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Hi there,

I would like to present the ideas in this article below for discussion with folks on this forum.

The article itself is something I put together over night but I have been sitting with the ideas for a couple years now.

I could be a lot more elaborate in my presentation of these ideas, but I thought I'd run it by other curiously minded folks, to have some critical feedback points, prior to putting significant energy into it...

With that said, please enjoy and comment as appropriate.

Original URL: http://evolvingtrends.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/p2p-social-currency-...

P2P Social Currency (Money 2.0)

October 21, 2008 at 7:18 pm

Premise:

One of the foundational elements of society is the definition of money.

Changing how money is defined will change society.

Dialog:

If we had a networked, programmable currency then I could tell my money to exchange itself only for goods/services that are made by vendors who care about the planet AND who have donated to my chosen candidate for President.

I can be as particular as I want and my money should do the figuring out of whom to pay itself to, based on rules I supply, and based on information it can access about the parties I’m trading with.

Another example for networked, programmable currency is to enforce rules on the spending of money that I give to my kids (luckily no kids yet) so they don’t buy food that contains unhealthy ingredients.

The new networked, programmable money should abandon the idea of paying interest on borrowed money. There is so much debt in the system that it would take decades to get rid of it and return the economy to normal functioning. The interest on debt is like bad cholesterol. While it fattens the economy, it ultimately clogs the global economic arteries and can lead to economic failure, as it has done (see: global economic meltdown 2008.)

In my opinion, the concept of “credit” and “credit rating” is good but the concept of interest is not. What I mean is that people and businesses should have a credit rating but it should be tied to something other than their ability to pay interest on money borrowed.

If you lend money to someone, where that someone is chosen per the particular criteria you’ve programmed into your money, you should be able to get your money back and get “good will” points that would replace today’s “hamster wheel” concept of credit rating, which was designed to encourage people to buy money with money, which is not only retarded but gives value to money from nowhere. Instead of being rated on your timeliness in paying back money borrowed + interest, you should be rated by how much you’ve lent others and how much time you’ve given people to pay you back, and this rating, e.g. your “good will” points, becomes your credit rating. This way people can dictate that their money is to be exchanged for goods/services only from providers with N “good will” points or more.

Maybe a good place to try this P2P Social Currency (or “Money 2.0″) would be in an online virtual world?

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I don't mean to reply ahead of Josephine here. But I believe it's necessary to clarify my own position with respect to the two different approaches that we have identified so far:

1. working with like-minded folks (read: intellectuals) and letting a familiar solution emerge, or

2. working with the average man/woman and letting an unexpected solution emerge

#1 is comfortable

#2 is not

If I follow the first approach, which I have done plenty of in the past, my experience has been that we end up going up in our head before addressing our feelings about the problem, i.e. before exploring and reflecting on our feelings.. feelings that may need a lot of attention and reflection... and in doing so we risk coming up with a solution that is driven by unprocessed feelings, like pride, anger, isolation (being protected from real emotions), detachment (having no real emotions), abandonment by society/others, etc Such solution would not be sustainable because any solution that is based on unresolved feelings is spiritually/psychologically unsustainable.

Yet another approach that's neither what I'm advocating nor the alternative approach we're all familiar with, is for someone, who has assimilated the concerns, hopes, wishes and struggles of their whole generation into their consciousness, to articulate a solution that has emerged from their symbiotic connection with their entire generation.

Such people probably have white beards and no internet connection :)

I know I am not there, not even 3/4 of the way, and many years have to pass with me listening to people and integrating their concerns, hopes and struggles into my consciousness before a solution can emerge that I can then articulate.

Through the intention I expressed, I'm trying to gain the wisdom or level of consciousness (not in abstract or metaphysical terms but in terms of real feelings of other people's needs) and as I work to foster that wisdom the solution will emerge.

Reality is based on symbiosis and emergence (see Zeitgeist II)

Connecting with people from all walks of life around the topic of how the new money should be designed, and letting their concerns, hopes and struggles influence us and vice versa is what I mean by symbiosis. Letting the solution build itself out of that experience is what I mean by emergence.

