Tag: money Page 4 of 5

Using Social Currency To Fight Terrorism

On January 8, 2010

In General Information

Given the events of the last several weeks, it’s time to for the aviation industry to get serious with Social Media. This article demonstrates how an alternate currency can be used to severely reduce or eliminate terrorist risk in commercial aviation. Think I’m kidding, read on.

Obviously an airline will not let you board an airplane if you don’t have the financial currency sufficient to buy ticket. Why should an airline let you board an airplane if you do not have social currency sufficient to fulfill your social obligations while in the air?

People with extreme social currency deficiencies are routinely stripped of their rights by a jury of peers and isolated from society for a period of time (where they would not board an airplane anyway). While there are many systems in place to manage the various degrees of social currency deficiency, none appear to be able to identify a terrorist without also violating the rights of non-terrorists.

Human Writes

However, many people are willing to share information about themselves to associates with whom an economic benefit is shared or exchanged. This happens a billion times per week on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter – why not among fellow passengers? After all everyone is already connected by 6 degrees.

What would a terrorist’s Facebook profile say about them? Do they have a lot of referrals on linkedin? Do they post great work on Flikr? Is their community orchestra featured on My Space? Are their posts popular on twitter?

Should a social currency credit score become imperative to social transactions as the financial credit score is for financial transactions?

Banks and Insurance companies already rely on a highly invasive “Credit Score” to establish financial risk profile as a means of protecting their selves and their other clients. Why wouldn’t an airline use a social credit score to establish a social risk profile as a means of protecting their selves and the lives of their other clients?

Ruse and lose

Sure, the bad guys can adapt to social media as they have adapted to all other measures. The problem is that the greater the size and scope of their social media ruse, the more difficult it is to maintain the ruse. A threshold score could be set to nearly eliminate this possibility. Those folks can then simply opt into the full body scan.

The Paradigm Shift

As the saying goes, the attacker needs to be successful only once, while the defender needs to be successful every time. The concept of a Social media credit score flips this paradigm on it’s head. The attacker’s social credit score needs to be successful every time. The defender needs to be successful only once.

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Political Memoirs; The Money Shot?

On January 6, 2010

In General Information

One must seriously ask, how exactly do political memoirs increase human productivity?

2009 marked the resurrection of the infamous “Book Deal” with lovely Ms. Palin and entourage leading the charge. However, books are not the actual product; it is the kindling (amazon pun intended) that they provide for endless fodder for the mainstream and new media. It’s the money shot.

Entering a mid-term election year with the future of our country in the balance, the onslaught of meaningless dribble will be epic. The national pundits will go wild fueling local media coverage as the authors engage in their cross-country tours of duty performing the perfunctory act of accomplishment.

There will be a wide audience of Americans asking themselves the same question:

Should the past be used to predict the future?

Karl Rove

Former deputy White House chief of staff’s book Courage and Consequence will be published on 9 March by Simon and Schuster’s Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint. Deal reported by US media at $2m.

Donald Rumsfeld

To be published in the autumn by Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin. No advance for the former defense secretary, share of proceeds to go to charity.

George W Bush

Autobiography, tentatively titled Decision Points, is to be published by Crown. Deal estimated at $7m.

Laura Bush

Her memoir is due in the spring from Scribner. Laura’s deal may be worth more than her husband’s. US media put it at $8m.

Dick Cheney

Scheduled for spring 2011, the former vice-president shares publisher with Rove. His deal is estimated at $2m.

What if this conversation has no currency?

What if we are reaching a tipping point? What if nobody cares anymore? What if none of this makes any sense to anyone? What if we can more accurately use the future to predict what really happened in the past?

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The Fundamental Flaw of NAFTA

On January 1, 2010

In General Information

Leading into 2010, The Ingenesist Project will release a series of videos that specify the construct of the Next Economic Paradigm. We begin at the beginning.

The following video discusses the flaw in modern globalization market economics that started with the failure of an obscure sub section of NAFTA – the free trade of services. The objective of the Ingenesist Project is to correct a tiny little flaw in market economics. This simple adjustment will result in dramatic change.

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Is it Social Media or Corporate Media?

On December 22, 2009

In General Information

Visionaries Ho!

There are no shortage of intelligent and visionary social media celebrities. They write great books about markets, social media tools, strategies, and on-line reputation for the benefit of the millions of people stuck on any part of the slippery social media learning curve. They are infinitely generous with their knowledge and share it freely at countless conferences, blog posts, and syndicated articles.

There is, however, one thing that most of these Guru’s have in common – they consult to and are paid by large corporations. I could be considered part of this crowd for whatever my influence is worth. So the question about causation is due – will social media develop as a function of corporate interaction with it?

If so, then it is not social media – it is corporate media.

This is no surprise, nor should there be any apparent concern, after all, everyone has to make a living and it is better that the corporations pay people to create content that benefits me. The practice is conducted quite ethically too -most readily disclose where their financial support comes from and we all benefit from free information that helps us keep the playing field as level as it can be.

But at the end of the day, it’s all about eye-balls and bullhorns. In order to produce eyeballs and bullhorns, people must be sitting at a computer or, at least, staring at a handset. The longer you can keep people interacting with the brand instead of interacting with each other, the better off everyone is, right?

