But isn't scarcity absolutely fundamental to economics, especially in
a world of limited resources? "My analysis of this question is
based on the work of Carl Gustav Jung because he is the only one with
a theoretical framework for collective psychology, and money is fundamentally
a phenomenon of collective psychology." - Bernard
Lietaer, economist and author
Join us at the
future of Money
- Thursday,
April 24,
2008 Where: Museum
de Burcht van Berlage, Henri Polaklaan 9, 1018 CP Amsterdam [near
Artis Zoo]
LIVE
WEBCAST at www.webcastingstudio.eu
We
would like to thank our supporters Netherlands Architecture Institute,
Etikstudio and Innergy Creations.
Felix
Bopp, editor-in-chief
Inter view with Martijn
Aslander by Jorrit Timmermans
(translated into english by Rodien de Maar)
About
transformations to a Network economy
The storm is a metaphor for the changes happening in our world.
Changes with impact and results that are incalculable. They are
also happening within the economic world. Many of our old patterns
have had their longest time. We are richer than ever and have
more capabilities than ever. But the consequences of this growth
in our world are slowly but unmistakeably felt by everyone.
Thankfully storms settle down and give new energy and chances.
Martijn Aslander knows what the possible consequenses are. Martijn,
who lives off networking and connecting people, is involved in
more than a 1000 projects on yearly bases. He does this by following
his heart. He turns all the available information technology into
value for himself and others. His attitude to life is best described
by the scouting law which he learned at an early age. A scout
goes into the world with the other to discover this world and
make it a better place to live in. He is honest, loyal and never
gives up.He is economical and sober. He is a go-getter, cares
for nature and respects himself and the other. You can definitely
count on him.
The economy is the sum of all the transactions and barter mechanisms
that keep our society in place. Untill now the focus has been
on collecting as much profit and capital goods as possible. But
now that seems to be changing. We seem to be asking ourselves
whether more money is needed, useful or valuable. On account of
frequent usage of scarce resources, striving towards maximum profit
often fails. Also companies have the tendency to waste the talent
of many people. The well known rat race in which employees carry
out their limited tasks day after day, restricts the enormous
worth that people could actually bring into the economy. Martijn
quotes futurologist and trend watcher Justien Marseille by stating
that our society is making a jump from maximisation of profit
to one of maximising usefulness. This simply means that you do
the thing which you are good in, in the place at that given time
which makes for optimal worth. Talent as an important impulse
for the economy, thats new.
How is it possible that individual talent suddenly has the room
to grow? Until now, we were restricted by means only available
to organisations to be able to produce. This was certainly true
when our economy relied on agriculture. With the coming of mechanisation
and industry, this became more amplified. Later, when the computerization
was a fact, it brought us the home computer and the internet.
After this, the individual had meaningful tools at their disposal.
With the home computer, everyone is able to write their own book,
produce a movie or compose their own music. And the internet is
our direct link to the whole world and thus the market. At the
same time, the costs decrease so fast that everyone can join in
to show their talent and offer their products.
Experiment
This development gives us the freedom to ask ourselves what on
earth we are doing. And whether we might actually want to do it
differently. There are still so many people that are not satisfied
with what they are doing. Information technology gives us the
opportunity to do things that were impossible in the past. Dependent
on our talent we seek and find the necessary knowledge, information
and contacts on the internet. This leads to an economy driven
by networks instead of companies. And money does not seem to play
the biggest role. The new barter system seems to be one of talent,
knowledge and information.
Critics say it's impossible to make a living this way. So Martijn
decided to test this theory and take on the experiment of not
asking any money for his work. Soon he found that he either had
a lot of money or hardly any money at all. But he always had just
what he needed that at his disposal just. A computer, an overall
subscription to public transportation, insurance, an office and
indeed just plain money. Because if you can offer something that
is valuable to many, then people are more than willing to donate
in order to keep it coming. Martijn let go of all pretences and
trusted that he would be fulfilled in all his needs at all times.
Seeing this was a success; he began thinking of what we really
need in this world.
Evolutional movement
The answer that he found is not directly a logical one. What we
really need according to him is movement. Evolution makes us constantly
adapt to our environment. And adapting means movement. With those
kinds of dynamics our nature makes us search for ways to do things
in a different but foremost better way. It makes us want to learn,
to try, to create and to innovate. A natural process which unfortunately
is discouraged in our present school system. While the bigger
problems in our society social cohesion, innovation, care
system, education, competition with other countries like China
and India scream for our capacity to adapt.
How this natural movement can be started is something Martijn
knows all about. Every year he organizes a large festival in the
woods in Drenthe, a province in the Netherlands. In three days
a whole village is built where people can even pay electronically.
