Archives For REXcasts

Talks with Marti: Ownership vs. membership

Jerry —  January 3, 2012 — 1 Comment

One of the two REX Fellows, Marti Spiegelman, is gifted in connecting executives to greater consciousness. Marti and I collaborate often, including a workshop we’re developing that melds the ideas of the Relationship Economy with indigenous technologies of consciousness. It’s a fun journey.

In this sequence of three short video conversations (go to the post’s page for all three), we take on the topic of ownership, as we tend to see and use it in Western society, and contrast it with the ancient notion of membership, as it has been passed to us through time from more ancient peoples.

We start with Marti introducing the idea of relational consciousness, which I then compare to the notion of the Ownership Society, a popular policy meme.

(Please click through to the full post; two more videos follow.) Continue Reading…

In Change, Relationship Economy, REXcasts
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Seeing Abundantly: Education

Jerry —  October 15, 2011 — 2 Comments

We tend to assume the school system as it is and proceed to try to fix it.

I went through it, half public, half private. I survived, and I’m pretty curious. Surely this is the only way to organize education.

But it isn’t. Once you start to look at the system we’ve built and the assumptions it contains, it’s a bit of a mind-blower how off it might be. The particular angle I take on it in this video is about scarcity and abundance.

I’m not surprised kids cause trouble in school and grades aren’t rising. The system is broken.

For a video from a teacher who is working wonders inside the system, watch this.

For some history on how we got this school system, I recommend John Taylor Gatto‘s The Underground History of American Education.

And for a lot more context and background, browse my Brain around this topic:

Continue Reading…

In Change, REXcasts ,
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Lessons from Wikipedia

Jerry —  July 3, 2011 — 6 Comments

Remember the monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Wikipedia is a bit like that. Seemingly overnight, this gleaming monolithic being has sprouted in our midst.

It’s the seventh most viewed site? It has over 3.6 million pages in English? All done without venture capital? Crazy!

Wikipedia tells us a few things about where we are as a society. Here’s my take; I’d love to hear yours.

Many thanks to Jay Cross for the video work!

In Change, Inspiration, REXcasts , ,
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That troubling word, “consumer”

Jerry —  June 7, 2011 — 6 Comments

The genesis of my Relationship Economy thesis was a realization, back around 1994 when I was writing Esther Dyson’s monthly tech newsletter Release 1.0, that the word “consumer” made me really uncomfortable.

I followed that energy, and it proved invaluable. Ideas kept unfolding from that initial premise. I began to notice the consumerization of so many spheres of human activity, from how we educate our children to how we elect our governments and how we pray to our Gods. I paid attention to the language of marketing to consumers, to the metaphors and business models that had spun out as a result.

Like the REXcast I posted just before, this is a look at what started me down my current path.

Again, even more gratitude to Jean Russell for the camera work.

In Change, Relationship Economy, REX, REXcasts, Thinking aloud ,
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Why I do what I do

Jerry —  June 2, 2011 — 6 Comments

Consider this a medium-length answer to Tony Deiffel‘s marvelous question, wdydwyd?

It’s also an opinion on how to handle information overflow.

Throw in a dash of meditation on life, history and where we are now. See for yourself.

In the video, I mention Leibniz, Yin and Yang, Leonard Shlain’s book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess and Big History.

All sorts of gratitude to Jean Russell for the camera work.

In Inspiration, REXcasts, Thinking aloud
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The Creator’s Dilemma

Jerry —  December 15, 2010 — 6 Comments

Creative people (and I mean all sorts of creative people, from sculptors and choreographers to inventors and mathematicians) are stuck in a dilemma: they would like to share their creations openly, and they need to make a living.

No wonder many of them freak out at peer-to-peer file sharing systems and other technologies and movements that are about open sharing. They see these movements as existential threats.

Imagine an infrastructure that makes it easier for them to make a living, so they might contemplate releasing their works more openly. This post builds toward that goal.