Social Media Consumer Advocate

A consumer advocate is someone who helps look after the best interest of the consumer for product safety and false advertising. Social media is pushing the envelope of the corporate interaction with consumers. “Advertising” no longer lends itself to the objective review of a billboard, commercial, or public statement. Social Media Marketing is increasingly sophisticated and manipulative. The vulnerable people; children and elders are no less vulnerable on social media, and may be more.

Social anomalies?

Some of the emerging research related to social media is surprising with increased instances of what can be considered social anomalies:

– Infantilism; adults doing childish things like playing silly games in ‘public’
– Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; constantly checking for updates and new photos,
– Depression and loneliness; preference of social media over real live interaction
– Narcissism; The excessive love or admiration of one’s image of their self.

Is it social because it is media or is it media because it is social?

We need to ask ourselves what is the difference between computer enabled reality and computer simulated reality. If we lose “causation” the entire body of analysis can be called into the question: is social media or is it corporate media?

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Predictions for 2010 and Beyond – Nothing is Sacred

On December 21, 2009

In General Information

It looks like everyone is buffing up their predictions for another year of astonishing growth by social media. The last several years have brought so many surprises that the next several are promising to yield a bumper crop of “I told you so” fodder from the “pithier than thou” crowd.

My prediction for 2010 is that nothing is sacred, including the onslaught 2010 predictions. Therefore, I’ll will go way out on a limb and make my 2011 predictions in 2009.

In General:

The interest coming due on our national debt will consume increasingly more of the money that institutions need to provide basic services. As these institutions weaken, they will increasingly be replaced by social media enterprise. These structurally weakened institutions will drive social media innovation more than any other factor.

Specifically:

Social vetting will catch everyone by surprise. Google buying Yelp is the game changer that will shake markets to the core. A market can only be as efficient as its vetting mechanism. To control vetting is to control a market – ask any despot. Where the vetting institutions of the old paradigm break down, they will be replaces by social media vetting. Nothing is sacred – the SEC, AMA, Federal Reserve – everything is vulnerable. Google knows this and will usher in an era of social media applications that will completely disrupt the gatekeepers.
Everyone says that social media will monetize. It will, but not like anyone expects. 2011 is the year of the Deep Web; the deep web is the vast universe of unprocessed data that exists like dark matter in the Google-verse. Social media will monetize around data because data is the only thing that corporation, governments, and other people are willing to pay for. Google created economic initiatives for legions of entrepreneurs to create information content. The new Deep Web Search engines will create economic incentives for legions of entrepreneurs to create databases.
The convergence of data will create the “new monetized innovation economy” defined by the way people interact with data. Highly localized data that will reflect the knowledge inventory of a community and will be represented by a virtual currency.
It will become increasingly apparent that many of the functions of a corporation can be duplicated outside a corporation by new vetted social media applications. Networks of people will become “corporations” and trade knowledge assets through the trade of virtual currency contracts.
Corporations will become technology centric rather than industry centric with open source architecture liberated to armies of diverse entrepreneurs. For example, breakthoughs in one industry will shoot across all industries like iphone apps – especially effective in environmental and “community organization” innovations. Nothing is sacred.

So there it is and be assured that 2012 will not disappoint even the hardiest eschatologist!

Sorry for not repeating the “real-time is king” mantra or singing the “people will finally pay for content” tune, or reciting the “every department is the marketing department” manifesto. Something much bigger is about to happen. The evolution away from the current financial system will drive social media more than any other factor.

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Is Wall Street Irrelevant to an Innovation Economy?

On December 20, 2009

In General Information

The most difficult challenge facing the modern creative entrepreneur is the funding of innovation. Likewise, the greatest constraint on an innovation economy is the funding of innovation. Having great new ideas is the easy part; actually building something around those ideas is hard work.

As such, the funding all of that hard work is the constraint on innovation economy. Traditionally, the “corporation” served as the legal entity within which all the hard work would be contained and the accounting system through which it would be financed. But even that arrangement does not work well enough to support a new economic paradigm for an innovation economy.

Is Wall Street Irrelevant to an Innovation Economy?

Our modern and supposedly efficient financial system in fact punishes innovation. If a company announces a new multi-year allocation of a substantial amount of money toward new innovation, stock price of the company is pushed downward since the funding would apparently be taken from today’s profits. The market would prefer to take their money elsewhere until the (now unfunded) innovation is market ready.

The prospect for the individual entrepreneur is worse. The modern and supposedly efficient banking system does not acknowledge an entrepreneur’s good idea and the work that they are willing to do to reach fruition.

So if most innovation (and the hard work of developing it) is self-funded, and all innovation (and the hard work of developing it) is the basis of all wealth creation, why do we need Wall Street? Ironically, the ‘revelation’ of the next economic paradigm is that Wall Street is ‘irrelevant’.

The opportunity for the future is to develop a financial system that does accommodate the fact of innovation and the willingness of entrepreneurs to do the hard work of developing it.

If taken in aggregate – the total wealth creation of all private innovation is obviously some positive number. If better data were accumulated regarding all the private innovation that is happening, then that positive number for overall wealth creation can be predicted within a range. The better the data are, the smaller the range for this estimate of net wealth creation.