While normally a festival of this scale would cost a couple of
hundred thousand euros, Martijn and his enthusiastic and talented
crew do it for less than 12.000 euros. And no script is even used.
The circumstances in which this project can develop is mainly
dependent on something Martijn calls swarming. A varied and motivated
group gets together for a certain project. From within their own
skill, everybody participates a little which means that the pressure
all round is kept low. Because of the joint exchanges everybody
learns from everybody. And after the project is over, everyone
goes their own way again or starts on the next project.
Super functional cooperation
What is happening is, its using the network as a business.
It groups together around a certain project and organizes that
which needs to be organized. Then afterwards, it falls apart again.
At first glance it seems more chaotic than businesses as we know
it now. However, nature knows only how to use this form of non-organization
also called the organic fluid pattern. A swarm of birds, a school
of fish, a termite hill, these are all examples of a super functional
cooperation in subtle tuning with each other. It is this coherence
that spontaneously comes up in a network driven by a mutual goal.
The internet and the ease with which like-minded people know how
to find each other, makes people act as one organism, one species
working together on this planet more than ever before.
Web 2.0
Martijn is an insider when it comes to the technology used within
the network economy known as Web2.0. This is the term used for
a collection of useful tools which the internet offers for free.
Tools for project management, file-exchange, marketing, information
sharing. The sourcecode for these tools is accessible to everyone
(open source). The unwrittenrule in the open source community
that is Web 2.0 is that in exchange for using the tools, you have
to make your own improvements and adaptations available under
the same conditions. A much talked about example is the online
encyclopaedia Wikipedia: it's content is freely accessible to
anyone and everyone can contribute. The accuracy of Wikipedia
is nearly on the same level as the renowned Britannica Encyclopaedia.
And the number of topics is many times larger. Small contributions
by a large group of enthusiastic users make for the open source
mentality in which products become better and extend fast. See
the power of the economic network grow.
The Holy Trinity of Dynamics is the term used by Martijn to describe
this. It describes a new consciousness of information. Ideas are
important.We already knew this. Also the connections between people
are important. But information is the key between the ideas and
the people. With information you pull people towards you. Information
is necessary to create an idea, to carry it out and to talk about
it with others. Consciousness about information in our society
has not yet taken a leading role.
We have to be nice
Besides the technological tools that are available to make the
most of the network economy, there are some personality traits
that come in handy. Martijn mentions a fast working and flexible
mind, an open attitude, curiosity and courage / guts. And the
most important part of all, is being nice. He realises that you
need the other as much as he needs you.
The distant sound of the hippies can be heard in his approach.
"I still have a bone to pick with them" Martijn says
jokingly. Their enthusiasm and ideas appeal to him a lot. They
just didn't have the means to execute them. Martijn does. And
that he has a point is something you see for example in the opinion
of the Belgian top economist Bernard Lietaer. This great thinker
is a true believer in complementary economies, where regional
currency and bartering play a central role. To rely on a monetary
economy alone is much too instable. A disaster like the one of
9/11 makes the dollar collapse and looses our faith in the economy.
While it says nothing about the productivity or creativity of
people. The revival of true value is the core of the network economy.
Besides, says Martijn, a monetary economy can only grow by locking
your money away in a bank so interest can be collected on it.
Social capital on the other hand grows when you give it away and
share it freely with others.
Information is the new currency
It is an interesting thought that giving leads to growth. You
can only spend money once. Then it is gone. Ideas, information
and access to your network are something you can give away over
and over again without loosing anything. The reverse, keeping
your information to yourself, leads to being excluded eventually.
And without connections you loose all worth. In the network economy,
information and networking are the new currency. It is valuable
and exchangeable. And it stipulates that you should behave yourself.
Only in a good
relationship with the other there is room to exchange talent and
value. It means that we have to become human again instead of
taking on a role in which we perform transactions for money. It
is obvious that we are in need of a redefinition of the economy.
Instead of profit maximisation we are moving towards optimisation
of usefulness. Value creation wil happen better and faster in
a networked environment instead of in bricks and mortar companies.
As a direct result social capital shall become an important factor.
The relationships between people will be more important than the
transactions. Having faith in the value of the other and opening
your own knowledge and network guarantees you can join in. Status
will be decided by the ease with which you have flexible access
to information and the connections with others. Perhaps the main
change will be finding our humanity again in everything we undertake.
.Next
Event
the
future of Money Thursday,
April 24,
2008 Registration:
18:30-19:00, Conference: 19:00-21:15 Tickets
Where:
Museum
de Burcht van Berlage, Henri Polaklaan 9, 1018 CP Amsterdam
[near Artis Zoo] The topics are The
major challenges ahead
Justien
Marseille,
Futurist, Trend Analyst, The Future Institute Will attention be the next currency?
