The Next Economic Paradigm

Tag: convergence

9/11 and the Convergence Economy

Today, I have been reading a lot of posts related to 9/11 and the terrible events of that day.  The conversation lives.  It is propagated in every direction and expressed in so many different ways once unimaginable from editorialized news.

My memory of 9/11 was quite personal; I was the customer engineering account manager at Boeing – my customer was United Airlines.  I was fortunate to have worked with many UAL Pilots and Flight Attendants and their Unions; UAL lost 16 employees that day – I lost 16 friends.

I remember the anxiety in the aircraft business as the unspeakable was spoken, the impossible became possible, and the unreal became real.   My own identity was defined by commercial air travel and the safety and comfort of people and families.  The relationship between Boeing and UAL has always been profound; but the strain caused inside the industry was foreboding.

The fact that data could shift so rapidly called everything into question.   Relationships diverged, people no longer knew how to process the information that was available.  This gargantuan ‘outlier’ stained every single probability chart in existence – like a crater in a barren landscape.  The only clarity could be found in shorter time segments, before 9/11, after 9/11… but not 9/11.

“Google News” was one of the first information aggregation devices and was developed in response to one news junky’s need to know, as soon as possible, what is happening in the world of such micro-timing. As the subsequent political and economic swings overshot every rational stabilizing mechanism such as ‘checks and balances’, or ‘market arbitrage’ forces, the rest of us sought quicker and better ways to stay in touch with the events of the world.  This meant, quicker ways to stay in touch with each other.

Today, as 9 years of  “new time”  has been added to the risk equations, we can see the effects of radical cultural shifts; social priorities are gaining momentum over Wall Street priorities. While governments still wrestle with the old world order, a new one is forming in it’s place.  This new world has the power to perform many of the functions of corporations and government.  Can twitter catch terrorists?  Can Facebook entries trigger community awareness?  Can instant messaging deliver instant response?  How many lives are saved by Social Media?  I am not certain, but it is an important question to ask that age old question: Will good triumph over evil? or in economic terms; Is humanity self-correcting?

The convergence continues.  The next paradigm of economic development will continue on the micro-time scale as FB communities hit neighborhoods, Linkedin communities hit local communities of practice, and Twitter news armies grow.  Cooperation Capitalism will replace competitive Capitalism and social vetting will replace institutional surveillance.  Finally, a productivity backed currency will replace debt backed currency. Bring it on.

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The Social Media Resolution; From Monet to Blue Ray

The Convergence of Knowledge

The Ingenesist Project and related blogs such as Relationship Economy and now Conversational Currency have long predicted that the resolution of social media space will vastly increase from  “Monet” to “Blue Ray”.  The segmentation and convergence of social media space will happen on two fronts: Knowledge Inventory and Proximity.

From Strategis:

“As Facebook balloons to over 250 million users, many voice their appreciation for Facebook’s small social network feel.  Unlike its so-last-year counterpart, MySpace, Facebook has successfully maintained a very personal feel, finding hundreds of ways to link the most relevant people, in the most relevant ways.

Even so, because Facebook has so many interesting people, useful content, and relevant apps available, many users would appreciate a broader search option that would enable the to quickly search ALL of Facebook’s content. Thus, Face says: “your wish is my command”. And so it is. Facebook has now announced that it will soon make the change allowing users to search the entire site, not to mention, do new things like share status updates with everyone, rather than just confirmed friends. Expect to see these changes in full effect some time within the next two months”

What’s in store for the next 2 years?

While the coolness of Social Media is still riffing through society as the late adopters drive huge growth, nothing “economical” happens until people actually get together and build something.  In order to build anything, there must be an inventory of parts.  All these parts need to be in physical or virtual proximity to each other. A financial system must support the initiatives of the entrepreneurs in any market.

The United States of Mind

We’re about 3% into this new paradigm today.  At 20% the corporate structure will become increasingly mushy as many corporate functions are now handled in Social media space. At 30%, cooperation will “compete” with competition as a business model.  At 40% a new currency emerges to hedge debt backed dollar with productivity backed “conversational currency”.  At 50% people convert general dollar backed holdings to ‘conversational currency’ holdings.  At 60% social priorities dominate corporate priorities. At 70% the Innovation Bond dominates financial markets. At 80% international borders become fuzzy as knowledge flows as easily as, say, avocados and T-shirts do today.  At 90% global currency backed by productivity, dollar, Euro, Yen all expire.  At 100%, the president is elected to a “State of mind”.

Hold on, not so fast….

OK, so that’s the problem with predictions, it’s hard to survive with one’s credibility intact.  Kudos to Strategis for showing us the future!!

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The Great Convergence

Hey Kids, It’s 3D:

The objective of this article is to discuss the Great Convergence of computer enabled society. Social media must not be allowed to converge to a single apex – rather, it must converge to 3 distinct and tangible dimensions.

The factors of production for the industrial economy are land, labor, and capital.  If you lose one, you can’t use the other two to build an SUV, for example.  The factors of production for an innovation economy are social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital. All production in the new economic paradigm will result from the allocation of a “secret sauce” of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital.  Again, if you lose one, you can’t use the other two to build anything meaningful.

The congregation of congregations:

In order to find The Great Convergence, we simply need to examine Social Media to discover where social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital tend to congregate.

One of the more obvious illustrations appears to be playing out between LinkedIn, Facebook, and Myspace.  Many people use Linkedin for professional contacts (intellectual Capital), other people use Facebook for friends, family and more diverse associations (Social Capital), while many others use MySpace to post videos of their rock band, Artwork, or to discover the latest Mash up (Creative Capital).  Of course there are many more social networks, lots of cross talk, different demographics, rants and raves, etc.  I intentionally leave this analysis sparse as these conditions simply reflect the nature of The Great Convergence.

The Next Economic Paradigm:

We need to watch The Great Convergence with laser focus and deep personal interest because it will be extremely important for the development of what comes after the knowledge economy.   Whatever form this next economic paradigm takes, globally and locally, will depend upon The Great Convergence.  The Innovation Economy is the only wrench left in the toolbox for resolving the vast global problems that we face today.

The Innovation Economy must end global warming, restore financial accountability, enact sustainable enterprise, and institute renewable energy – or not.  This is a huge burden to ask of the next “greatest generation”.  It is clearly in everyone’s best interest to identify, encourage, and support The Great Convergence to form in 3D, before the old single-apex game “resets” and starts all over again, perhaps for the last time.

[The Ingenesist Project discusses this concept at length and identified various predictions, methods, and scenarios, including specifications for an Innovation Economy.]

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