Nobel Laureate Dr. Robert Solow calculated that 80% of economic growth can be attributed to technological change. This is the domain of engineers, scientists, and technologists. Accordingly, knowledge assets and their derivatives are not actually “intangible” but rather, they are simply invisible and unable to be measured directly. Like the proverbial “tip of the iceberg” the visible part of the economy is supported by the invisible assets below the surface.
True to form, emerging technology now offers us the ability to quantify this vast reservoir of value. We now have the opportunity to unlock an economy many times larger than the one we currently grapple with – the one in which there is “never enough money” to care for our planet and meet the needs of our civilization.
The Innovation Bank:
The Innovation Bank utilizes game mechanics, blockchain technology, and Artificial Intelligence to measure the natural interactions of engineers, scientists, and technologists within a simulation representing this hidden economy. Novel Financial Instruments may then represent this new value.
What is an Ingenesist?
A “Capitalist” is a person who uses money to invest in trade and industry for profit. An “Ingenesist” is a person who uses ingenuity to invest in trade and industry for profit. Both operate in tandem to arrive at optimal solutions to market requirements.
Join Us:
The Ingenesist Project comprises the collective vision, intellect, and creativity of more than 250 engineers, scientists, and technologists who have collaborated across various industries over the past 30 years as a non-profit research and governance organization.
Many blockchains exist for many reasons, but none are built for the purpose of discerning physical fact from digital fiction. Where other industries use blockchain to correct their flaws, a blockchain of engineers and scientists can amplify their superpowers. Our ability to leverage truth may be the most powerful tool available to shift political priorities toward resolving our most pressing Global challenges.
For almost a decade, we have been writing about how four important aspects of blockchain technology could create thousands of times more value if applied to the engineering and scientific professions rather than the financial industry. We have also been amazed by the early ambivalence, reluctance, and often visceral resistance among some professional engineering societies, educational institutions, and engineering enterprise leaders, toward this technology.
Engineers and scientists need to reorganize ourselves fast if we are to have any expectation of pulling out of our flaming planetary tailspin of social, monetary, and ecological unrest.
The Thing That Happened.
Blockchain blew onto the scene with the Bitcoin white paper published in 2008. This technology was coincident with the 2008 financial crisis which had exposed near-fatal structural vulnerabilities in our financial system — going so far as to suggest a new form of currency could be developed. Blockchain introduced the idea of immutability to the financial system where laws had failed, thus code as law became the mantra.
An essential part of this arrangement is that there must be no overarching organization that can act against the consensus of the entire community and alter any transaction after the fact. This is broadly called “decentralization”. This puts many financial transactions at odds with governments who enforce laws (i.e., law is law). That struggle continues.
1. Immutability is our superpower.
Unlike the financial industries, engineers and scientist are abundantly familiar with immutability. You can’t return the lumber to the forest. An airplane can’t be un-crashed. You can’t un-pour concrete. In fact, all scientific processes are irreversible – that is what entropy is all about. In effect, blockchain would be far better suited to represent the immutability of the underlying asset rather than the flimsy paper that represents said asset. This makes more sense.
2. Engineers and Scientists are Already Decentralized.
Earlier, I complained about about resistance by the engineering institutions. What if this flaw is actually a feature? The experience taught us that there is no singular engineering or scientific authority that can sufficiently control or enforce its will on any of the others. Rather, we found engineers and scientists to be sequestered behind a multitude of organizational silos such as corporations, professional societies, ontologies, jurisdiction, national boundaries, academic titles, etc. Even if they wanted to change, they could not find each other to do so. It is no wonder that intellectual capital is called “Intangible” on a corporate balance sheet. In effect, the engineering and scientific professions are already decentralized. All we need to do is measure ourselves into a “tangible” existence.
3. Widespread Consensus Already Exists.
There is likely no greater consensus in human civilization than the laws of Nature. Every Noun on Earth is subject to these laws without exception. The scientific method, considered the greatest innovation in human history, provides us with a means to update, modify, correct, and replace old consensus with renewed consensus. Everything else can be expressed as the probability that a consensus exists. The scientific method is able to defend against failures in a manner not unlike the Byzantine General’s problem upon which much cryptography is based.
4. A Stable and Convertible Token
Money represents productivity as measured by Gross Domestic Product. Dollars represent American productivity, Yen represent Japanese productivity, etc. Yet nearly 80% of all increases in GDP can be attributed to technological change. This is the domain of engineers and scientists. Therefore, a token representing engineering and scientific productivity also directly represents GDP. In other words, we can print money.
