I posted this thread over 1.5 years ago. The issue is still very relevant to me, although it is apparent that I have not asked the question in an engaging enough way for anybody to have actually engaged with it.

So... Now whenever I feel like a discussion I'm in on this topic gets bogged down in these issues of semantics, I'm going to ask for suggestions and link people here.

Suggestions about how to frame this topic in a more engaging way are also welcome.

For a peek at some attempts to play with langauge that is invented rather than adopted visit the FlowSpace Brainstorming Worksheet and Dimensions

Edit: Fixed link.

I see nearly endless opportunties -- just one example: http://www.approval-ratings.net/

Truly endless -- and I am very "engaged" in this field....

:D nmw

ps: dimensions link (?)

well, with freq flyer points and coffee shop loyalty cards, we're simply talking about incentives, yes?

and with college degrees and educational certificates of all kinds we're talking about recognition, yes? (that recognition is itself an incentive, I suppose)

with eBay and o/net we also talk about reputation

with movie entrance procedures we talk about tickets

so can't we talk about the flows that these various mechanisms encourage without calling them currencies? I would wager that it's even possible to draw parallels between these flows and the flows encouraged by money, without getting bogged down in the economics talk

insightful link nmw pos 5

sorry, I was incomplete above - eBay there's reputation and o/net there's both reputation and content feedback - amazon and netflicks have content feedback as well, yes? - is there another name for that? it's the same as hotel or restaurant stars

and I guess hotels.com is good for "commercial" hotels, hotels.us might be good for american hotels, hotels.de, hotels.eu -- each would probably have different criteria for rockin' hotels...

;D nmw

Ted:

So there are ways of counting (we don't have to say accounting) things in different domains: Reputation, feedback, incentives, statues, performance, value, tickets, coupons, rebates, certifications, degrees, medals, ribbons, stars, etc.

What I'm trying to talk about is what they all have in common as tools we use to shape, measure and facilitate flows.

Each one has particular rules for:

• How they are created and who can create them (Issuance in currency parlance)
• How they can move among people or organizations (transactions)
• How their value can change forms (be converted or exchanged)
• How/When the value ceases to be (expiration or retirement)

It looks so much like currencies that I have difficulty finding a better analogy. What do we call these things as a group? What do we call the principles at apply across all of them?

okay, now we're getting somewhere! :-)

of course, "currencies" works for me

could we call them "tokens"?

Tokens is certainly a less loaded term.

I'll bet people are a little less attached to their current definition.

Of course, speaking to you as my token government worker friend, I see other ambiguities. I'm not sure they're bad ones though.

Tokens? Markers? Indicators?

Maybe it is enough to use any of these terms in a more or less context sensitive ways. When you are explaining concepts, you can explain how each of these is another way of talking about currency, and then you can be an nuanced as you like in describing particular applications.

On the other hand, it is also important work to challenge our automatic associations of money and currency with the inefficient and often ineffective systems that we have known. Few people understand that the core practices of finance and banking are only a few short centuries old. These are artificial systems and therefore it is entirely appropriate to subject them to analysis leading to change or even radical redesign.

Agreed Gerry, but to have the conversation, the participants need to move past their fear of loosing everything they know about consuming and owning. They are attached (I am attached) to the current system as part of what it generates is a factor of my identity for better or worse.

Helping people understand that they are already using tokens, awards, degrees, reputation, points systems... as currencies and thus help them understand this process-make it transparent feels more empowering to me.

Yes -- frames, right?

;D nmw

ps:

insightful link nmw pos 5

Yes. Helping them frame it in a way that engages rather than frightens. I am the one saying they are frightened. It is my interpretation of their reaction and what I feel when I step into that perspective.

What about reputab?

Arthur, I am very interested in this subject and would love to have a chance to talk to you. I met Thomas Kriese at the Beyond Broadcast conference this past weekend and he suggested I speak to you about our upcoming launch of a user-driven public access station here in Denver. I've looked through your site and postings here and its clear you'd have a lot to offer. We've been exploring various rating, ranking, and social currency approaches and I look forward to getting your perspective. I'll try e-mailing you as well, but I'd like to talk on the phone or in person, since we're both in Denver.