Peter R. Luiks,
Executive
Vice President and Director, Gaggle
International BV Private Equity
Ilja
Linnemeijer,
Senior Manager, PricewaterhouseCoopers Virtual economies present real challenges
Moderated byBob
Stumpel, Result Strategy,
Cellspace, Xing, Ideabroker, LBI, GetMobile, TCS, Mendix, FON
LIVE
WEBCAST at www.webcastingstudio.eu
We
would like to thank our supporters Info.nl
and Innergy
Creations
The FUNDETEC
report
(co-financed by the EU Commission and private banks) identifies
the current barriers and gaps in financing environmental technologies
and bringing eco-innovation to market. The report examines how public
investment or other policy actions can leverage private instruments
to address market failure or urgent societal need. Researchers highlighted
the economic, public policy and marketing of environmental technology
investment, as well as the cultural and financial structures in
place that enhance and restrain investment flows.
eProvenance applies advanced RFID technology to authenticate
and track fine wines and spirits from producer to consumer, monitoring
and recording the temperature of storage, and collecting the pedigree
for each bottle in a secure online database. eProvenance has brought
together the technology and the team to measure and verify Provenance
for the first time in history. Whether a producer of wine or spirits,
broker, distributor, retailer or consumer, you will appreciate how
the "Intelligent Bottle" alleviates the threat of counterfeit
while the system monitors and logs ambient temperatures in each
case, thus assuring that proper storage conditions have been maintained
everywhere along the bottle's journey from the producer to the consumer.
.Global
Economic Prospects 2008
Developing Countries
Must Improve Capacity To Absorb And Use Technology, Says World
Bank
Rapid technological progress in developing countries has helped
to raise incomes and reduce the share of people living in absolute
poverty from 29 percent in 1990 to 18 percent in 2004. Despite
these gains, the technology gap between rich and poor countries
remains enormous, and the capacity of developing economies to
adopt new technology remains weak, says Global
Economic Prospects 2008.
Technological
progress increased 40 to 60 percent faster in developing countries
than in rich countries between the early 1990s and early 2000s,
said Andrew Burns, Lead Economist and main author of the report.
Nevertheless, developing countries have a long way to
go, given that the level of technology that they use is only one
quarter of that employed in high-income countries.
Subtitled Technology
Diffusion in the Developing World, the World Bank
report notes that recent progress reflects increased exposure
to foreign technologies. As a share of GDP, high-tech imports
and foreign direct investment levels have doubled since the early
1990s.
Rising trade
and investment contacts with high-income countries, often facilitated
by migrant groups, have been central to technological progress
in developing countries.
said Uri Dadush, Director, World Bank Development Prospects Group.
However, openness alone is not enough. To continue catching
up, countries need to strengthen educational achievement, governance,
basic infrastructures, and links to migrant groups.
The report stresses
that the weak diffusion of technology within countries
holds back overall technological achievement in many countries.
Thus, while major centers and leading firms in Brazil, India and
China may operate close to the global technological frontier,
most firms in these countries operate at less than a fifth of
the top productivity level.
According to the
report, improving capacity to absorb foreign technology
is critical in low-income countries, as well as in those middle-income
countries that have exploited low-wage comparative advantages
rather than strengthened domestic competencies.
More highlights
· Most developing
countries participate minimally at the global technological frontier.
Their rapid economic progress has been achieved by adapting and
adopting already-existing technologies. This will likely persist,
given the large technology divide.
· Technology
now spreads much more quickly between countries. In the
early 1900s, new technology took over 50 years to reach most countries;
today it takes about 16 years.
· Technology
tends to spread slowly within countries. Main cities and
leading sectors use more sophisticated technologies than the rest
of the economy. For example, the IT-enabled services sector in
urban India employs world-class technologies, but less than 10
percent of the countrys rural households had telephone access
in 2007.
· Use of some
new technologies, such as mobile phones, has risen quickly.
Nevertheless, some technologies have spread only slowly. Three-quarters
of low-income countries have 15 or fewer personal computers per
1,000 people, and a quarter have fewer than five.
· Governments
should strengthen domestic technology dissemination channels
as a high priority. These include transport infrastructure and
the capacity of applied R&D agencies to orient themselves
to markets through improved outreach, testing, and marketing.
· Weak basic
infrastructure systems limit the range of technologies that can
be employed in many countries. Policies should ensure that
critical enabling services such as roads and electricity are
widely available, whether delivered by the private or public sector.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, just 8 percent of the rural population
has access to electricity.
