Patterned after the nutrition labels we see on many food products, the social ‘nutrition’ labels promoted by Project Label (http://projectlabel.org/) are a way to leverage consumer knowledge to provide an idea of what impact a company’s products are having on personal health, nutrition and safety, the social and community level, and on a planetary, environmental… Continue reading
Searched for "Social Currencies"
The State of the Art of Complementary Currencies and its Open Source Software in 2010
“The International Journal of Community Currency Research (IJCCR) has produced a special edition which details some of the recent developments in the field of complementary currencies. It contains fifteen short papers which encompass discussions of the wider field, geographic reviews and reports on new forms of currency innovation. The edition highlights the growing range of… Continue reading
Towards Iconomics: the Creative Currencies projects in Latin America
Whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues,… Continue reading
The Evolution Will Be Socialized – The Contact Summit
excerpted from a post by Douglas Rushkoff …with some encouragement from a few great organizations including Shareable – I’ve decided to convene a summit called Contact. Contact will seek to explore and realize the greater promise of social media to promote new forms of culture, commerce, collective action, and creativity. I’m inviting technologists, artists, activists,… Continue reading
Beyond alternative currencies: towards asymmetric account systems for gift-based markets
I am finding myself increasingly surprised and dismayed at proponents of alternative currency who propose and promote systems that fundamentally offer very little change from our current system. In most cases these “alternatives” are simply non-governmental versions of the same transactional-scarcity model. The majority of innovation occurring currently is in inherently abundant informational goods and… Continue reading
Transparency as a Competitive Advantage for Alternative Currencies
Another interesting contribution on the open money debates, by Gregory Rader, who we also featured yesterday in a long post about asymmetric accounting: Excerpt: “The conventional wisdom regarding money is that privacy should be respected. People don’t like to talk about how much money they make or how much monetary wealth they possess. This shyness… Continue reading
The mycelial approach to social change: networking transformations instead of achieving ‘hierarchical’ reform
We can see there is a hierarchy focused way of creating change which is focused on changing what the hierarchy (government) does. And then there is a way that is based on transforming people from a grassroots way and then linking them up in mycelial networks. And which is based on collaborating between the different… Continue reading
Goteo: research on creative currencies and p2p-financing
Olivier Schulbaum of Platoniq, announces the following project: “AT LAST BUT NOT LEAST, we start a new adventure, whose codename is GOTEO (drop by drop) This is our new open R+D project. Goteo is a community platform for cultural and social innovation p2p financing, which is not exactly crowdfunding, but we do hope it will… Continue reading
How new currencies can change the world
Excerpts from an interview by the Integral Leadership Review, where Jordan MacLeod talks about his book: New Currency: How Money Changes the World as We Know It: JM: New Currency establishes money as a leverage point for economic and broader social transformation. It examines the historical evolution of money and economic systems and their interdependent… Continue reading
The digital currencies are here
The weak dollar. A Federal Reserve constantly being second-guessed. It’s times like these when talk inevitably turns to alternative or complementary currencies. While local currencies have come and gone, many involved in social networks are hoping peer-to-peer (or P2P) virtual currencies will, given the momentum to retool the financial system, have more staying power. With… Continue reading
Bernard Lietaer on the role of complementary B2B currencies in this crisis
Japan ” tried the classical solutions, and after five years, they stopped believing the economic downturn was a cyclical thing, that it was like all the other ones. That’s when they started implementing these structural kind of solutions, which is why Japan is a full-scale laboratory of complementary currencies. However, Japan still haven’t gone to… Continue reading
Evolver: a social network for change
Most popular social networks are designed to support what media critic Thomas de Zengotita has called the “flattered self,” constantly craving attention. The main purpose of these networks is to make a profit for large corporations. When I initially heard about about Evolver.net, launched by Daniel Pinchbeck and his Reality Sandwich crew, I was initially… Continue reading
Asia needs a Social Innovation Stimulus plan
The following is a draft editorial I would like to see published in the mainstream press. In the meantime, here’s an overview of how a social innovation policy could mitigate the effects of the meltdown. I’m addressing this to a hypotethical Asian audience, but it could be applied anywhere. Michel Bauwens: According to the Asian… Continue reading
George Monbiot explains complementary currencies
Radical journalist George Monbiot, gave a very accessible explanation of the case for introducing new types of currencies as an answer to the credit crunch. Via Common Dreams: “I want to introduce you to another way of negotiating a credit crunch, which requires no moral hazard, no hair of the dog and no public spending…. Continue reading
Do we need energy-backed currencies?
(via an email from Dante Monson) That we do need such a currency is one of the main underlying theses of Marc Fawzi’s project for a P2P Energy Economy, which he develops in our wiki. But the idea has been preceded by concrete experiments already, i.e. the Wat checks system in Japan (thanks to Dante… Continue reading
The Social Currency debate: key issues overview
Marc Fawzi launched an intensive debate on social currencies on our Ning community site, with 112 replies on November 28, as I write this. I asked him for an overview of that debate. Marc Fawzi: “Here is my summary: 1. With respect to my interactions with Dante, the discussions centers around how deep of a… Continue reading