If I was to connect with intellectuals and like-minded people instead there will be little symbiosis, because I already know what other intellectuals know and they know what I know. We can't affect each others as much as we can be (or rather "should be") affected by average man/woman. We are locked into this intellectual group think, IMO, and the way to break out of it, IMO, is to experience symbiosis and emergence with the average man/woman, not with other like-minded people (or intellectuals.)

Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree, but for now it is the only tree I know, and I guess that, for myself, I need to make the journey to a place (metaphorically speaking) where I can experience symbiosis and emergence with the average man/woman. So that I can gain the wisdom I need to articulate the solution as it emerges from such symbiosis.

In other words, maybe all I did here was to seed an idea (of programmable multidimensional "conscious" money to help redefine how society is designed) and let the intellectuals do their own symbiosis and emergence while I go on a different path of symbiosis and emergence with the average man/woman, and then the two paths can connect, symbiotically, at some point, and some greater solution (or set of solutions) can emerge.

That's how I see it hypothetically.

Practically speaking, however, all I can do is what I have done and hope that I would run into someone or some group of people who'd want to join my aim to create the said symbiosis and emergence with people from all walks of life, who do not happen to be intellectuals and are not "like-minded" but "like-hearted"
Hi Marc , you say : If I was to connect with intellectuals and like-minded people instead there will be little symbiosis, because I already know what other intellectuals know and they know what I know. We can't affect each others as much as we can be (or rather "should be") affected by average man/woman.

Thank you for this perspective Marc! It helps me position myself, and you, and how we can eventually support each other in opening up new opportunities.

yes, the greater the diversity, the greater the creative potential.

I realize through your reply that I take the "meeting the average man/woman" as granted, as I have been living a nomadic lifestyle, spending much, if not most of my time on the road, hitch hiking across europe, meeting people on the city streets and public transportation, in the countryside, on the highways,...

I am also not interested in staying stuck within one type of sub-culture,
and perhaps paradoxically the kind of sub-culture I connect easily with ( as we recognize each other and do not need to talk to understand each other ) is one that tends to travel a lot and is open to a variety of cultures and environments. - yet as we are nomads, we tend to move on, and although we stay in touch we do not stay stuck with each other.

I realized that one of the most precious things for me is "shared space created for each other in ones realities", especially when "one can use this space to co-create" along "common intentions" ( and not specific expectations )

One of the most difficult aspects to traveling with little or no money is when one faces an absence of (shared) space following the specific need for control, the fears ( and related potential frustrations,anger,etc) of addictions and ego flows of consciousness a number of individuals are trapped in.( including ourselves at times - it also seems that the experience we live is the learning experience allowing us to expand our awareness through further detachment and healing , at some point extending from our own self to others, as if we are one greater connected body )

Such conditionality does not open up the space for unconditional opportunity making,

nevertheless, while discovering such aspects I also , through my lifestyle, could filter these as to find beauty and unconditionality , which brings me to keep and further develop faith.

Offcourse, each of us is learning, and the fears and ego flows are there- and the stronger our presence through unconditional love ,contemplative detachment into intentionality, the more the qi energy of "can" seems to flow from greater dimensions through us to heal us, and the more it seems we feel we heal ourselves by healing others, often simply through presence and allowing the energy to flow through us to feed the reversing of a consciousness of fear into one of trust - although this sometimes leads to a strong drama ( which may take different shapes with each person needing to go through certain de-crystallization, although when addiction holds on through drama it always seems to be the same person we see )

Hence, it is not as much about " intellectuals" vs non intellectuals,
but more a matter of shared consciousness.

I have been very close to people with whom I could not even share a language, as we understood each other and shared common intentions even beyond age, culture, or language barriers.

Such nomadic lifestyle ( http://nomadology.com ) leads to having at our disposal many mirrors , while being a mirror for others,
and already embodies in itself the first strategy.

It does not exclude the second strategy either, although the second strategy for me is not about closing myself into certain groups, but about opening up synergies with anyone that has space to share in its reality, beyond specific expectations and into intentionality.

And, well, yes, when some individuals already invest themselves fully into pursuing certain intentions, it makes it easier to share and co-create beyond the limitations of our isolation into mere contemplation, and beyond the daily spectacle of staying present while allowing ourselves and others learning to overcome drama of specific need for control and addiction-and the fears of losing such control on addictions.

