Original Description

The Lift Conference is a place to discuss and work on how technology challenges and creates opportunities in our society. At a time of undeniable turmoil, it seems sensible to take a look at how Technology can affect a component that is particularly intertwined with our Western strain of Society: the Economy.

We may be headed for a full-scale economical doomsday. Or not. Either way, some recent trends are hard to ignore.

• We are welcoming new methods of exchanging goods and currency. We have seen the rise of eBay and Amazon and those two, along others, seem to be here to stay. Contactless identification and payment systems (NFC) are gaining traction and are approaching full-scale deployment in western markets after a successful launch in Japan. Other consumer payment solutions (notably, phone-based solutions) are also quickly advancing through industry efforts.
• We are participating in the emergence of new markets. Micropayments, a marquis thought and work subject of the 90s, seems to regain interest in technological and economical circles, notably through micro-loans and on “small” payments (Premium SMS, Facebook gifts, pay-as-you-go Cloud services, online donation drives, etc.). Emerging countries are engaging in B2C and C2C using alternative, technological means. In Côte d’Ivoire, where less than 5% of the population has a bank account but 30% has a cell phone, a functioning economical space has emerged, relying in part on cell-phone to cell-phone money transfers.
• We may be witnessing the advent of a new economical spirit. The global market downturn of 2008 and 2009 is the source of many pleas for an update to our economy. From re-enforced calls from the far Left to get rid of Capitalism, to elements on the Right advocating a more responsible market. The idea of a “new Bretton Woods” seems to be advancing and epitomizes a world-wide striving for new or updated solutions.

The question is: can these currents amount to something larger than just superficial change? Rather than hope on the advent of a new economy, are those signs that a new economical sub-space can be (semi-)realistically expected, welcomed, fostered or advanced? If not, which are the smaller, separate challenges and opportunities we could face?

The proposed workshop structure is the following.

1. Try to list and classify the currents that are coinciding on that front.
2. Organize areas of opportunity. What can we update? What should stay as is?
3. Proceed with the same organizational task for areas of challenge. What is at risk from doing this? What is at risk from not doing it?
4. Try to identify next steps that could be taken.

Media

• Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/timanglade/a-new-economical-space
• Video: http://www.klewel.ch/blog/?p=661

Notes from the Workshop

Currents

• Privatization of money
• Electronic Currency
  • Bridging to the real world? => In the case of games, it would negate the purpose of spending time in the game. Even the playing field too much => In the case of virtual worlds, more realistic * Twollars on Twitter : a thanking money pure emotional money, can only be converted to real money in the hands of a non-profit organization (paid by sponsors) => In the “real world” * do gift cards count? * legal regulation limiting the field? Can’t take a VAT on it. * Easyswap.org : trading of goods for goods and services and bartering => again, stiffled by regulation (VAT again this is a non-taxable economy?) * Similar initiative in Japan
• Microcredit and micro-lending (prosper.com lendingclub.com, etc.), karma system built on top of that (helps define the interest rate). Risk of somebody defaulting much lower than in real banks. Volume much lower? => Tax issues again? (Need to declare revenue) => Regulation varies from country to country, hard to pass frontiers.
• Are those completely uncontrolled markets when we are looking to control our bigger markets more?
• Does the karma systems that exist (ebay, Amazon, lendingclub) make the system more (self-)controlled
• We’ll know those work when the government gets interested?
• Risk for money-laundering
• Micropayments
  • are real, Estonia, Japan
  • The tech needs to be here (not widely deployed in Europe)
  • What works: micropayment aggregated on your utilities (phone) bill. Swisscom is discontinuing it in Switzerland though.
  • Coins are micropayments
  • Laundry machines start accepting credit cards
• Phone-to-phone payments did not take off: didn’t reach a critical mass.
• The Swiss “Cash Card” : see also, Moneo => some extent of anonymity there?
• David Birch: “is it a cashless future?” (liftconference.com/videos)

Challenges

• Regulation
  • Moving the currency to private backing?
  • For-profit companies running the system?
    
    • Rewards programs, gift cards
    • Virtual worlds, games : Linden $ with possible conversion to dollars, etc. So is it just like any other currency? => No, regulation, limits about exchanging the currency
    • No “real” currencies?
• The end consumer is the problem? => Not ready yet?
  • Are consumers the problem? Is the industry being slow? Can we help those markets accelerate? How do we reach a critical mass in that market?
    • Difficulty to benefit ratio (as easy as it was before: why use NFC when coins are there)
    • Trust in the system : not so much in western countries? (find studies to reference). Bigger problem for emerging countries : online payments have to go through a wire transfer and the national bank (Morroco, etc. ?)
• Anonymity is missing from most of those solutions
  • Even if the tech could be made anonymous, would people trust it?
  • Are people already used to being big-brothered enough?
• The technology will not change the system if the economical space still relies on goods, manufacturing
  • Also a problem since the technology is developed by the industry.

Opportunities

Is the end goal really to buy and consume, manufacture more? Or is there another way? => There are lots of other ways.

• Valuing social interactions, adding value : 1 = 2 possible, tickets-restaurants, etc. => You pitch in 1€, your company pitches in 1€, you end up with 2€ => Need a referee in the system, someone deciding or arguing what is “fair”?
  • (Some, most) people will use it as a min-max thing and not play “nice”, some people may play charitable, who wins in that sytem.
• Reversing the concept
• An open-source / wikipedia economy? Based on sharing.
  • “pay” for open-source coding or wikipedia editing
  • Would that defeat the purity of the ideal?
  • Not really. ? Open Source devs accept money for their work? Hardcore ideologues still resist.
• Conflict of value between
  • on one hand, the social and emotional and potential value of one action : participating in a FLOSS project. Other example: studying.
  • on the other hand, the “real world” value of earning your money at another job to live.
• Not create a currency, but several currencies. Mozilla $, Linux $, Microsoft $. One-to-one conversion rate between Mo$ and L$, 0.1 conversion rate L$ to Mi$
• Goes against the trend of aggregation to a single european currency.
• Revalue social interactions services
• Are we dependent on an evolution of the mentalities?
• B2B is a big area of opportunity
• C2C also
• Such a system could help give incentives for long-term view, sustainable development

Next Steps

• R&D Stock Market : input $10, transferrable for big companies, local government, personal projects, open-source project.
• Micropayment for local services : people see garbage in the streets, pitch in $1. Once we reach $X, the company comes to collect. Or open market, people grab the contract when it reaches the price they’re willing to be paid for the service.
  • What would need to happen :
    • Interface to add payments
    • Escrow service
    • Some way to verify the service has been rendered.
• Internet money ? Only valid to buy and sell things online, exchange rates to local currency adjusting constantly.
  • What needs to happen : people making money out of this.
  • Or : Google doing it
  • A tax scheme could be put on top of that.
  • An international money.
    • Put who can pour money into the system?
    • Big problems ahoy.