It has been noted that I seem to update my facebook status often. Yes, I do have a mobile version on my phone. But I also have a mobile version of twitter as well. Twitter is this social networking platform that lets you do micro blogging from anywhere in text message size. What can you say about your exact situation in 140 characters or less?  It’s kind of like facebook or tribe, in that you have followers and you follow people. But hen you get these little “tweets” from people telling you where they are, what they’ve been seeing, and who they just spotted in the four seasons.  And it links up to Facebook and Myspace. I tweet when I update my blog (when I remember) and I tweet from set, when being on the internets is inconvenient.  

Now here’s the thing. If I am following your movements on twitter, I know where and what you are doing and with whom… well as much as you like to share. Likewise, if I am out with someone who is also on twitter, I can say where we are. It has people know what is going on in my life and know what I am doing. So if for example you too were going to the magic castle last night, you would have been able to say hello. 

The more information we are able to share, and the faster we can do it, the more connected we become. One of my favorite quotes is from Arthur C. Clark:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

If you pay attention to my facebook updates, or my twitter feeds, or my blog, think about how much you could know about me that even my closest family doesn’t (if only they would figure out how to read my blog regularly). Perhaps being psychic has as much to do with broadcasting the information as anything else.  Think of what a time traveler from 1985 (Like Marty McFly) would think of our communications in this era.  He would be blown away. Now think of what someone from 1969, the year we put a man on the moon. Or better yet, the last great depression. We would be thought of as heretics!

While I appreciate the encouragement to write, and to keep updating, broadcasting the contents of my head to for others to know in their heads is a one way street. Make this a two way communique, write yourself! Update those statuses and twitter feeds. Subscribe to twitter and follow Spaceman23, Connect and share. Spread out the network. See how much your psychic little brain can carry and broadcast your greatness through every medium. Be known. 

It’s a fun time, lets keep playing big.

As you know, dear reader, I have been thinking a lot about total economic collapse these last few weeks.  It’s dark work, being a harbinger of disaster; I am stuck being the guy who is looking at the outcomes and the signs with no answers. I feel like Chicken Little, a paranoid little naysayer screaming about the sky and it’s impending doom (DOOM!).  I am finding quite a bit of agreement in the world for my particular world-view.  Between the stories I am finding on google reader, watching the incredible Story of Stuff and Zeitgeist: Addendum, and reading Get Back in the Box by the super-genius Douglas Rushkoff, I have been getting a lot of input and have been brewing some thoughts of my own. I have a few minutes in the quiet of the mountains to get them out. 

The problem I have been having with the idea of economic collapse is that I can’t really see a social collapse along with it. As fun as it is to imagine a Fallout/Mad Max/ Burning Man reality becoming the dominant form, with Spaceman running around with a glock, a battleaxe and a camelback, it really would be a nightmare scenario for everyone (but it would look cool, you must admit). I can get that kind of thing from video games (read Fallout 3). While our monetary scarcity based system is like a house of cards ready to tumble down all around us, our social connections and communities are very strong and very interconnected.  Interconnectedness gives strength. 

We are moving into this heavily networked era of Humanity. An era where we are connected instantly and powerfully. Think of things like twitter, tribe and facebook. Hell think about this blog and how quickly I am able to get out information to the world.  Think about how many of our career lives are connected with those that we are interacting with in social circles. I don’t really know the last grip job I worked that wasn’t connected to someone I thought of as a friend, who I would invite over for dinner. My friend KT is a photographer, (maybe you’ve heard of her) and her business is all based on relationships. There’s a recession on, and she’s doing fine because she has strong relationships. My friends Roxy and Chris, they have an acupuncture/chiropractic business, same thing. The needs we have as people are not going to go away if suddenly the almighty dollar isn’t anything more than fancy kindling for our furniture fires. Our relationships aren’t going to go away, either. 

So what I have been wondering, is WHAT are we going to use as a basis for trade?  The Burning Man gift economy seems to work pretty interestingly. It is also a meritocracy, where those who give the most, somehow get a much more rich experience. (Did you know that those DPW people, the ones that build the city before you get there, they get a shower truck, and three hot meals per day?) But, it is also centered on abundance, like we all spend a metric shit ton at Target and Santee Alley before we ever get there so we can gift the hell out of that playa.  And then there’s trade goods? What would we use as currency? Oatmeal packets, silver coins, Clif Bars, bullets, clothing, pints of gasoline or water? All of these things? I read an article about prisoners in the state prison system using packets of mackerel  bought from the prison store as their currency when the system outlawed smoking. What I fear is that it will be force that takes what it wants, as in “I have the uniform and the gun, I will take what I want.”  This is the trouble with placing our well being into the hands of a few, who are armed to the teeth. In honesty, it will probably be some combination of these things. When things go sideways, I just hope we have some serious leadership nationally and locally to keep some semblance of sanity. 

Our power in times of trouble will be from two sources. It will come from connectedness and social currency.  Being networked to our communities is paramount. This means pay your phone bill and keep your internet access going almost above all else. Being able to twitter that you are hiding in your apartment and roving bands of hungry and angry former bankers and insurance salesmen are ransacking your building looking for tasty bites, could be the difference between getting help and being left to those monsters. Being able to know where people you know are gathering, and building new things: Essential. Knowing what resources there are, and where to get access to them, essential. Of course, I am an internet dude. I am biased. But I think the networked reality offered us by the web is probably the most important innovation to human connectedness and communication, yet.   

But then there is this thing, Social Currency.  What is it? It is an intangible. You have it through interactions with others. It is what you bring to the table in relationships. You may be someone who has a vast music collection and you share it. You may be someone who tells great jokes. You may be a great listener or communicator. You may be that person who can build things, or you may just give great hugs. It is your connection with others, your generosity to others.  It is something that is not easily measured, but something that is easy to get. It is sharing.  Going back to Burning Man, it is that thing that works with a really great theme camp (like mine this year) where everyone keeps giving and the pool of social currency keeps growing.  Everyone is giving and sharing and building it up.  The cool thing about social currency is that it, like love itself, is a perpetual motion machine. The more you give, to the more people you give it to, who then give, extending this abundant model. At it’s very core it is participation. It can only work in a networked reality. 

A networked reality is our current ability to communicate to many and have instant feedback. It is a natural state. You send out communication and broadcast to everyone. Like this writing, for instance. It hits everyone, and those who it resonates with or effects read it and process it. They then have some social currency in the form of conversations, ideas, memes, new ways of thinking.  I also get some social currency for bringing it to the electronic page. It is a zero loss kind of game. Meanwhile thousands of these communications are traveling back and forth through our networks, building up social currency among the community. Social currency can also be lost by being a jerk, or squelching communication, or making really poor choices (Dick Cheney lost some social currency when he shot that guy in the face, even though his friend was okay, for instance).  But for the most part, it is an intangible, expanding aspect of our collective self.  

So I am in just the very beginnings of working this out. Already, this may be my longest blog essay.  But there is much much more. I am just excited that there is a reality I can start seeing that isn’t some survivalist wet dream.  With Social Currency and Networked Reality I can start to see my lifelong dream of abundance and innovation for all coming to pass. It fits in with my commitment to the new Golden Age.  It is emerging faster and faster, just before I posted this, I found this.

It is for us to work out the details, so please contribute by commenting on the blog or on the facebook feed. Comments = Social Currency. 

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. 

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

George Bernard Shaw