If net wealth creation can accommodate the past and predicted into the future, then a cash flow can be assigned to all private innovation. If a cash flow can be predicted, then a bond can be issued backed by this estimated cash flow. This cash flow, while not actually realized can be expressed in terms of an IOU credit. These credits can be traded like money

Now it becomes in the best interest of a market to protect, nurture, and legitimize the innovators who are willing to do the hard work to develop the next innovation industries.

Is Wall Street Irrelevant to an Innovation Economy?

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Diversity in Innovation

On December 19, 2009

In General Information

Most literature on the subject of Innovation cites diversity as an important component of the innovation enterprise. Unfortunately diversity rides a political narrative rather than practical applications. Polarization is the death of diversity and the political narrative that plagues our country also plagues our ability to innovate.

Process Diversity

Not only does the diversity in innovation matter, the diversity of acceptable outcomes of innovation is also important. In addition, the diversity of attempts at innovation is essential, i.e., failure must be culturally acceptable. Preconception, bias, thresholds, and ideology often spell the end of a economic outcome.

Moving Against the Grain

Unfortunately, the forces acting against diversity are deeply ingrained in each of us whether we’ll admit it or not. For example, if you are in charge of producing diverse groups, processes and outcomes. How does one extract their own personal bias? How does one determine how much diversity is needed? Removing oneself produces randomness. Including oneself produces similitude. Polarization returns.

A Diverse Quagmire

Most companies innovate with existing personnel whose behavior can only be a function of their interaction with the company for their career and retirement prospects. Utilizing external sources does not eliminate this bias and may in fact magnify it.

There may be a way out of this quandary; we must open our observation to include all possible outcomes as worthwhile. Then we must distribute the results broadly. Where diverse people observe the same event, objectivity is achieved.

A striking resemblance to social media

By observing something derived from unobservable events, we can gain a great deal of information. because Social media is experiencing extraordinary growth we can say that a great amount of innovation is occurring. It is our prerogative to capture the innovation and not to expect the innovation to capture us, our government, or our corporations.

Diversity by Proxy

At the Ingenesist Project, we define innovation as outcomes proportional to the rate of change of knowledge with respect to time. As such, all we need to do is look for high rates of change of knowledge and we know that innovation is taking place. We do not know what the innovation is, where it’s directed, or what the market for the innovation may be. However, when we employ diverse observation, these answers begin to emerge.

Social media provides an interesting backdrop to the innovation process. Social Media does not care what you look like, the clothes you wear, or the church you attend. Social media hold no monopoly of opinion on diversity –

Diverse Incentives

If we take a lesson from economics, we know that people will generally act in their own perceived best interest. Then we can apply a set of incentives that modifies the best interests of the people. These incentives may be rewards, access to more incentives, or reduction of risk. Suppose that diversity were in fact a process of self selection or self removal from an objective? That is, people would have enough information regarding the potential outcomes that they could choose to interact with the process or not. In effect, innovating as an economy.

Photo credit

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Should Education be Open Source?

On December 18, 2009

In General Information

We continue to challenge the relevance of the college “degree” as being an insufficient measurement for what “educated” is, or is not, in an innovation economy. With the cost of a college degree spiraling upward and the value of the degree spiraling downward, the market will tip in favor of the alternative education measurements.

It is important to note that we do not challenge the existence of institutes of higher education, only the “degree” as a unit of measurement. The four year Bachelor degree and two year Masters degree are irrelevant as a title (there is no legal title since the age of the guilds) and arbitrary in duration to respond to the diversity, speed, and scope at which new technologies become available for deployment.

Ray Barton writes: The UK House of Commons in its’ report on Re-skilling in January 2009 stated the useful life of a degree is five years. In high tech professions, the useful lifetime of knowledge can be as short as 1.5 years.

This alone disrupts the current paradigm of higher education in several ways.

Read More

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Conversational Perjury

On December 17, 2009

In General Information

As brands get social, they enter the new media performing their best interpretation of a conversation. Face it, they are still going for the kill – like a wolf in sheep’s clothing – the dance of the pitch is just getting more sophisticated. Social media is powerful followed closely by the of abuse .

The danger is that the more it resembles buddy talk, the more likely it will be mistaken for buddy talk. The sales pitch is being elevated to an art form. Now social media can be as much as a social cure as a social anomaly.

The 4 Big Lies of Marketing:

The integration lie; Ingratiation efforts are manipulative and calculating but serve as a very subtle way of obtaining increased power over another person. Appearing to be similar to the target the ingratiator appraises the target person’s attitudes, opinions, and interests and modifies his/her statements to match the perceived beliefs of the other conforming to the target’s wishes.

Major Brand: The key principles underlying [company] decisions and actions in social media are: Listening, Learning and Engaging in conversations with our customers where they are…while hiding where we are.

The foot-in the door lie: To increase the likelihood of a prospect saying yes to a moderate request, a person may ask for a smaller request first. By saying yes to the first, small request, the person may agree to the second request to maintain consistency with self perception.

Major brand: we recently launched an on-line quiz with a widget component exclusively through social media and it has been a great success just in terms of the number of people taking the quiz and then word of mouth as a result. This goes back to us showing people can engage with [company name] not yet buying the product.

