12.15.07

User generated currency

Posted in exchanges, producers, transparency, usergeneratedcurrency, attentioneconomy at 12:20 am by kevindjones

The power equations will be rewritten in the new version of social stock exchanges. It’s a merger of social value in a medium where the individual has asserted a new level of power. the intermediary’s role in an online exchange that treats people and the planet as of some intrinsic value will be different. Technology itself is one reason that new power dynamic will accompany transactions across these exchanges. User generated content becomes user generated value. This is an exchange that will attract a lot of liquidity from those most familiar with the web, and who want to play in this inherently liberating medium (TCP/IP matters; it sends power to the edge of the network).
Technology’s impact on this comes from the fact that the modern computer is an interactive device. The speed of communication inbound determines the pace of your response, if you are paying the attention (attention in kind and attention in quantity) that full productive use of the device demands. The tool demands, it doesn’t just give; the tool makes the user an extension of the tool, rather than a tool being an extension of our will or force, as previous, non interactive tools were.

The tool demands a certain kind of attention. You don’t give it attention. It snares you subtly into loops of attention, communication and response, like a tar baby who can dance.

I wonder if you can measure the level of attention demand a particular media has? It’s AIK and its AIQ. Of course there are probably consumption metrics to map against the attention matrix; dollar spend, against time, against durable vs. electronic vs. other goods, etc. how do you spend your depending on the kind of attention you pay when connected to an interactive device? Why would you want to give that information to any old vendor, though. Isn’t there a higher value you could place on it if you computed your attention index? Would that be the coin that would cause John Hegel’s original attention economy to trickle into being?

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10.15.07

Emerging Developments: Exchanges, Mapping, and Social Value

Posted in exchanges, product, producers, Story Index at 2:08 pm by Andrea McGrath

There are so many exciting developments in ‘social capital markets’ - and many thoughtful groups gathering formally and informally to figure out how to develop and implement innovations as they emerge. We here at the xchangexchange aim to track these developments and find out what we can about these emerging networks and activities to help connect the dots in a truly emerging landscape…Here’s just a few of the efforts we’re learning about:
Exchanges
§         For-Profit/Blended: Social Stock Exchange (SSE) in UK, BLAB in the USA, a Kenya Social Investment Stock Exchange in Kenya, and a donor advised fund/exchange at Calvert Philanthropic Assets in the USA.
§         Nonprofits: existing exchanges such as BOVESPA in Brazil and SASIX in South Africa, as well as some in development such as Altruistiq in USA and some effort towards developing Local Exchanges
 
Landscape Mapping:
§         On the capital side, we see some developing efforts, such as a team from Collective Intelligence and Good Capital on sources of capital, funds and syndicates and a team at Rockefeller taking a sector dive into sustainable agriculture -among others
§         More generally, there are others drafting interesting ‘maps’ of the various capital sources, risks/returns, the players and intermediaries, etc… as part of existing organizational efforts and/or as part of reports on developments in the sector
 
Indices/Measures
Social impact and social value are in some ways considered an implicit element in this emerging market - both in the investments and in the expectations of investors and donors. As new efforts around exchanges are rapidly developing, the questions around how best to demonstrate social “return” (quantitatively and qualitatively) are emerging as well. Social value is often measured or demonstrated best through the use of narratives - either exclusively or in combination with numeric or financial measures. Jed Emerson is currently working on an effort investigating whether we can expand our set of indices to include the quantitative value of qualitative factors. The Story Index Project is a new effort investigating how we might compare narrative social value across organizations: are there common descriptors or language? Can these be aggregated? Can we create an Index of these similar to those in the more traditional markets?

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