I hope this does not sound too abstract.

More on

http://oikoumene.coforum.net/processdimensions

http://dante.ecobytes.net/2008/07/17/meaning-through-shared-realities/

http://dante.ecobytes.net/2008/07/19/mutually-empowering-rhizome/

Looking forward to interact further

Cordially

Dante
my last re-edit in reply to this post of yours did not save itself,

I was meant to add that I feel there are various levels of abstraction of intentionality,

and that being able to continue living while interacting with all different levels of abstraction of intentionality ,

while not excluding ourselves from connecting with individuals that experience intentionality at higher levels of abstraction ( as they built upon the different objects they had access to, allowing these differences within themselves to create relations that allowed for the ungoing emergence of objects at ever higher levels of abstraction ),

as connecting with each other itself allows for a form of emergence through connecting the variety of objects we internalized within ourselves.

Even though, we still , when living more and more into intentionality and less and less into conditionality ( including the conditional power current money can provide ),

survival may also require to maintain intentional relations at all kinds of different levels of abstraction.

ps : i m talking from my own experience, any other views are welcomed

That sounds like a precise definition of your intention.
>>

It is.

===Request: please defer any comment on this content of this section (if any) and put in another thread===

The whole dialog so has been a mix of many needs: "the need for dialog about the dialog", "the need for intention to manifest," and "the need to discover," so I'm happy that we've arrived at a precise definition of my intention, through what seems to be a process of mluti-dimensional zooming in. It's very hard to achieve that normally, especially online using unstructured text, so I'm really happy that we've somehow managed it. This section is enclosed in a Request Tag to prevent re-de-focusing of the discussion. I think online conversation can benefit from such structuring and I have plenty of ideas on a language for structured online conversation, that relies on user supplied "request tags" like the ones encapsulating this section that act like "traffic signs for conversation" that direct the conversation and eliminate all the shouting, friction and collisions between the units of the conversation

===End of request===


Do you look forward in using video?
>>

Video of audio. I prefer audio personally. But video maybe more powerful.


Discussing with various people?
>>

Interview format, yes, but the interviewer can talk about their own story too.


Editing presentations?
>>

I take it to mean Text/Graphics presentation, and if so, my answer is that that would be dry and would not create empathic connection with regular folks who would be the users of this new money. My thesis is that, given that I sense the coming unraveling of the current definition of money, I believe the time is right to switch from aloof intellectual discussions to a process of stirring up emotions, radical integrative listening, and empathy creating, engaging dialog about the definition of money and how it affects society, through story format, stories by common people. So no to text/graphics presentation, in general rule, but ===Request: consider the following in future post-first-stage context=== in the larger integrative view, there is room for every type of communication.==End of Request===


Documentaries?
>>

Video or audio documentaries, primarily.


Are there people you shared this specific intention with and that may collaborate?
>>

No, that's why I reached out to Michel to connect with others here.


Where are you currently based?
>>

Seattle, Washington (state), US
Hi Marc

I realize there seem to be more and more documentaries popping out that try to use a holistic tone with a call for participation and empowerment, and that generally sounds good to me ( although I am not sure if there is much of a subculture for distributed collaborative practices and tools that is being spread through a number of such new documentaries ).

I did not really collect much information about such movies/documentaries,
although I sometimes add some of them on http://delicious.com/deliciousdante/documentary

Some projects also seem to try to use a participative approach, such as
http://theshiftmovie.com/
although it still feels rather like a crowdsourcing approach rather then a fully open source copylefted distributed one.

But ... there are tools that allow us such approach... for example,
we can use ( although I did not test it myself yet-am in the process of finding a video camera to play with) online tools such as Kaltura:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaltura

http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/Main_Page

http://corp.kaltura.com/

I am writing some collaborative media project with a friend,
and collecting materials that could relate to the deep tagging of video interviews we would like to make with the following tag:

http://delicious.com/deliciousdante/moze

I would be very happy to open up such intention to more collaborators all over the world,
and build up a database of audio and video excerpts, perhaps also using existing materials (asking for them to take a copylefted licence?),

and then allow for deep tagging of each audio and video material.