The ‘Istanbul bazaar’ Lie: The initial request is very large – large enough that no one could be expected to comply with it. It is then followed by a smaller, more reasonable request. This technique relies on the norm of reciprocity. The norm of reciprocity states if a person does something for you, you should do something in return for that person.

From a famous social media marketing evangelist: Extrapolate the potential points of touch between your customers and your organization, by showing them what full engagement looks like but then asking for a smaller subscription, enables participation in some of your processes, in some way.

Even a penny will help Lie: This technique is based on the tendency for people to want to make themselves “look good.” Since everyone has a penny, one would look foolish to say no to the request. The target cannot simply give a penny without looking foolish. The target tends to give whatever is appropriate for the situation.

From a Social Media Marketing Guru: FB Friending, Twitter, and even Linkedin are brilliant in delivering mutual follow mentality to marketing – people want to feel good for having followers and will often put up with constant, yet fleeting marketing messages. Tweet meme is another way for people to feel good about thier self for a tiny investment of a single click.

Inherent in all 4 techniques is the attempt by an influencer to manipulate another by engaging in subtle subterfuge. The only way to undo the lie is with a simple truth: knowledge and understanding that the influencer is always lying.

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Deep Web Search

On December 13, 2009

In General Information

Deep Web Search Engine is here. This represents a new economic paradigm since increasing the available information increases the rate of change of knowledge across diverse communities. Keep your eyes on this one – it’s a big one.

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Fallout: FTC and Blogger Payola

On December 11, 2009

In General Information

The FTC recently issued guidelines for payola to bloggers. The impact and opinions are now emerging over what this means for social media. As with any game played on a new field, rules need to apply. The questions emerge regarding who the rules hurt, who they help, and how the game will develop in the future due to those rules.

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.

Extrapolate into the future:

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Is Freedom A New Economic Paradigm?

On December 10, 2009

In General Information

A New Economic System of the country of Montenegro is based on complete and unfettered economic freedom; in other words, the elimination of all barriers to conducting business. Is Freedom A New Economic Paradigm?

Veselin Vukotić ‘s paper titled Economic Freedom and New Economic Paradigm, offers a case study that enlightens us as to some of the core changes, some easy and some difficult, that any proclaimed ‘new economic paradigm’ would place on people, culture, politics, and the markets. From this insight, perhaps we’ll see a new paradigm emerge.

Freedom; A competitive Advantage

Montenegro has achieved a competitive advantage in their Eastern European region by reducing international trade barriers, treating foreign and domestic concerns equally, reducing “contribution” fees and other taxes, reduction of public spending, affirmation of private property, and encouraging entrepreneurship. Veselin Vukotić also notes that the concept of economic freedom is a complete theoretical and practical expression of an idea. He quotes Plato:

The difference between concepts is the difference between starting ideas!

Therefore, he concludes that the idea of economic freedom is freedom of an individual to conduct business (earn money), and that business is the key factor of a society’s development and individual wealth. While we now know that unfettered capitalism breaks down at some point, he does accomplish something important – the elimination of all government as a defining element of freedom.

The Singularity Solution

We know it is often easier to solve a problem if we can remove certain elements, even temporarily, and analyze components individually. Suppose we eliminate Government from the equation, corporations would rule. However, corporations are made up of individuals, so individuals would rule…they would rule whom? The logic also breaks down.

There is one exception: what if all individuals were corporations and they ruled only themselves? Corporations are keeping government out of their affairs by keeping people off the books. The solution is for everyone to structure their existence as a corporation contracting to each other for every conceivable business arrangement. Heck, it only costs 40 dollars to open a business in the the U.S.

Self-regulating Freedom?

Knowledge would be shared freely, people would be paid for their productivity, diversity and strategic combination of knowledge would be rewarded. Everyone would own their knowledge and would seek to accumulate more. Trade barriers would be eliminated, taxes would be reduced, private property would be affirmed, and entrepreneurship would be encouraged. Like a family, no corporation could become wealthy at the expense of another corporation for very long.

Would you be willing to pay the government to leave you alone? Is that Freedom or a new economic paradigm or both?

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Goldman Sachs: Bernie Madoff on Steroids

On November 30, 2009

In General Information

(Editor’s note: in all fairness, the GS initiative does represent a fundamental shift away from the Friedman doctrine of amoral capitalism.)

Money does not represent gold, solver, or oil. Money represents human productivity – yours and mine. Goldman Sachs is about to award the greatest ANNUAL payout for its employees – over 700,000 dollars EACH.

The words “money” and “productivity” should be interchangeable. So, what exactly did Goldman Sachs produce in order to amass such astonishing amounts of “money?” Where is the corresponding astonishing productivity?

The line of fire is quite obvious; the productivity is really “future” productivity in the form of debt – yours and mine.

WSJ: Some of the largest shareholders in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have urged the Wall Street firm to reduce the size of its bonus pool, arguing that it should pass along more of its blockbuster earnings to investors, according to people familiar with the situation.

Uhhmmm…15% of the shares are owned by the Goldman employees – sounds like the 2nd tier of the pyramid are getting anxious. Like a street gang, they battle for a piece of the turf. Perhaps Goldman should do something for the 3rd tier too.

