That's Capital

In a post last week, I looked at why media organizations, unlike Madison Avenue, have been able to really exploit the power of digital technology, suggesting it's easier to use to generate content than money. Well, that's true, unless you consider money content. Above is a nice little video from the Wall Street Journal about emerging forms of money, with sub-cultures creating their own digital currencies. Watch it, as it's fun. It also reminds me of something else in last week's post, namely the digital game "Beatle's Rock Band." Yesterday, WBUR Radio's OnPoint had a great show on the audience... Read more →

The Next Financial Crisis | The New Republic Shared via AddThis Read more →

This week Ad Age published a piece by Weber Shandwick strategist Chris Perry on how marketers have not yet found the key to leveraging social media. Perry writes "what if social media and its inherent benefits are so revolutionary, so potentially game-changing, that it takes time for people to figure out how to best use them? More fundamentally, what if organizational silos and constraints limit its potential to address a new brand-building equation?" He illustrates his thoughts by looking back to the military adoption of airplanes in the early part of the 20th century. Put into service by the U.S.... Read more →

At age 52, a former Army intelligence officer (who also worked teaching college-level dance, selling antiques, and creating puzzles) started a new business. Called Phoenix Commotion, it was based in Huntsville, Texas. Even that detail offers sweet insight into the fertile possibilities of what human imagination can generate. To cut to the chase, the man started building homes from junk. Beautiful homes from the refuse of others. If only more economies could grow like this. Read it here. It's uplifting, fun, inspiring. Read more →

"Go out and play." That's a headline from the San Francisco Chronicle. I sometimes fantasize about waking up to find the network out and life totally unplugged. Literally and figuratively. This little outage, unable to easily access all my mail, brings the fantasies unhappily to fruition. Oh, not that unhappily. But it does remind you how much of life is networked now. Haven't posted for months and months. Takes an outage to inspire me. Next time such urges strike, I may not be able to log on. But honestly been seeing an array of things in the news that continues... Read more →

Op-Ed Contributor G.D.P. R.I.P. * Sign in to Recommend * E-Mail * Print * ShareClose o Linkedin o Digg o Facebook o Mixx o MySpace o Yahoo! Buzz o Permalink o Article Tools Sponsored By By ERIC ZENCEY Published: August 9, 2009 Montpelier, Vt. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Nicholas Felton IF there’s a silver lining to our current economic downturn, it’s this: With it comes what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction,” the failure of outmoded economic structures and their replacement by new, more suitable structures. Downturns have often given a last, fatality-inducing nudge to dying industries and technologies. Very few buggy manufacturers made it through the Great Depression. Creative destruction can apply to economic concepts as well. And this downturn offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of one that has long outlived its usefulness: gross domestic product. G.D.P. is one measure of national income, of how much wealth Americans make, and it’s a deeply foolish indicator of how the economy is doing. It ought to join buggy whips and VCRs on the dust-heap of history. Read more →

It hit me this morning looking at my Facebook page. Snippets from a childhood friend I haven't seen in years - I still remember his courage as a four year old bounding down our building's flight of stairs with glorious abandon, and now he and his wife look not much older than they did in their thirties too long ago - a champagne-toast airport brief from an office colleague on a red eye back from L.A., someone else's Twitter "I think there's smoke coming out of my ears." And then it hit me, all these bits of self-expression, data bytes... Read more →

Circulation Economics: generating movement in an economy to prevent paralysis. As Mark Taylor told us in Confidence Games, economics... indeed money, itself, is all about a collective agreement around rules of what constitute value. Or even reality. We're in a period when trust has been shattered. Lack of confidence. Things are frozen. Or so we're told. Look at these examples from The New Republic of people who are finding ways to circulate, not despite, but because of today's circumstances. Jonathan Field Read more →

Me and my co-creator Titus Levi, a media economist, have spent far too long dawdling about focusing on a theory of his called Circulation Economics. As my favorite saying goes, "perfect is the enemy of good enough." All to say, need to accept the blemishes and get the ideas out. Here it is. Circulation is good for an economy. Stasis is bad. Big or small, healthy economies move. Are active. They may have moments of rest, but paralysis is far from rest. What excites me about circulation economics is the way it focuses on people to people connections, helped by... Read more →

Another post from our friend, designer Nathan Felde: These times do call for big, bright ideas. We not only need to repair the damage we have done to our immigration policies and thereby to immigrants, legal and illegal, but we need a renaissance of our nation's concept of immigration. In the larger sweep of our history, immigration, not war, has been the primary fuel for long term sustainable economic growth. With a land mass nearly equal to China and far superior infrastructure we can obviously support twice our current population and there are plenty of people all over the world... Read more →