Alex and I have published our latest paper, in the series on money and tokenisation, from which some new terminology has emerged. We refer to what has enabled men, women and families to thrive for millions of years up to today as proto sustainability.
Proto sustainability relies on opensource knowledge to distil individual and communal needs, capacities, links, skills and learning into wisdom.
Opensource is the methodology that created the power of the internet and so much of the technology on which we rely today.
Opensource is how our needs and desires have been captured, stored and used by the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon and Meta to become dominant in the new hybrid economy.
The hybrid economy comprises two elements:
- old style, exchange money paradigm that proxies value to a third party medium;
- new style, direct value handling that captures, stores and uses the unique attributes of needs, capacities and links providing a repository of knowledge. This repository evidences what is valuable to men and women and from which we can learn, develop skills and techniques.
Direct Value Handling by Alex Nikolov and Clive Menzies
Summary
From the adoption of money some 3000 years ago, we’ve moved on from physical representations
of money such as shells, tobacco, precious metals and the like. We’ve progressed through paper
representation of physical metals and fiat currency to crypto currencies and other digital
representations of exchange money.
Methods of transactions have similarly evolved: from cheques, credit and debit cards to near field
communication devices (taps) and even no physical exchange at the point of transaction. For
example, Amazon Fresh enables people to walk into the store, pick up what they need and walk out. Data is recorded and collected and yes, their bank account or credit card is debited but there is a rich data set that is contributing to the direct value handling side of the new hybrid economy.
Dependency on money accelerated with urbanisation and “globalisation”. This has resulted in
money becoming the single point of failure in the global economy. We need, more than ever, to
develop and implement solutions that provide resilience.
We’ve witnessed enormous value creation by the new hybrid economy that has already implemented data driven, direct value handling based on opensource knowledge. The top three players in the hybrid economy are valued in excess of $15 trillion.
Implementing a solution that enables any of us to participate in the direct value handling economy
will resolve issues such as data ownership, privacy, security and other challenges.