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Fattest Cat Bets Against Dollar (and what we can do about it)

On November 25, 2009

In General Information

In 2006 John Paulson (of no relation to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ) bet that the sub-prime mortgage market would tank and housing prices would fall on a national scale, according to a new book The Greatest Trade Ever by Greg Zuckerman. He cleaned up with 4 billion dollars in personal gains, 20 Billion for his firm.

Wonder where your money went?

“John Paulson took it,” wrote Peter Cohen of BloggingStocks. Want to know what Paulson is buying this year? Gold. Betting against the dollar is his latest ploy and so far seems to be working. Ummmm…this means that the rest of us are basically screwed, again.

Paulson’s investing lessons:

1. Don’t Rely on Experts
2. Bubble Trouble
3. Focus on Debt Markets
4. Master New investments
5. Insurance Pays
6. Experience Counts
7. Don’t Fall In Love
8. Luck Helps

Hey Kids, let’s learn from the master:

1. Don’t rely on Experts: They are the crooks. The Mexican Peso crisis was not caused by foreigners; it was caused by Mexican elite running away from their own currency and sparking a wider run. See Johnny Run….

2. Bubble Trouble: Further evidence is seen in speculative bubbles appearing in mundane fixed assets like land, minerals, and alternate currencies around the world.

3. Focus on Debt: If you have cash, you’ll lose it to inflation. But if you have debt, you’ll lose that too. If you have too much debt and you’ll go bankrupt. If you have too much cash and you’ll become equally broke. The trick is to hold just as much cash as you hold debt and when it’s all over, you’ll be no better or no worse off.

4. Master new investments: In the old system, if I trade a dollar for an apple, I lose the dollar but gain an apple. In the next economic paradigm, I share an idea but I still retain the idea; and currency multiplies – master the new investment!

5. Insurance Pays if you know how to play; if you can identify the peril, you know the probability that it will get you, and you know the consequences of the loss – you can “play” insurance. People must reorganize around an “insurance system” enabled by social networks that can influence these factors.

6. Experience Counts; While corporations are laying off older people, social media is capturing them in a knowledge inventory. We must develop, produce, and access this knowledge inventory.

7. Don’t Fall in Love: This means diversify and don’t be afraid to try new things. Innovation is the art of putting many different ideas, concepts or objects together and yielding new wealth creation. What better mechanism than social media.

8. Luck helps: Social media is like a cloud. Nobody can control and the only way to engage with it is to talk to the cloud. After a while the cloud will deliver rain, and your garden will grow. John Paulson calls this luck, we call it inevitable.

We, the people, need to introduce a new economic paradigm – nobody will do it for us. We may lose the dollar as a currency but we must not lose our personal ability to produce and trade our ideas, plans, and actions for the things that our families need to grow. Wealth is created by sharing. The Next Economic Paradigm shows us how we, as a society, can reorganize ourselves around an economy built upon social media. Sounds far out but it can be done today if we move quickly to understand the power – near absolute – that people can have in social media. If John Paulson were really smart, he would bet on us not against us.

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Bovine Economics

On November 23, 2009

In General Information

Money does not represent gold, silver or oil. Money represents human productivity – yours and mine – otherwise nobody would work (i.e., be productive) in exchange for it. Therefore, the words ‘Money’ and ‘Productivity’ should be synonymous and interchangeable – right?

Not so fast. The following headlines were produced from a ‘Google News’ Search that contain the word “money”. Next, I replaced the word “money” with the word “productivity”[in brackets]. The headlines don’t make any sense.

Yes kids, try this at home. If the headline still makes sense with the word swap, then you can enjoy the article in full confidence that you are being nourished with useful knowledge. If, however, the headline doesn’t make a damn bit of sense after the swap, then you are experiencing Bovine Economics – suitable only for mushrooms and methane

Canada [Productivity] launderer shows holes in Vegas casinos

GM to start paying back bailout [Productivity]

Some taxpayers may have to return [productivity] from a new tax credit

[Productivity] talks in Afghanistan, says army counter-insurgency manual

“Stimulus” [productivity] going to 10 Ohio congressional districts that don’t exist

Our government is minimizing breast mammography to save [productivity] not lives

Prisons, education feel [productivity] pinch

[PRODUCTIVITY] MARKETS-US rates futures gain on Bernanke remarks

On Healthcare, Don’t Follow the [Productivity]

(Editor’s note: This series is an experiment and we’ll get better at picking the gems. Let me know if this is interesting enough for a weekly feature article)

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Is Virtual Currency a Problem?

On November 15, 2009

In General Information

Editor’s note; The following analysis by Daniel Indiviglio from The Atlantic regarding a NYT article is foreboding of an unknown future. Half insightful synthesis and half tongue-in-cheek, this article suggests that virtual currency may impact the current monetary system. The conclusion is brilliant suggesting that the national debt could be paid in virtual currency. It seems quaint now, but what would happen if the dollar fails? During the Mexican Crisis, citizens emptied WalMart because today’s peso would be buy fewer Levies tomorrow – and it happened very fast. Get this and get it well: currency is a social agreement. People will trade what ever people agree to trade.

by Daniel Indiviglio

Is Virtual Currency A Real Problem?

