Crowdsourcing
With the recent talk of reddit being cannibalized by bitcoin technology, I thought it a good time to post something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Could a completely decentralized startup one day rival the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon?
Within the bitcoin world there’s a common understanding that the most valuable thing about bitcoin is not the monetary currency but the underlying “blockchain” technology that the bitcoin currency runs on. For those unfamiliar, you can check out three heavily-funded ventures creating infrastructure that would enable anyone to program applications on the blockchain that go way beyond monetary currencies: Ethereum,Swarm and Blockstream.
One such application is what’s known as a “Distributed Autonomous Organization,” which is an organization like a corporation, government or NGO, but which has no central leadership and uses internet technologies to organize and function. Examples of DAOs that you are familiar with include open-source software systems like Linux; terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda; communities like Anonymous; and …
Adjacent Possible, Agency, Alternative Institutions, Architecture, Computation, Crowdsourcing, Economics, Emergence, Incentives, Innovation, Investing, Markets, Politics, Socio-technical systems, Superorganism ,
My TED Talk on the Magic of Crowdfunding
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Adjacent Possible, Alternative Institutions, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Economics, Incentives, Investing, Markets, Scarcity / Abundance, Social Entrepreneurship, Social Networks, TED ,
I have a new column on Unreasonable.is, which is where this five part series is published:
- Part 1: The JOBS Act will unlock $30 Trillion in long-term investment capital that can legally be invested in startups and small businesses through crowdfunding portals.
- Part 2: Currently, investors have a stranglehold on the fundraising process. Once the JOBS Act is implemented, there will be a leveling of the playing field in which entrepreneurs and citizen-investors control the process.
- Part 3: Investment crowdfunding enables individuals to invest in companies they are passionate about, and in so doing, outperform professional investors.
- Part 4: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
- Part 5: There is a second revolution coming: investing directly in people. When it collides with crowdfunding, this will create a perfect storm….
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Adjacent Possible, Alternative Institutions, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Economics, Happiness, Incentives, Markets, Scarcity / Abundance, Social Capital, Social Entrepreneurship ,
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by your inbox, meeting schedule, and list of phone calls to make or return? Have you ever wished you could include a wide audience in your one-on-one communications so that we could all benefit from wisdom of the crowd? If so, you might like my new policy for all business-related communications.
Email
- Non-private: instead use Accelerating Possibilities FB Group. (and I don’t do FB private messages).
- Private: I read every email but only respond if I feel it’s truly a private matter and I’m interested in responding.
Phone & Video Chat
- Non-private: Create a Vokle Event and post the subject of the discussion to the FB group above. If I can make it, I will, but hopefully others will join you regardless.
- Private: Email me your phone number and I will put you on my list of people to call when I have time. I can’t promise if/when I will call you though.
In Person Meetings
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Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Happiness, Interventions, Social Networks ,
This interview was done as part of the New Cancer Mentality initiative:
New Cancer Mentality is a grassroots organization focused on giving cancer patients a virual townhall to ask their questions to leading oncologists and researchers about their work. Furthermore, New Cancer Mentality focuses on bringing about collaboration between researchers as well as giving researchers an online forum to share their views and what needs to be done to cure this disease.
If you’d like to learn more or join the movement, check out blog and contact David.…
Alternative Institutions, Cancer, Causality, Complexity, Crowdsourcing, Interventions, Invisible Etiology, Medical Breakthroughs, Models, Science, Science 2.0 ,
I meet a lot of social entrepreneurs who are just starting out and have the following dilemma. They are full of energy and creativity, but they don’t have a single tangible project or venture yet that they feel they can commit to. What they need is the time and freedom to explore the possibilities, brainstorm with a community that believes in them, talk to everyone they can, and get practical experience working on cool projects that their friends are doing, without needing to draw a salary. What they is need some runway… the modern day equivalent of backpacking around Europe or joining the Peace Corps.
Here’s a quote from Kickstarter, one of my favorite platforms for accelerating possibilities:
Kickstarter is focused on creative ideas and ambitious endeavors. We’re a great way for artists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, athletes, adventurers, illustrators, explorers, curators, promoters, performers, and others to bring their projects, events, and dreams to life.