Tony,

I know of your project. You guys are moving in the the Micro Business Development offices, right? (We're starting to explore currencies with them too.)

Steven Morris has been talking with somebody at Deproduction about using a currency to help elicit the kinds of participation and volunteering you want from the community. He's been consulting with me about it, and we're supposed to be setting up some time for us all to put our heads together on this topic when I get back to Denver.

Is that the kind of thing you had in mind?

Arthur, thanks for summing up properties so succinctly - that's a great place to launch from.

So...we're looking for things where we can describe those properties for a variety of capital: financial, social, and probably individual and ecological of some sort.

I think that in each capital space we could meaningfully give the "media of exchange" its own term: "money" in the financial space, "prestige" in the social space, etc. where "media of exchange" or something similar would be the generalizeable term. (Xerox brand photocopying machine. ;)

The biggest issue then is that all these different kinds of capital reflect certain values. If there's only one type that's recognized in my world, say money, then it's RELATIVELY simple, though different groups of people might value how I manage risk and others might manage how much stuff I own. But in general people would agree: more is better.

However once you start thinking there's other kinds of capital, it gets tricky (because these aren't mutually exclusive): I've got SO much money I have an enormous mansion and a fleet of Hummers! But wait, doesn't that show both I'm ostentatious (lowers my social capital) and that I'm wasteful (lowers both my social capital and ecological capital)?

So the problem is not only the properties of a media of exchange within its own capital space (i.e. money in the financial space) but also how to exchange one for another in dfferent spaces.

Because things haven't been inculcated into capitalistic culture where you can explicitly value, say, a homemaker for his/her social value, people try to come up with an economic value. In particular, people attach prices to the functions a homemaker typically does and announces that this is the value of homemaking. Contrast this to the function that a salesperson does (brings in money) to see that this is a conversion problem: salesperson is entirely in the money domain, whereas homemaker raises social capital but functions virtually not at all in fhe financial domain. If you looked at what a salesperson actually does on an item-by-item basis, there's nothing that justifies the salary OTHER than bringing in the money. (Having done both, I believe getting a 5 year old who is terrified of thunderstorms to put on his shoes when it might rain outside requires at least as much in the way of domain knowledge (anxiety management, child development), persistence, organization, and specialized persuasion skills as sales.)

So my first question is: how do we make these different means of exchange convert, do they float like money-currencies against each other? or do we pin them somehow like a conversion from one unit system to another?

Second, if I'm in a corporation, and the only thing that being reported to my investors with even an attempt at transparency is how much profit we've made, then is it possible to consider the social capital within the corporation in a meaningful way (I think not, which is why I think that type of reform will end up being key)? If it's not measured -- let alone reported -- then how can it tie into the social capital within the community?

Third, are there social network analysis results on what types of social network topologies enhance value creation for the purposes of developing financial gain?

---

As for the practical:

Jean, could you convey the concept via a Price Is Right type of game? I'm not so sure that people need to think away from currency/money so much as towards the idea that other types of capital have fungible media of exchange.

Oops, I just re-read the problem statement, and my response did probably exactly what you DIDN'T want.

So to fix that :) I'll just say that once if you can go in one direction you should be able to go in the other.

Instead of "capital" you can use the term "well-being" and get pretty much the same idea: there's a way to give and take among these domains so that the well-being in one doesn't destroy the well-being of another.

Jessica,

I agree with you (even if this is rather "mixed-up confusion"). I have, myself, been thinking along these lines.

When I was in undergrad. school, there was a professor there who put forth the proposition that we should read Schumacher -- and so I did (he only assigned one article, but I read all of the "selected works" collection [1]). The sermon we were recieving was called "Economic Development".