All that time spent playing video games may finally be paying off. Literally. According to a fascinating New York Times article today, virtual currency — credits to buy stuff in video games — is being taken very seriously. China worries that make-believe video game money could affect its ability to control its money supply. As a result, it’s slapping limits on virtual currency. I’m not kidding.

From the NY Times:

Some people have even traded virtual currencies in China, and exchanged them for clothes, cosmetics and other goods. Last year, nearly $2 billion in virtual currency was traded in China, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. Some experts say they believe there is a much larger underground economy in the virtual world.

And it gets wackier:

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When Capitalists Are Really the Socialists

On November 7, 2009

In General Information

Yikes…

Unemployment tops 10%. Add in the under-employed, part timers, young adults trying to enter the job market, the ones who have given up or otherwise marginalized, and we’re well into the 15-20% range.

Mediated Reality:

When will people come to the realization that a new financial system is needed to represent the new social order? When will people realize that they have in their possession the most important tool ever devised by humanity for the benefit of humanity? When will they shut off the TV and reject the barrage of mediated reality that blinds them with propaganda at every turn?

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Banks In The Future

On October 29, 2009

In General Information

Bankers don’t care about money, they care about the rate of change of money. At The Ingenesist Project we are not entirely interested in change – we are entirely interested in the rate at which things change. As you can imagine, we get all giddy when we see the rate at which the rate of things change…that’s all that banking is and all that banking ever will be.

Each of the Facebook Applications posted below are to Facebook what The NYSE is to Commercial Banking. Note that Facebook is growing at an astonishing rate. Now, these applications – on top of Facebook – will increase the rate of change of the rate of change in how people communicate, transact, organize, and deliver conversation.

You are hearing it here; these innovations are the most significant disruption that Wall Street can’t possibly imagine. Money is a social agreement and these are the banks of the future. Although many come from the gaming industry, many games are modeled after the real world, therefore, transition back to the real world is not as difficult as one may think. If people are willing to trade it, it becomes money. This is serious business. While many of these new innovations are on the right track – not all of them will survive.

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Banks In The Present

On October 28, 2009

In General Information

I see a lot of articles asking the question why people are not absolutely livid about what is happening to them. The degree at which their wealth is being transferred away from them and the debt being shod on their grandchildren is astonishing. I saw LA burn for a whole lot less after the Rodney King affair and this crisis does not even foment a decent March on Washington like the good old Reagan days.

It would clearly be in the best interest of stock market capitalists to keep the majority of people poor, weak, and disorganized. Below a certain economic threshold, people simply fail to organize – they are too busy trying to feed their families by working harder. This is where they want to keep us…but will it work?

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Building a Better Entrepreneur; Google 10^100

On September 27, 2009

In General Information

Google 10^100 award voting is Launched. There are two sectors that we believe would have the greatest impact on the greatest amount of people; building a better banking system and funding social entrepreneurs. You can’t have one without the other – if Google funds these two sectors in concert, the outcome would be incredible.

Build A Better Bank

In the old banking system we assume that we have the knowledge to execute a business plan and we go to the bank to borrow the money. In the new banking system, we will assume we have the money and we go off in search of the knowledge. Social Media is an excellent “public accounting system” for knowledge assets.

Our current banking system has gotten it backwards.

Technological change must always precede economic growth. The supranational currency may be backed by productivity and not debt. Social media provides an excellent platform upon which to design such a banking system. People trade “social currency” at a tremendous rate. This is evidenced by the amount of destructive innovation is occurring in many legacy sectors due to social media.

Better Banking Tools for everyone

“Partner with banks and technology companies to increase the reach of financial services across the world. Users submitted numerous ideas that seek to improve the quality of people’s lives by offering new, more convenient and more sophisticated banking services. Specific suggestions include inexpensive village-based banking kiosks for developing countries; an SMS solution geared toward mobile networks; and ideas for implementing banking services into school curriculums”.

Suggestions that inspired this idea

1.   Enable prepaid cell phone bank accounts for millions of people working in the informal economy
2.   Create a community-level electronic banking system for rural areas
3.   Build IT-enabled kiosks which provide access to financial services
4.   Create a single world bank or supra-national currency, uniform rules and transparent public accounting

Fund Social Entrepreneurs

Venture Capital is ridiculously expensive. Corporate innovation serves shareholders value over social priorities. Some say that the financial risk of funding innovation is too high. The top ten reasons why start-ups fail are due to knowledge deficits, not money deficits. A new banking system that trades knowledge as currency would solve this problem.

The key is to match most worthy knowledge surplus to most worthy knowledge deficit. Google is perfectly able to build a search app for knowledge assets if there were an inventory of knowledge assets. With the most worthy match, Risk can be reduced and new financial instruments can be developed such as the innovation bond, innovation insurance, tangential innovation markets, and destructive innovation transition contingency options, etc.

Help social entrepreneurs drive change

Create a fund to support social entrepreneurship. This idea was inspired by a number of user proposals focused on “social entrepreneurs” — individuals and organizations who use entrepreneurial techniques to build ventures focused on attacking social problems and fomenting change. Specific relevant ideas include establishing schools that teach entrepreneurial skills in rural areas; supporting entrepreneurs in underdeveloped communities; and creating an entity to provide capital and training to help entrepreneurs build viable businesses and catalyze sustained community change.