Wouldn’t it be great if the creative …
Alternative Institutions, Autocatalysis, Crowdsourcing, Investing, Social Capital ,
Inspired by the X Prize, Y Combinator’s “Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund” and Kickstarter, I am offering a $100K prize in three parts:
$10K for Crowdsourced X Prizes Platform
- Allows anyone to offer a cash prize for achieving a goal they want achieved
- Allows anyone to pledge additional dollars to someone else’s already-offered prize
- Uses crowdsourcing to vet which goals are worthy of public prize offer and which get top billing
- Uses crowdsourcing to determine if/when a prize gets awarded
- Has been used to award at least five prizes of one thousand dollars or more
- Does not have any pending lawsuits alleging that the platform violates U.S. federal or state laws
- Has an opinion letter from a U.S. law firm that the system does not violate U.S. federal or state laws
Note that this is different from Kickstarter in that (a) it’s the donors who set the goal not the recipient; (b) Kickstarter does not use crowdsourcing in its vetting …
Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Incentives, Innovation, Investing, Social Entrepreneurship ,
As readers of my blog posts know, I talk a lot about evolutionary systems, the formal structure of cooperation, the role of both in emergence of new levels of complexity, and I sometimes use cellular automata to make points about all these things and the reification of useful models (here’s a summary of how they all relate). I’ve also touched on this “thing” going on with the system of life on Earth that is related to technological singularity but really is the emergence or (or convergence) of an entirely new form of intelligence/life/collective consciousness/cultural agency, above the level of human existence.
From The Chaos Point. Reproduced with permission from the author.
In a convergence of a different sort, many of these threads which all come together and interrelate in my own mind, came together in various conversations and talks within the last 15 hours. And while it’s impossible to explain this all in details, it’s really exciting to find other people who are on …
Agency, Artificial Intelligence, Cognition, Computation, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Emergence, Evolution, Levels, Networks, Singularity, Socio-technical systems, Superorganism Agency, Artificial Intelligence, Cognition, Computation, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Emergence, Evolution, Levels, Networks, Singularity, Socio-technical systems, Superorganism,
Everyone has heard about the Large Hadron Collider, arguably the most ambitious and complex engineering project ever undertaken, anywhere. The purpose, no less ambitious, is to answer all sorts of burning questions about the nature of the universe, including whether the Standard Model of particle physics is valid. Given such ambition and high stakes, it would surprise most people that the LHC is managed in a collaborative manner with very little hierarchy. Essentially it’s a giant, crowdsourced science experiment.…
Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Incentives, Management, Science, Science 2.0 Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Incentives, Management, Science,
Has anyone played Foldit, the protein-folding game that is designed to advance the science? This Wired article makes it sound like Ender’s Game meets biochemistry! Sounds like the Poehlman kid is the protein-folding equivalent of Stephen Wiltshire. I love the crowdsourcing, the meta-evolutionary algorithm of it (to find the savants), and the implications for science.…
Alternative Institutions, Cognition, Competition, Computation, Crowdsourcing, Evolution, Games, Medical Breakthroughs, Science, Science 2.0, Socio-technical systems, Visualization Alternative Institutions, Cognition, Competition, Computation, Crowdsourcing, Evolution, Games, Medical Breakthroughs, Science, Socio-technical systems, Visualization,
I have been having a 140 character discussion with Ciarán Brewster (@macbruski) via twitter. And while it’s kind of interesting to force complex subject matter into very few characters, it is limiting the discussion, so I will summarize it so far here and hopefully others can weigh in too.…
Alternative Institutions, Autism, Crowdsourcing, Limits of Knowledge, Markets, Science, Science 2.0, Socio-technical systems Alternative Institutions, Autism, Crowdsourcing, Limits of Knowledge, Markets, Science, Socio-technical systems,
In part 1 I advocated photographing your completed ballot before submitting it and posting your photograph online. Turns out that if you followed this piece of advice in Missouri, you might be in jail right now. Oops! Sorry :-)…
Crowdsourcing, Government, Interventions, Media, Politics, Voting Crowdsourcing, Government, Interventions, Media, Politics, Voting,
One of my favorite talks of all time is Ken Robinson’s on how children are born naturally innovative and the process of schooling and growing up in our society beats it out of them by the time they are adults. More recently, Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat Pray Love fame) opened some eyes with this talk on how we think of individual creativity and where it comes from.…
Alternative Institutions, Cognition, Creativity, Crowdsourcing, Epistemology, Science, Science 2.0 Alternative Institutions, Cognition, Creativity, Crowdsourcing, Epistemology, Science,
Tribes are hot.
Kevin has referred more than once to the famous Dunbar number for limits on optimal human tribe size.
One of my favorite books recently is Seth Godin’s book on leadership, called — you guessed it — Tribes.
