The Future of Ideas and Money

Kellan suggested that some books are read better together and asks "Do you have favorite pairings?" Following Rich's post on the Creative Commons, I've been thinking about Lessig's The Future of Ideas and ever since the Naropa Workshop on Intentional Economics, I have thought it would be great to pair Lessig with Bernard Lietaer, author of The Future of Money.

I talked to Bernard about Lessig's code/architecture as the fourth category of ways to regulate. When a complementary currency is introduced, does it merely fall in the economic incentive category or is it a lower level change to code and architecture?

What is intentional economics? Bernard explained that instead of assuming the right money system is in place, we ask "What is our objective?" Then, only after we figure that out do we design the system of money.

Complementary currencies address social problems that the dollar ignores. The metric for the success of a complementary currency is not whether people choose to use it but whether it is fixing the problem the community set out to address. Since that is generally undefined for national money systems, we must assume that their purpose is not to change anything. As Lessig might say, they are designed to preserve the old against the new.

Here is a photo (thanks jonl) of our Jo's napkin slide from last night's presentation.

In The Future of Ideas, Lessig says

there is a benefit to resources held in common...the Internet forms an innovation commons (p. 23)...Innovation is best when ideas flow freely (p. 71)

Similarly, community currencies form an innovation commons. Only the private central bank can create national money, but when adaptation to new circumstances is desired, preserving the old against the new doesn't help us. When each innovator creates her own currency (through work completed instead of through a debt loan from a bank), a new innovation commons is formed.

The trick is that everyone must trust in the currency system. This requires data integrity. The top node in the hierarchical structure on the left can allocate security resources and the system can remain closed. However, in the configuration on the right, the responsibility for the data integrity security requirement is distributed among the community. This requires the system to be open, both code and policy process.

We'll continue the cross-pollination of ideas between Lessig and Lietaer in the next post.

Creative Commons in Austin

In trying to think of the first post, it seemed strange to mention a workshop introducing creative commons because surely everyone knows what that is. Unfortunately, that's not the case. One common experience that emerged from those attending the workshop was that so many people who should know about creative commons don't.

Even while so many people kvetch about the horrors of patents and copyrights, creative commons grows by being incorporated into Yahoo, Flickr, Google and many others. Many blogs we visit every day have the creative commons logo and license attached. Yet the average person doesn't know about this solution to sustaining cultural creativity while still protecting artist rights.

Perhaps it's because the average person lives off line while so many of us trying to change the world never unplug and face the people in first life. Or maybe we still need to develop advocacy skills?

The average artist or culture participant doesn't have the resources of the RIAA to lobby for laws. And while they restrict our access to culture more and more over the years, education and awareness among the public might be the only way to create a swell to counteract that. Fair Use and Public Domain is shrinking. Companies like Disney made fortunes off of our folklore (Pinocchio, Snow White, etc) and yet tries to restrict their ideas from entering the public culture like the works they made millions from by remixing.

Creative Commons allows artists and producers of work to give the public access to disseminate those works while the creator can retain as little or as much rights as they want. It personally reminds me of the concept of signifying. Like the musical dialog of Jazz and even the body dialog of capoeira, creative commons allows for a dialog of art and community. It allows me to put a call out to the world and hear the response. I can answer back, or watch it grow.

Let's grow the commons and make sure our children have folklore and a public culture to pass on to their children.