Suggestions that inspired this idea

1.   Provide targeted capital and business training to help young entrepreneurs build viable businesses and catalyze sustained community change
2.   Create a non-profit, venture capital-like revolving fund to invest in high-impact local entrepreneurs
3.   Send young American entrepreneurs to underdeveloped communities to help create small businesses that would economically benefit those communities
4.   Create schools in rural areas to teach local people how to become entrepreneurs
5.   Create a private equity fund to help immigrants in developed countries finance business development in their countries of origin

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A Clear and Present Value!

On September 22, 2009

In General Information

Clear and Present Value

The value of conversations is real, clear and present – especially in the actions of those who profit wildly from them. I saw this in the negotiations of NAFTA when it was clearly in the best interest of the some negotiators to keep engineers poor weak and disorganized.

I saw it again in corporate America. Imagine if Boeing was to publish a complete accounting of the incredible intellect, ingenuity, talent, and creativity that roams their hallowed halls – the world would dismantle them piece by piece. The “knowledge inventory” is a company’s most closely held secret.

Keeping secrets from the secret:

Sometimes it seems that the biggest secrets are held from those who represent the greatest real value. Corporations pay their engineers the minimum amount of money required to get them to their desk in the morning. Then they resist organization of engineering professionals, and they give them little or no power over marketing, human resources, accounting, and sales promises related to the engineering outcome.

The problems get worse when this big “secret” becomes public. For example: Steve Jobs has now been identified as trying to collude with Ed Colligan, the CEO of Palm, to not poach each other’s employees.

A Currency Collusion Collision Conversation

“Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” Colligan said to Jobs last August, according to an article Bloomberg reported. Jobs succeeded in making such an arrangement with Google, according to published reports. The feds are investigating and the Palm allegations only make Apple look worse.

It is quite amazing that companies would expose them selves to such risk if conversations among engineers were NOT in fact extremely valuable. Why else would Apple engage in such disrespect to engineers and others who actually create the products Mr. Jobs gets credit for?

The liberation of Knowledge Assets

The IPhone that rolls off the assembly line is not an innovation. Rather, the millions upon millions of tiny incremental ideas, conversations, and shared thought are assembled into what does eventually roll off the assembly line. The role of the CEO is significant, but still a minority task in the larger picture.

More than ever, social media is empowering people to hold equally productive and focused conversations outside the construct of corporation. With the ability to measure and track impressions comes the ability to pay royalties to those that produce, direct, and sustain conversations.

With the Obama justice department and other federal regulators already looking closely at Apple over the iPhone and handset exclusivity and the sharing of board members, Jobs’ alleged anti-poaching efforts only add to the fire that is growing around him. If social media continues to integrate at a rapid pace, the biggest fire that Mr. Jobs and other CEOs may have growing around them is the autonomy of creative, social, and intellectual staff.

Special thanks to a post written by: Veteran industry-watcher David Coursey who tweets as @techinciter and can be contacted via his Web site.

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YOU are MONEY

On September 18, 2009

In General Information

Some HR bloggers are calling for a new profession called “Social Media Administrator”. While there are many opinions and wide agreement about the roles and responsibilities – most of which I fully agree with – I would like to add the following considerations:

The corporate social media administrator should have a direct connection, responsibility and accountability with other social media administrators external to the corporation. Not unlike a board of directors having diverse membership. The membership and reputation of member of a Social Media BOD is also on the line.

Social media is just that, social. It cannot be sequestered fully behind corporate walls and must be open and transparent in it’s message. The Social Media administrator must protect the voices of those who speak. While there is a constitutional amendment for freedom of speech in our government and the basis of democracy, none exists for corporations who use the information or the social media enterprise that hold “possession” of the information for eternity.

A market can only be efficient with adequate vetting mechanisms; the SEC vets Wall Street, The FAA vets Airlines, and the system of Checks and Balances vets government. When the vetting mechanism fails, so too does the market.

Few people can see why this is important largely because the reasoning lies in economics and market theory. Simply put, we are entering a new economic paradigm unlike anything we have ever seen or could imagine. The idea that each and every iota of knowledge, experience, and opinion that exists between your ears behaves like a financial instrument has not fully been explained. YOU are MONEY in every definition of the word. Your productivity supports the value of the dollar. You own your knowledge, it is your property – you can waste it, you can mint more of it, you can borrow it, and you can lend it – and you should be able to capitalize in any currency of your choosing.

The only thing missing is a financial system for your knowledge. If we are smart – and ONLY if we are smart, this system will arise with the continued convergence of social media. Among the KEY elements that MUST be in place is a public accounting system for Social Media Administration.

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The New Reverse World Order

On September 9, 2009

In General Information

The New Reverse Order

If someone can track your spending, they can predict your behavior. It is also true that if someone can track your behavior, they predict your spending. The next economic paradigm is simply a higher order of the same.

On the next higher order, if someone knows your “Knowledge Inventory” they can predict how you will manage changing conditions – that is, how you will innovate. Likewise, tracking how people innovate exposes the development of new knowledge assets (the ‘gold-standard’ of conversational currency).

Everyday some new headline shows that we are getting closer and closer to that point – for better or worse – where humanity learns to manage an innovation economy.

