These define our aims, hopes and dreams; and thus, the kinds of groups we are seeking to collaborate with. The guiding questions we used to light our way began simply:
What follows are some of our answers to these questions.
The following attempts to distill the shared context we have developed over the last year and a half. The guiding question motivating this work is, “what is it about the confluence of digital technology and global economic circuits that needs to change?”
Economikit emerged in reaction to a debt-creating engine meant to produce capital from capital, in a negative loop reinforcing the system’s self-perpetuation. Our work lives as a set of experiments responding to this situation.
Here we are, in the collapse of American Capitalism, along with the rise of Black Lives Matter and the tide of social awareness in the White world. Movements of consciousness-raising and techno-utopianism become entangled in the promise of Bitcoin, blockchain, and other distributed tech.
But are these technologies anything other than the last gasps of the Western mind to make some “good” of the materialist and separatist mindsets that they’ve become beholden to under Scientism? Can technology ever be generative and sustainable, or does it inherently depend on externalising the suffering of other beings? Is trying to engineer our way out really a valid path forward, or is this all just spiritual bypassing?
This past year working on Holo-REA has been a fascinating, exciting and occasionally overwhelming foray into the evolution of distributed systems. In that time, a small group of contributors has managed to prototype a robust economic ledger which not only manages supply chain tracking, but also facilitates complex operational planning and business process management.
It is truly a simple and elegant solution to numerous economic and resource coordination activities. But, that was already known— this is the second (some would say third) generation of an existing system that has been proven in multiple real-life case studies.
I first discovered the ValueFlows project while searching for movements aiming to replace the current world economy with more sustainable and humane ways of organising. With apps like Buycott having found traction and new blockchain-based platforms like OriginTrail gathering momentum, the rise in consumer demand for transparent and trustworthy information on the products and services we buy seems set to skyrocket in the near future.
But consumer-curated platforms like Buycott & Good On You and even the next generation of blockchain-enabled supply chain tracking systems only go so deep. We need more than just guesses from third-parties or even information that lets us see inside the products we buy— we need information to show us what's going on externally, too. That includes the health and wellbeing of those involved in the production process as well as their communities; but much more critically it also includes the negative effects and impacts our production system has on the natural environment. And we need these capabilities delivered in a way that allows organisations to experiment with and own their own systems; not as part of a one-size-fits all global solution.
I think this recent interview with my former colleague and collaborator Thomas Miller is the clearest and simplest I've ever been able to communicate the purpose of 'open value networks', the promise of Holochain and ValueFlows; and why I believe methods like this are the most likely means of salvation for our species. (more)