marketing?

Andy Becket wrote an excellent investigative piece called The dark side of the internet that I highly recommend reading. Among many great points, Andy describes the deep web:

“The darkweb”; “the deep web”; beneath “the surface web” – the metaphors alone make the internet feel suddenly more unfathomable and mysterious. Other terms circulate among those in the know: “darknet”, “invisible web”, “dark address space”, “murky address space”, “dirty address space”. Not all these phrases mean the same thing. While a “darknet” is an online network such as Freenet that is concealed from non-users, with all the potential for transgressive behaviour that implies, much of “the deep web”, spooky as it sounds, consists of unremarkable consumer and research data that is beyond the reach of search engines. “Dark address space” often refers to internet addresses that, for purely technical reasons, have simply stopped working.

The implications of the Dark Web are subtle. Like “Dark Matter” in space, the dark web may behave as a multiplier to account for that which cannot be explained except by some invisible, albeit, constant force. We can assume consistence because the common thread that transcends the entire Internet is still conversation. The ability to have a conversation as well as the ability to reject a conversation is part of the Dark Web and still a conversation nonetheless. The opposite of publicity is anonymity – if the universe seeks balance so too can we expect the web to equalize around the average anonymity of conversation.

Entrepreneurial factors also appear rational when applied to the Dark Web, specifically true ownership. Ownership includes the right to restrict access from others. In the Googleverse of search rankings and old economics, watered down and largely unenforceable copyright laws create a wasteful game of Cease and Desist among content providers – not exactly a safe place to converse. The inability to establish ownership and boundaries of user generated content is a primary constraint on monetization.

Meanwhile, the Dark Web utilizes a knowledge inventory where trusted people of known affinity are given free access to share freely – and anonymously. Ironically, anonymity improves the quality of a conversation by eliminating the irrelevant data that often constrains conversation. It is worthwhile to consider anonymity as a possibles monetization factor – pay to hide?

Not all anonymity is corrupt and perverse. People spend a great deal of time and effort developing a database that represents a knowledge inventory and they don’t want someone to just copy it. Trade secrets are the great competitive financial instrument of capitalism and depend on secrecy. For better or for worse, political activity in non-free countries such as China, Iran, and Afghanistan also rely on anonymity. The more time people spend on the web, the more of their personal life that would want to keep to themselves – the ability to avoid Google bots is a tangible conversation.

The phenomenon to consider is that people with mutual anonymity are able to share more freely. Ironically, anonymity improves the quality of a conversation by eliminating the irrelevant data that often constrains conversation. Conversely, efforts to constrain anonymity destroys freedom of the web. Tell that to your web analytics team.

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You Are The Algorithm

By Admin

On May 4, 2009

In General Information

You are the algorithm.

Google is an information company. Their corporate charter is to organize the World’s information. Their limitation is that Google cannot organize knowledge because knowledge exists only within the consciousness of a person. Instead, busy little Google spiders scour the Internet looking for high rates of change of information and they use that as a proxy for “knowledge”.

An economy is crawled

Google Spiders favor blogs because of the high frequency of updates, postings, tags, comments and keywords in comparison to static websites. The logic goes as follows; if there is a lot of activity, something must be happening. As a result, an entire industry has grown around the blogging and Search Engine Optimization business; listings are counted, raw data are analyzed, comments provide feedback loops. Most notably, money is exchanged.

B-school tells us that that ROI can only be calculated from long term future projections, not short-term-recent-past spider activity. If this “economy” cannot be projected through ROI, then how exactly is it projected?

Dynamic, like life itself

People are figuring out that the rate of change of information is the best indicator of value as well as the best way to create value. The last mile of social media is the next frontier of value creation as people will emulate ‘Google Spiders’ and scour their community for changing information, new ideas, improved information, and feedback loops to organize, categorize, and distribute. This action will ultimately play out in new corporations built upon perfect dynamic information markets rather than third party selective information markets. Exit Boston Globe, enter Twitter.

Organize this:

The key to unraveling the Innovation economy will be in refining, restructuring and organizing the profound relatedness between information, knowledge, and innovation.

Information is facts and data – this is the medium of exchange or “the currency”. The rate at which the facts and the data change is a proxy for new knowledge being created somewhere and somehow. After all, if there is activity, something must be happening. All of the things that people do with the results creates even more new knowledge – this is innovation. Innovation creates new information. New currency is created because new information is created. Knowledge expands.

There is something in it; otherwise people would not do it

We are seeing the tip of the iceberg; social media is the new engine of the innovation economy. Where information becomes more perfect, markets become more efficient. Where markets are more efficient, knowledge becomes more tangible. Where knowledge is more tangible, innovation is more predictable. Where innovation is more predictable, the innovation risk disappears. The lower the risk, the cheaper and more abundant the venture capital.

People increasingly use social media to improve information, everywhere, any way that they can dream of. They increasingly act locally and share globally to create opportunities for themselves and their communities. People and their behavior is the algorithm of the innovation economy; monetize that. Google did.

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Social Media Frequent Flyer Miles

By Admin

On December 22, 2008

In General Information

The Internet is a lot like a commercial airplane – it is very useful in transporting us to distant lands but the real work must happen on the ground. The organization of society at both ends of an Internet destination must be developed if real wealth is to be created. Social Media needs to develop this component at this critical juncture of human history when vast amounts of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are being sent to the shores of despair upon Unemployment Air Line.

Computer enabled society:

The great opportunity of our generation in the fair, sustainable, and equitable creation of wealth through innovation in a computer-enabled, open-sourced, and democratic society that can organize its own knowledge in the form of a financial instrument. The great danger, of course, is if we miss our flight and engender a computer simulated society where it is easier to interact with online community than our own neighbors. It’s like getting on an airplane for the fine view, good food, and interesting conversation. Social capital is by far the most powerful force of change and social media must now touch the ground in a meaningful, systemic, repeatable, and scalable manner.

The analogy continues:

The earliest days of aviation were a novelty at best. Some commercial enterprise emerged in the form of barnstorming, carrying the mail, light cargo, aerial photography, and warfare. Likewise, the evolution of the internet brought us on-line gaming, e-mail, e-commerce, assorted photography, and hacking, etc. It was not until the invention of municipal airports that the airplane became a true time machine by increasing human productivity and allowing us to see history that would otherwise be unavailable traveling by sea. The true value of both commercial aviation and social media over “sail mail” is precisely through the increase in human productivity to transfer information to the ground.

Three Web Applications:

First, social media needs to develop a knowledge inventory system by geographic areas. Second, Social Media needs a search engine at a local level that combines knowledge assets to form “strategic” social networks that can execute a specific business plan at reduced risk; cooking the “secret sauce”. Third; an Innovation Bank must “pull” knowledge surplus and “pull” knowledge deficits together from diverse communities. These three applications will provide everyone with the tools needed to create wealth in their communities.

Social Media has the potential to become the airport of the Internet Transportation System. Nothing meaningful can happen until the rubber meets the tarmac. So, let’s start building runways.

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The Next Economic Paradigm

Tag: Internet

Dark Net and the Economics of Mutual Anonymity

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