Profound Issues Arise.

The following article about Wal-Mart adopting the debit card (Wal-Mart to Staff: Bye-Bye Paycheck, Hello Debit Card) as a means of issuing paychecks represents a quantum leap in the monetization of knowledge assets. We expect many more will closely follow in one of the most important financial developments in financial history – virtual currency. If food stamps can be delivered on a debit card, why not frequent flier miles, Disney Dollars, coupons, rebates, tulip bulbs, beanie babies, or a new global currency such as the Rallod?

A Vetting Zoo

The only questions that remain are related to Vetting. By all accounts Social Media is developing into the mother of all vetting mechanisms. Who controls the card? What system is it replacing? Who can pull money off? Who charges fees to whom and why? Who gets the business intelligence? What is the PR spin? Can advertisers interact with the card to apply discounts and rewards? What types incentives motivate what types of people and can it go on a debit card?

A Steep Departure

Each of these questions, and the companies they spawn, will live or die by Tweet and Blog – this is a steep departure from the past. For example; 30 years ago, if every American were told that their social security number would be tied to a credits score that is tied to their driving record, employability, insurance premium, health care, mortgage rate, and, yup, their debit card – the cities would have burned in protest.

Nobody could have seen this future except those who designed it. Today, the designers are you and I – see the future now, see the future here at Conversational Currency.

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Trust as a Social Currency

On September 8, 2009

In General Information

The idea of trust as social currency is appearing in more articles, conferences, and books. This is all highly consistent with the TIP thesis on Innovation Economics which describes the necessity of a vetting mechanism among the knowledge inventory as a means for the emergence of a currency in a market – that is, a conversational currency. People need to trust the currency if they are to trade the currency.

Shefaly Yogendra provides some excellent insights below. Keep in mind that American Culture does not have a monopoly on the definition of trust. It should not be an American expectation to define the conversational currency in our own image. Indeed, convertability of such currency will be, and must be, global.

I kept the analysis sparse on this article because it is a valuable exercise to form one’s own perspective on trust prior to diving into someone Else’s opinion. After all, it’s your currency – you own it. Good luck.

******************

by Shefaly (please see her Bio here)

Trust is a non-negotiable essential in business. The post linked here refers to web-based business-to-consumer interactions. But as social currency, Trust is the most significant in interactions amongst organisations, customers, employees and regulatory bodies.

Definitions

Wikipedia defines social currency as “information shared which encourages further social encounters“. Social currency is different from social capital which refers to “connections within and between social networks and individuals“.

Social currency – some characteristics

a) No distinction between ‘physical’ and ‘virtual’ worlds

b) No distinction between ‘individuals’ and ‘corporate entities’

c) No distinction between validity of negative or positive normative labels

Determining the value of Trust as social currency

a) Verifiable Identity and antecedents

b) Consistency

c) Reliability

d) Peer recognition

e) Value of the network

f) Individuality and collaborative consciousness

The original article can be found here and it elaborates on each of the points above.

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If it Quacks like a Buck…..

On August 13, 2009

In General Information

If it looks like a buck, and talks like a buck, and quacks like a buck – it’s probably a buck.

So when your money gets “free will” and starts walking out the door door, that’s bad enough. When flies out the window en mass enabled by the same social media that brings money in the door – serious management issues arise. Should organization choose fight, flight, or cooperation?

Battle lines are being drawn:

“Among large U.S. companies, 33% have employees on staff to monitor e-mail messages — up from 15% last year, one survey found. The Proofpoint study also found that 31% of companies had fired workers who breached confidentiality via e-mail, and 8% had fired someone over a social-networking leak. The survey found 41% of respondents are worried about potential leaks via Twitter. ZDNet (08/10)”

“Marines banned social networking sites from their computers Tuesday due to security concerns, and the Pentagon announced a policy review. But Pentagon’s top officer will still tweet (Christian Science Monitor 08/05)“

“A great way to keep up with the latest Navy news is through the MyNavyMyFuture Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/mynavymyfuture. Just FYI for anyone who’s on Twitter. The handle is based off the Navy Officer site www.mynavymyfuture.com. (NavyNima – recruiter)“

The New York Times reports, “The N.F.L. has identified the enemy and it is Twitter.”

There are literally thousands of articles on this subject but none of the few that I read came to any conclusion, so I will:

Money is becoming intangible (cannot be contained) and Social Media is becoming tangible (has become the container)

The very structure of organizations is changing. Trying to control the temperature of the room when the windows have been blown out will only destroy existing controls faster. A completely new economic structure is emerging complete with new factors of production, incentives, institutions, accounting, and currency.

Swap or swamp?

Easier said than done? Not really; all we need to do is swap the same methods that we use to manage tangible assets with those same methods that we use to manage intangible assets. There are in fact people and organizations trying to do this (specifically this author) but you won’t find then in corporations anymore.

Companies have no choice but to understand migration patterns, flock actualization needs, motivation, and environmental issues. Going from an economy where the corporate charter is only “to deliver shareholder value” to one of safeguarding the health and welfare of people and their property” is a huge leap.

The discussion of Conversational Currency is required to understand the underlying economic forces that drive social media and the emerging institutional structure for corporations to create value in a computer enabled society.

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