One of the basic calculations economists commonly make is "marginal productivity" -- how much more you "get" out of putting one more "unit" in. Unit of what? Economists tend to be very abstract: they view the world as made up exclusively of "people" and "things" -- and to count/tally up all of this stuff in the world, they use these units: "labor" and "capital".

I once heard how helicopters had been shipped to China -- and that they just stood there to rust in a barren field. That doesn't seem very productive to me. Are helicopters "more" capital than thousands of shovels (can they make more good things happen?)? Likewise, there are different kinds of labor (this may be somewhat less "obvious" -- but I don't think a neurosurgeon would be "appropriate" [2] for fixing an automobile's electrical system).

The punch line is that the simplified economic perspective is to plug "capital" and "labor" into formulas that chew on these numbers to spit out "productivity" guidelines (which usually result in more "capital-intensive" technologies for some people, and more "labor-intensive" technologies for others). So some parts of the world get "wired up", other parts use hand-written notes and "runners" (people who deliver messages).

However, my main point: giving someone a helicopter is not necessarily a "capital investment" -- it could also just be an example of stupidity.

;D nmw

Part of the reason Arthur wants to talk about something other than currency is that the terminology itself tends to situate the conversation in the space of market exchanges. The point is that currency can apply to things like prestige and social capital that do not have exchange value.

For those currencies that do have a role in exchange, there can be an issue of exchange rates and markets, but for many local currencies there isn't much of that. The currency just circulates and pays for one thing and then another until it is redeemed.

My own view is that the ability to exchange these currencies (the ones with exchange value, at least) is key to being able to have an economy based primarily on these currencies. I think that would be both possible and desirable. I've been thinking about having several classes of exchange currencies in addition to the "official" currencies that are the basis of the economy now. By making it easier or harder to make exchanges between the different classes, you can encourage the assets to flow in certain directions. For example you would encourage the circulation of the alternative currencies by imposing higher exchange fees to redeem it in official currency, or to take investment assets and use them for consumption. The currency for consumption might decay to encourage people to spend it fast or to invest or give away any surplus.

BTW, you can edit your posts if you made a mistake on something or wanted to rephrase, just click on the date and you should see on edit tab if it is your comment.

I can think of a lot of reasons why technology like a helicopter might go unused. There is a lot of support facilities and equipment that goes into keeping them flight worthy not to mention the trained pilots. Likewise you can't just give someone a computer and think you have bridged the digital divide, you have to show them how to use it and what they might use it for.

interesting link nmw pos 1

exactly !!

(and that is very improtant in the context of "flow", "exchange", etc.)

Gerry Gleason said:

Part of the reason Arthur wants to talk about something other than currency is that the terminology itself tends to situate the conversation in the space of market exchanges. The point is that currency can apply to things like prestige and social capital that do not have exchange value.

The simplistic reason why they do not have an "exchange value" is that they are not (normally) publicly traded.

Now that I just wrote that, I recognize that the WTC used to be an icon of market capitalism and/or US hegemony (which is why there had been several attempts to "attack" it before 9/11/2001). The result is that this "prestige symbol" was "paid for" by the lives of terrorists and innocent bystanders and now also such PITA-phenomena known as "airport security", "Iraq War", etc. Putting a monetary value on all of this is probably impossible.

I think one of the most obvious cases of such "prestige" is awards (ceremonies, etc.). That reminds me of stuff that I have read by Claude Levi-Strauss (is anyone familiar with his work?) -- that might be an interesting path to follow up on (? - don't present remember many details)...

Gerry Gleason said:

I've been thinking about having several classes of exchange currencies in addition to the "official" currencies that are the basis of the economy now. By making it easier or harder to make exchanges between the different classes, you can encourage the assets to flow in certain directions.

Actually, I think stock markets resemble what you are describing. I am quite happy about the fact that more and more information becomes available about companies and their "dealings" -- largely due to the supply and demand for their products (e.g. consumer reports), but also their stocks (e.g. stuff like WSJ and/or fuckedcompany [1]).