Yesterday I heard a great talk by David Logan, co-author of Tribal Leadership.…
Alternative Institutions, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Culture, Invisible Etiology, Language, Society Alternative Institutions, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Culture, Invisible Etiology, Language, Society,
In a March 2009 Wired article, Daniel Roth calls for radical transparency in financial reporting as the path to recovery and a more secure financial system. He argues that the reporting requirements today allow companies to obscure what’s going on and that the way to fix things is as follows. Embrace a markup language with which bite-sized chunks of standardly defined pieces of financial data are thrown out to the world so that users can crowdsource the true picture of a company’s financial health.…
Common Knowledge, Crowdsourcing, Economics, Incentives, Interventions, Markets, Mutual Knowledge, Stability Common Knowledge, Crowdsourcing, Economics, Incentives, Interventions, Markets, Mutual Knowledge, Stability,
Has anyone read the entire text of the stimulus package?
The ambiguity of this question is intentional.
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Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Economics, Government, Limits of Knowledge, Politics Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Economics, Government, Limits of Knowledge, Politics,
Here’s a contest model for spurring innovation that I’d like to explore:
- 50 participatns ante a pre-determined amount of money
- Each participant submits original work (of a pre-determined type)
- Each participant votes for one winner (other than themselves)
- Winner gets the money
…
Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Games, Incentives, Social Entrepreneurship, TED Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Games, Incentives, Social Entrepreneurship, TED,
The Obama Transition team wants your input on how to fix the country:
No, seriously. Check out the various meetings they have upcoming and the comments sections that go with each. Some topics like Health Care have lots of comments. Others like the Humanitarian, Refugee, and Asylum Policy meeting currently have no comments, which means you could have quite a bit of influence by being the only one to spout your opinion…
So, what do you think? Will Obama policy be shaped by this promising open forum with unprecedented input from the average citizen, or will this end up as just good PR?
p.s. is that Stephen Colbert looking askance at the bald dude? :-)…
Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Government, Politics Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Government, Politics,
Okay, Kev, here’s your chance on affecting climate policy, go crazy!…
Alternative Institutions, Climate, Crowdsourcing, Government, Interventions Alternative Institutions, Climate, Crowdsourcing, Government, Interventions,
[ I’m asking for your help in answering this question, read past the fold to see how ]
In my post on invisible etiology, I challenged us all to be as open-minded as possible when dealing with our most complex problems, for this is the only way to make the invisible become visible. Here’s where I attempt to practice what I preach.…
Blog Comment, Cancer, Causality, Crowdsourcing, Invisible Etiology, Pop!Tech, Science Blog Comment, Cancer, Causality, Crowdsourcing, Invisible Etiology, Pop!Tech, Science,
Back in June, I suggested that public voting records would be healthy for our democracy if the populace were comfortable revealing their voting records. There is now a movement* and new web site for this called Who Voted? though they are not going as far as I am in advocating for revealing your actual choices.…
Alternative Institutions, Common Knowledge, Crowdsourcing, Government, Mutual Knowledge, Politics, Voting Alternative Institutions, Common Knowledge, Crowdsourcing, Government, Mutual Knowledge, Politics, Voting,
Google Labs has a new service called “In Quotes” which might be tweakable to do a truth market of sorts. Here’s the suggestion I just emailed them on this topic:
I would love to use Google “In Quotes” to crowdsource measures of truth.
For instance, I just saw this:
“In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025,” said Mr. McCain during a campaign speech. [ Wed, 29 Oct 2008 Washington Times ]
…
Crowdsourcing, Markets Crowdsourcing, Markets,
I am a fan of prediction markets. They have typically done much better than polls at predicting the outcome of elections. Why? Here’s a thought experiment. Consider who you think is going to win the election (not who you want to win). Now consider that I was going to bet you $10,000 of your hard earned money on whether your prediction comes true. Did that change your thinking at all? Some of you might have even switched candidates once money was on the line. That’s the difference between a poll and a prediction market.…
Crowdsourcing, Markets, Models, Non-linearity, Politics Crowdsourcing, Markets, Models, Politics,
What is Cancer?
[ I’m asking for your help in answering this question, read past the fold to see how ]
In my post on invisible etiology, I challenged us all to be as open-minded as possible when dealing with our most complex problems, for this is the only way to make the invisible become visible. Here’s where I attempt to practice what I preach.…
Blog Comment, Cancer, Causality, Crowdsourcing, Invisible Etiology, Pop!Tech, Science Blog Comment, Cancer, Causality, Crowdsourcing, Invisible Etiology, Pop!Tech, Science, 0