The links I mention in the video:

In Change, REXcasts, Uncategorized , , , ,
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Persistence: An Appreciation

Jerry —  October 17, 2010 — 6 Comments

Sometimes a secondary attribute is as important as the first, obvious attribute.

For example, with broadband connections, most everyone focuses on the speed. Ooooo: Megabits! Gigabits! Given a choice between a slower Net and a faster one, faster is definitely nicer, but the element we tend to slide past is that the connection is always available.

Remember the days of dialup, or even of expensive calls to BBSes through mysterious packet networks? Remember how long it would take to get connected and logged in? Those days are pretty much history.

Here I’d like to appreciate a different attribute of our infrastructure, the attribute that makes it different from — and better than — the phone system, the TV networks and other technologies that might seem similar.

That attribute of the Net is that we can leave things in it and they persist. They’re there when we come back, and while we’re away they’re available to others. “They” can be essays, songs, movies, code or other things.

You can’t leave anything in the phone or TV systems. Before I steal any more of my thunder, let me take you to the REXcast:

(And yep, I’ve stopped numbering the REXcasts.)

In Relationship Economy, REX, REXcasts, Thinking aloud , ,
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REXcast #4: What is the REXpedition?

Jerry —  July 26, 2010 — 2 Comments

The public side of REX — this blog and the various materials that weave into it — is a conversation about what a Relationship Economy means to individuals, organizations and society as a whole.

Here, we’ll compare this thesis to others, take the thesis deep into different sectors of the world economy, explore its many layers and possibilities (such as the relationship between the commercial economy and gift exchange, between scarcity and value, and between what is paid and what is free), and gradually make it more tangible.

There’s also a private REXpedition, a membership cohort that I convene and facilitate. This group will pursue aspects of the Relationship Economy thesis that it finds most compelling, shaping them and testing them in the real world. Occasionally, this group will run experiments or build prototypes, bringing to life some of the entities and services that are needed so we can all thrive in the Relationship Economy.

This video is my brief explanation of the REXpedition as a whole, with its complementary public and private sides.

If you’re interested in joining the private REXpedition, please contact me directly. If you’re interested in this quest generally, just follow this blog.

In Relationship Economy, REX, REXcasts
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REXcast #3: Welcome to my Brain

Jerry —  May 11, 2010 — 1 Comment

For 12+ years, I’ve been pouring data into a concept mapping app called PersonalBrain — into the same, single data file. So when I add a bookmark or a concept, I’m adding it to a rich context.

I’ve been able to publish my Brain online for a while, but I haven’t done much with it or blogged much about it. I just keep adding “thoughts” to it, and it keeps getting more and more useful.

So I’ll be using screencasting software to start telling stories while showing things in my Brain. Call them “braincasts.”

That said, here’s REXcast #3, the debut braincast. I recorded at the highest resolution I could for YouTube, so you’ll want to play it full-screen, at the highest resolution setting.

You can find my Brain online, at Webbrain.com. Here’s a link to the Brain Function thought I showed in the braincast.

In REX, REXcasts , , ,
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REXcast #2: What are these REXcasts, anyway?

Jerry —  April 19, 2010 — 2 Comments

The stream of nuggets, narratives and points of view that I’ll start issuing from here are all the public part of REX, the Relationship Economy eXpedition.

The private side of REX is a collaborative inquiry into the next economy, which I’m guiding. If you’re interested, I’d love to tell you more about it live.

These REXcasts are a way of developing the notion of a Relationship Economy in public, in a fun, accessible, re-usable way. I’ll try to keep each episode under the magical four-minute mark, as in this one:

This REXcast mentions:

I’ll be using a variety of media in the REXcasts, including talking-head videos (like this episode), sketchcasts (my voice plus my hands and whatever I draw, as I did last episode), screencasts (my voice plus a recording of what’s on my PC screen) and Braincasts (my voice plus a traversal of my Brain; coming soon).

Gratitude: again, special thanks to Loraine Bjorendahl for her help and inspiration in creating this REXcast.

In REX, REXcasts
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