I realize Dailymotion , motionbox , and more recently ( a few days ago ? ) youtube offer such deep tagging option:


I still need to find out about any options with Kaltura concerning deeptagging
( deeptagging : deep tagging of parts of video files. Open a file , select a portion of the video, and tag it. Viewers later will be able to skip right to that clip of the video by clicking on the tag. Longer videos can now easily be broken down into linkable pieces. )

// I did not fully research tools for audio deep tagging

It might also be interesting to consider other tools, that allow layers of annotations on existing text, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diigo ,
or even, that allow to create multiple layers of a website, such as shift space:

http://www.shiftspace.org/

-----

It could be nice to continue this conversation into a new forum thread -
what would you like to call the new thread?

"Distributed Views"? "Distributed Emotions"?, "Rich Media Project"? "Stir,Listen,Understand&Connect Project"? , ...


----

Some of the questions I ask myself in relation to such a project are:

- Where to host the materials ? - use free commercial hosting platforms/services- youtube, etc ? ; ask certain organizations/foundations to host materials ? set up our own servers and solutions for financing bandwidth?

note: there seem to be large non commercial databases of video such as on http://www.archive.org/index.php

- Can we connect such materials also to geotagging? And open up opportunities for trans-organizational listening and potential collaboration of individuals and organizations locally, around holistic approaches, questions, perspectives, ideas and initiatives?

...

as to further facilitate the emergence of communities of practice which include resources to which organizations have access to, while facilitating boundary spanning and p2pcollaboration,

and enabling a broader view through the collection of various views,

at some point eventually combining video and audio further with other text and links,
and immersive visual representations of relations between collected data.

-----

Which are the partners we could collaborate with?

Union of International Associations ?

http://www.uia.be/

which also has a data base of interconnected issues / world problems and human potential :

http://www.uia.be/sites/uia.be/db/db/x.php

-

Shift N ?

http://www.shiftn.com/

" We facilitate conversations between experts to reveal structures, linkages, causes and effects etc. We build scenarios and map different perspectives. We diagram systems and their dynamics. We explore the big picture "

...

others ?

If you use delicious.com , we can decide upon some common tag to share links with information revolving around such a project.

I also understand that there can be a special emphasis on " emotions " ... and on " listening to emotions " ,
as to broaden awareness and , in complementarity with (dry?) "intellectual understanding : " emotional understanding " :

http://eqi.org/4bmodel.htm

1. Perception, Appraisal and Expression of Emotion
2. Emotional Facilitation of Thinking
3. Understanding and Analyzing Emotions; Employing Emotional Knowledge
4. Reflective Regulation of Emotions to Promote Emotional and Intellectual Growth


---

Which leads to another series of questions regarding the approach - what theme to start with, with certain kinds of questions, ... ?
Additional Note :

there may also be potential in collaborating through new platforms such as

http://socialmediaclassroom.com/

on which Howards Rheingold , etc ( Samuel Rose ? ) are working on

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_social_media_classroom_a_n...
another note for collaboration:

if you would like to work together on a map I started on glinkr.net ,
feel free to create yourself an account on glinkr using your email adress,
and send me a mail to dante.monson - at - gmail , with the email you used to register,
so that I can invite you to use and edit that map - which can extend into understanding how to use interviews and video, audio, text databases to collectively develop our (holistic?) (emotional intelligence?),
with as starting points our emotions regarding the monetary and financial systems ( ? )

It could be nice to continue this conversation into a new forum thread -
what would you like to call the new thread?

"Distributed Views"? "Distributed Emotions"?, "Rich Media Project"? "Stir,Listen,Understand&Connect Project"? , ...
>>

"The Conscious Ladder: Talk, Listen, Empathize (with your feelings, others'), Process, Integrate (into your consciousness), Articulate"

The thread title itself in abridged form is "The Conscious Ladder"

It is really a mirroring process the way you had defined the concept of "mirror" in that document, but at each iteration of this mirroring process you go up one step in your consciousness/awareness about the issue.

What do you think?