Here’s the Good News
Blockchain technology was invented by engineers as a direct analogy of the engineering process – not finance. This is actually very good news because nobody controls a monopoly on intellectual capital which must be fought, beaten, and dismantled in order for engineers and scientists to reorganize. Engineers and scientists can build their own blockchain that represents their work-product and govern the presentation of physical fact over digital fiction. Engineers can exist with out Blockchain but blockchain can’t exist without engineers. This is a game we can easily win.
A Blockchain Of Engineers and Scientists
Financial products are fictitious representations of real things and therefore easily manipulated into many forms while the asset that they represent remains physically unchanged (suitably called “hypothecation”). There exists a powerful technology that is abundant and cheap and that can directly express physical fact as a monetary unit rather than financial fiction.
If we work together, global engineers and scientists can simply walk onto the economic landscape unchallenged to begin altering the development priorities for the World. No kidding. Again, there is nothing standing in our way, except our own unwillingness to change. This may be the most important opportunities that has ever been presented to the Sciences.
Blockchain Is Better for Engineering. Global Engineers and Scientists must adopt Blockchain Technology to directly enforce physical fact over financial fiction.
Human civilization has progressed through many stages. Each stage arose from the “integration” of the tools developed in the prior stage. Believe it or not, the next economic paradigm will arise from the integration of the tools being developed in the current stage of human development. Let me explain:
Hunter -gatherer:
We started as hunter-gathers who traveled from place to place to follow animal migrations and seasonal flora. People would collect fallen branches and burn them for heat or cooking. Then people started to sharpen rocks that could be used to hunt food better than a dull rock. They sharpened rocks to chop down trees for warmth and shelter. Soon they sharpened rocks to till soil.
The agrarians
The arrival of the agrarian age came when the arrow, the axe, and the plow were integrated; that is, the output of one became the input of another – allowing people to conserve energy and increasing productivity. The emergence of communities led to the division of labor as people specialized their skills. People soon developed tools and techniques for forging metals, building structures, and harnessing of forces such as wind, sun, water, and domesticated animals.
City-states
The arrival of City-States arose when division of labor, harnessing forces, and transportation became integrated. Spare time became available to experiment in ideas such as governance, laws, civil services, and currency. Travel allowed for trade of goods, services, and the spread of knowledge across great distances.
Philosophers
The age of philosophy emerged as the leisure class, knowledge exchange, and civil law integrated such that people began to question existence, spirituality, and test theories about the observations that they constantly witnessed in the natural world.
Scientists
The scientific age emerged from the integration of tools developed during the philosophical age. Written language, mathematics, geometry, came together as alchemists attempting to turn lead into gold, instead created many other new and useful things from the elements. Astronomy, calculus, the scientific method, and modern finance were born.
Industrialists
The industrial age emerged as an integration of the tools developed by the scientific age. Eli Whitney demonstrated the “interchangeability of parts” paving the way for modern production. The printing press and cotton gin demonstrated the scalability of machinery while capitalization and securitization of value (finance) allowed a merchant class to allocate land, labor, and capital.
Information
The age of information formed from the integration of tools created by the industrial revolution. All that machinery created a tremendous amount of data. Computers were developed for processing data creating information that could be used to make productivity more efficient.
Knowledge
The Knowledge age emerged from the integration of tools developed during the information age. The Internet vastly accelerated the amount of information available from which knowledge could be applied as factors of production in physical systems from weather prediction, space travel, medicine, and new ways for people to organize their selves.
Innovation
The innovation age will emerge from the integration of tools developed by the knowledge age. So called “social media” is creating thousands of platforms upon which people reorganize themselves around interests, affinities, relationship, and commerce. As these tools integrate; that is, when the output of one tool becomes the input of another tool (and vice versa), a new economic paradigm will emerge.
Wisdom
Keep in mind that the agrarian economy and all previous stages are still with us today. Keep in mind that elements of future economies also exist today. Keep in mind that the US dollar has not always been the currency of trade nor should we expect that it will always be with us in the future. We can assume that the productivity inherent in people and communities is not dependent on the currency, rather, currency is dependent on it. Time is the only scarce resource and everyone has an equal amount of it. As such, time is the only true currency.
