For several years, I ran around stringing together ideas that felt half-baked and improperly incentive aligned. I knew they carried the DNA of social change in them. Sometimes, you can’t see the full picture – you can only intuit based on what you know to be true. So I strung together pieces of truth – and even traveled all over the world to give a talk about Moving from a Sharing Economy to a Shared Economy. I gave lots of examples of social media networks planning to give equity to users (ahem: Reddit), the platform cooperative movement, and shared ownership through equity crowdfunding.
But, it wasn’t until nearly a year ago when I began working with blockchain companies full time that I saw the potential for value distribution, shared ownership, greater global equity, and supply chain transparency. There are so many beautiful things that we can program into the future with smart contracts and blockchain technology. While it’s not perfect, blockchain tech is a step in the right direction.
We must be looking for ways to create shared production and ownership. We must find ways to incentivize people and organizations to support our planet. We must create companies that operate more like communities than top-down hierarchical organizations. And we must share value with all value creators – NOW!
I start by talking about how I felt after writing my book and looking around me at the exploitative nature of the sharing economy:
Fairly quickly, I get into the how I see blockchain technology as a philosophical opening as much as it is a technology, urging people to imagine what the future will look like for them.
The conclusion of this talk begins with, “We are standing at the precipice of one of the most meaningful opportunities for social change of our time…”
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A special thanks to Andrew Hyde and all of the folks who helped at TEDx Boulder including Margaret Watts Romney and Brenton Weyi for your speaking expertise and know-how on how to make blockchain relatable. Also, a big thank you to Michael Darius for helping me round out the edges and visualize my talk with professional slides.