I am not conveying any knowledge or authority on this subject. I'd rather be listening at this point, as I have TALKED quite a bit! I'm still at the first 3-4 steps of this ladder. I don't feel that I have done enough listening and empathizing yet, and I sense that I'm trying to remove myself instead of getting more in touch.

So obviously I could use your help and the help of other like-minded people in getting deeper in touch with this place. That is despite my belief that I/we ought to break out of our intellectual inner loop, make the journey to another place (metaphorically speaking) and interact with the regular man/women around this issue of defining a new currency.

So please feel free to start that thread and define the iterative mirroring that takes place (per your definition of mirror, and with respect to the self and the other and multiple levels/states of the self) as one goes up this hypothetical consciousness ladder. I think that's a good idea...

But let's also step back for a while, and Process.

Thanks a lot.
Hi Dante, since this forum allows a limited number of nested replies, I'm replying to your last reply right here.

My reply:

We can see each other more clearly now, so that is definitely good.

As far as detachment into intentionality, I believe you mean detachment from contemplation, but in my case (here is me mirroring myself) I'm attached to intentionality 90% of the time these days so for me this whole dialog is a detachment into contemplation, away from intentionality. Yet it seems that your detachment into intentionality and my detachment into contemplation have a huge overlap, which is the shared consciousness.

I agree, it's not about intellectual vs average man/women, it's about shared consciousness (this is me mirroring you)

But all things are one.

And, to me, that one thing is consciousness.

I can see you and you can see me. Now let's carry on with our intentions.

I had stated mine as:


I'm interested in defining the problem we have with today's definition of money in terms of stories to be told by people from all walks of life. Stories that show how the current method of money creation (via interest), the scarcity approach, and the 1-dimensional nature of the value system inherent in the current definition of money (or the lack of an explicit programmable criteria that can encapsulate each user's multidimensional value system at the single transaction level)... show how the current definition of money is bad for society and how it has affected us as people, in plain language, stories told by everyday people.
>>

Can you please make a precise statement of your intention with respect to new definition of money (even though I can sort of gather what it is from all the links you've posted and all that you mirrored about yourself)?

Then we can have a useful output in terms of statements of intention.

And others can make sense out of our intentions.

Thanks
Hi Dante, Josephine, Michel,

Here is proof (to me personally) that I've gained new understanding and better awareness from our dialog:

See comment #1 under Michel's blog post on Ethical Economy:

http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/discussing-the-ethical...

Hi Dante,

I am looking forward to having your intention captured, in a paragraph or two, with respect to the challenge of re-defining money, the economy and society, but specifically with respect to re-defining money if you can.

Thank you for all the time you've put into this dialog.

I believe it will be worth it.

I definitely feel like I have new insight to move ahead with.

I still wish the conversation had some sort of traffic signs to direct its flow, but that requires custom made forum software. Mind maps do not replace textual conversation, IMO, but they are helpful in a different way.
Very interesting - " radical subjectivity "? ( hmm, well, still in the process of trying to understand what that concept really means )

As for me, I have some ideas for different architectures of trust information systems, preferably intentional trust information systems ( as opposed to conditional "trust" information systems / that are conditional "trust" as it may not be trust at a individual level, but its use ( and conditions ) may be enforced on the individual through a monopoly )
---

It sounds like an exciting perspective, as individuals themselves will be able to program their protocols,

and choices for one protocol or another will directly be a ethical and political choice supporting the kind of parallel societies we decide for.

(... and the emotions and awareness play a big role in the protocols people might choose to use. )

It will also be interesting to understand the meta information systems ( and protocols?) potentially connecting certain protocols with each other, etc

I ll come back to this later.

In the meantime, a reminder of some links:

http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Money

I also intuitively feel it might be interesting to explore Transfinancial economics

http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

I did not take the time to fully read it yet, but just an intuition for later - also, it seems Robert, who wrote that page, is developing a deeper understanding of it.

I also feel like suggesting :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_economics#Technological_LTV_...

Speak to you soon.
OK, I see re: intention alignment vs conditional gating

The only thing I have to say is this:

I am in favor of an Ethically Designed Platform for Conscious Economic/Social Transactions

I am not in favor of a Platform for Ethical Economic/Social Transactions

The latter implies control of economy/society towards an end. The former implies emergent self-awareness.

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