· Ineffective
or uneven access to quality education also restricts countries
ability to exploit technologies. Even simple technologies
can have big impacts. For example, relatively simple skills are
needed to build rainwater collection systems, which improve access
to clean drinking water and reduce infant mortality by lowering
the incidence of diarrhea.
Bernard Lietaers
extraordinary book is a devastating and controversial analysis of
the challenges facing monetary systems now. The debate it will create
will be a contentious and passionate one. There is no such thing as
money: it is only an agreement of society
to use something as a medium of exchange. This agreement is being
placed under an unprecedented strain, due to a wide range of factors
(from the creation of cybermoney, to social and political issues).
This momentum of change could become even faster, and the effects
more brutal, if the instability of the monetary system continues to
spread. The global monetary crises of the 1990s (Mexico, Russia, Asia
and Brazil) proved that money is modern societys central information
system equivalent to the nervous system in our own bodies.
In order to prevent a global monetary meltdown, a unique vision of
sustainable abundance, and the mechanisms for achieving this, is proposed.
.interior
innovation award cologne
The interior
innovation award cologne
gives prominence to outstanding achievements in the furnishing
sector. In addition to design and technology, this includes new
kinds of material and solutions in detail, as well as outstanding
product concepts and success in the market.
Chair First
by Stefano Giovannoni, Magis
Chair Firsts name comes, in fact, from it being the first
example of a chair made by air-moulding, in which the emptying
of the frame is not simply applied to the volumes with a small
tubular section, but all throughout the extensive and complex
volumes of the chair and its backrest.
ZENIT by Kinnasand
Design Team, Kinnasand
GmbH
ZENIT combines the
traditional knotting technique with a timeless, modern design,
giving this new article a unique design property for floor arrangements.
Due to intricate handcraft, a lively surface is created, making
each and every carpet an original, quite incomparable to industrially
manufactured goods.
MIURA by Konstantin
Grcic, Plank
Collezioni Srl
Trough its folding mechanism and light weight the MIURA
table enables an extraordinary handling and a exceptional low
storage volume and therefor very flexible in its usage.
HIGH DESK byStudio
Morgen, Sabine Mühlbauer. Morgen
Fine Furniture & Fine Arts
These furnitures are produced with computer-controlled mill cut
as well as they are traditional fitted by hand. All details are
reduced to a minimum. Because of its strong material and the efficient
static joining, DESK are very light furnitures.
GECKO Hafttextil / Adhesive textiles by Création
Baumann
The revolutionary development of GECKO is based on an idea developed
by the Basle University for Design and Art: In 2000, a graduate
wrote a thesis on mobile curtains. In 2006, a prototype
of this self-adhesive fabric could be presented.
.Futurist
Portrait: Patrick Dixon
Dr Patrick Dixon is often described in the media as Europe's
leading Futurist and has been ranked as one of the 20 most influential
business thinkers alive today (Thinkers 50 - 2005). Chairman of
Global
Change Ltd, he is author of twelve books (485,000
in print in 26 languages). Titles include Building a Better Business,
Futurewise, The Genetic Revolution, The Truth about Westminster,
The Truth about Drugs and The Truth about AIDS.
Dr Dixon has spoken
to audiences in 51 countries and is one of the world's most
sought after keynote speakers at corporate conferences and client
events. His multimedia vision of the future is experienced by
up to 3,000 people a time, in up to five countries a week. Challenging,
hard-hitting, provocative, dynamic, passionate and practical
as well as entertaining, motivating people to change, backed
by data and original research - watch videos.
He advises multinational
company boards and senior teams on strategic implications of
a wide range of global trends such as the new economy, the digital
society, financial services, biotechnology, health care, geopolitical
issues, lifestyle changes, marketing issues, consumer behaviour,
employee motivation, public policy, business ethics and corporate
social responsibility.
What is a futurist
Investment funds and pensions scandal? Fund management
risk
Many fund managers don't recommend own retail investment funds
to family and do not chose to invest own wealth in own funds.
Future scandal in fund management?
.Agenda
The
Season Events are on Thursdays
Registration: 18:30-19:00, Conference: 19:00-21:15
April
24
18:30 - 21:15
the
future of Money
Location: Museum
de Burcht van Berlage, Henri Polaklaan 9, 1018 CP Amsterdam [near
Artis Zoo]
May
29
18:30 - 21:15
the
future of Children Learning to Play
Location:
Waag Society, Nieuwmarkt 4, 1012 CR Amsterdam [Center of the Nieuwmarkt]
June
26
18:30 -
Taste
of Diversity
.Club
of Amsterdam Open Business Club
Club
of Amsterdam Open Business Club
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.Contact
Your
comments, ideas, articles are welcome!
Please write to Felix Bopp, Editor-in-Chief: editor@clubofamsterdam.com