I walked into NASA with all the arrogance I could muster because I had to tell someone in authority that they were headed for a disaster with their Shuttle Space Program. They needed a "platform for change" if they were to survive and thrive as a space-based enterprise. NASA smashed into a disaster when Challenger blew up [see photo]. NASA was shut-down; later they lost another shuttle when Columbia failed to return to Earth.
The "platform for change" you need to survive and thrive in 2022 is simple yet complex. It has three basic elements: continuity, crisis, and discontinuity. Another way to think about these elements is certainty, risk, and ambiguity. Yet another way of thinking about these elements is homeostasis, dynamic change, and chaos. And so on and so on...
The amazing thing about these three elements is that they lie along a continuum. We live, survive, and thrive within the state of continuity. Of course for brief periods we all enter the state of crisis, risk, or dynamic change and then we return to continuity. Rarely do we move on from dynamic change into chaos. In visual terms this continuum has multiple layers of density at the continuity end; however it becomes a mirage at the discontinuity end.
This means that we all have a latent "platform for change" which is biased towards continuity which serves us well unless, or until, we face discontinuity. And here is the rub. We all face discontinuity in 2022. In a sense this means that what we think we know is far less stable, or well grounded, than we need it to be if we are to maintain a rational sense of continuity. This means we must develop a "platform for change" that can establish a future continuum of continuity, crisis, discontinuity.
For example, inside my new continuum [platform for change] I am willing to conclude that money does not exist and thus the old continuum is fading. But does my new continuum provide me with a viable concept for the replacement for money. No! I do not mean Bitcoin even though it might prove to be what most people eventually accept as the replacement for paper money. In my new continuum: money is replaced by information that can be instantly transferred from me to my supplier of a good or service to effect the trade. The validation of this transfer however remains an open question. Who will validate that process?
The old continuum was built around the notion of validation being done by a bank. However banks are lenders and their paper money is a simple IOU. In my model I would validate my information in terms of my accrued assets like cashflow, intellectual use value, pure land holdings, etc. In this new system there is no provision for an IOU. Here a direct payment can come from me to you even if I am on Mars and you are still on Earth. At present I lack a model that can explain precisely how this system will be created and used by Martians and Earthlings; however I do have an inkling that such a new system can, and will, be created. Thus the notion that money is about to be replaced by pure information is a founding element of my platform for change.
Richard.
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