I wanted to let you know your Arduino project has been added to a list of 20 Arduino projects of 2012 published on Nudatech’s blog ( http://www.nudatech.com/blog/20-arduino-projects-of-2012/ ).

Please let me know if there’s any mistake in the short note I wrote about it and if the link I chose for it is the right one.
Obviously sharing the list on social networks, blogs and forums is also appreciated

Regards

We’re using this as a noise level detector in our the lobby of our school as a tool to give the kids visual feedback about the noise level they’re making.

I’ll install it in our lobby and take some pictures (and maybe video) that you can add to the post.

I love the screen and UI. I thought we were going to have to plug it into a computer to adjust parameters and behavior. It’s much nicer this way.

Thanks Eric!

Seriously though I’m no longer competing with all the other demagogues to educate the occupiers. I don’t even think we should be demanding anything of anybody. National governments are obselete, if not the very nation state. I’m rebuilding from the bottom up.

Another story you may want to link to this one: the 100% isomorphism between feudal power on the land and feudal power on money. The feudalism based on land has moved to feudalism on money. The idea I want to stress here is not much political or sociological, but ontological.

If we place ourselves in the shoes (if they had some) of a serf or peasant of the 9th-15th centuries, land was inseparable from a lord (more precisely the lords-vassals-fiefs order). In the inner subjective reality, land+lord were a unit that the mind was not able to separate. Land had the nature of the lord, the lord had the nature of the land. Dissociating them required a complete leap of mind that challenged the cosmic and social order. And even if the land and the lord were mentally separated, so what? What’s after? The ontological separation is the first step, but then the mind is asked to imagine and build a whole new functional universe that works, that’s the second step — the big one. Only a few visionaries have such capacities, then they have to deal with everyone’s incredulity and inertia.

I guess we face the same challenge today with money. Wealth is undifferentiated from money, the same way land was undifferentiated from a lord. Both pairs wealth-money, land-lord share the same ontological bond. When we say “someone is wealthy”, it means this person has lot’s of money, which indirectly ties this person with the current monetary feudal system. My feeling is most (r)evolutions begin when consciousness starts to decouple some of these pairs.

“Complementary currencies” are the first step people make when they decouple money and wealth. The current monetary order is so pervasive that it doesn’t leave space for the mind to rebuild a whole new order. Consciousness needs a long, long journey before it can create a whole new world that is not “alternative” or “complementary” to the existing one, but a pure creation. Right now we are still in the first step of unbinding wealth and money. Even if we do it in the mental level, the practical aspect is still very very challenging.

Even “free currencies” still keep us attached to the old paradigm of seeing human societies as market places, whereas we now need to seem them as conscious living systems in which subjective reality is as important as objective flows.

That’s why I love the verb “to weal”. “Let me weal you”, or “let’s weal” will mean let’s build, measure, acknowledge, exchange, trade, experience, shine wealth together, without ontological strings tied to a centralized proprietary monopolistic technology.

Sooo, thanks Eric, your post wealed me!

Remember that the world of patent warfare is much bigger and more complex than seems right. What I really hate are the wasted resources and assaults on what would be commons property that go to ridiculous extremes. It is clear that our patent and copyright system is quite broken.

However, don’t jump down Apple’s throat until you see the offense in an Apple product… they well could have patented that in order to gain footholds and assets in all the patent wars in which they are constantly embroiled. It is a common tactic to deny others use (and revenue) of a feature by patenting it.

It might also serve as a pawn in the game of pleasing partnership companies – perhaps a cell carrier is requiring an Apple device to support this feature, and Apple decided to level the playing field by taking the feature out of the competitor’s reach. A ways down the road with partners look different, and it may turn out the partner realizes it wasn’t such a great idea after all, etc.

I agree that we are at a nexus, a point of transformation, and that with a slight tilt of the head, we can shift between views of reality.

I and my business partner blog about P2P and while our focus is primarily in the blog on the impact of P2P on content, I am very interested in the economic potential for P2P as the basis for how information is transacted during the next chapter in planetary (and human) life.

We blog is at http://www.perceptric.com – Look forward to reading more of your thoughts.

Since you read some interesting stuff you may also be interested in a book that I am reading right now by Joshua Cooper Ramo, called “The Age Of The Unthinkable – why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what to do about it”.

OK, I think I’m starting to get this more than I did when you described it at the reunion. (I do better with visual aids!) Other posts on this blog helped, too. I’m still not clear on (a) how the unlimited aspect of a currency would play out and (b) how a currency applies to the acknowledgeable but unmeasurable types of wealth.

Let me write out my thoughts as I try out the ideas, and then if you get a chance, I would love to get your reaction, particularly about where I may be missing big pieces of the concepts.

I use the site okcupid, which gives points based on the number and type of activities I carry out on the site (creating a profile, posting a photo, creating a quiz, etc.). My activities are measurable, but not tradeable.

These activity points entitle me to certain benefits (avoiding advertisements, etc.), so I get a pay back for my activities. The fact that I have gained 20 points by performing an activity does not mean that anyone else loses 20 points, so the activity-point aspect of okcupid is an open system.

Everyone in the okcupid user community benefits from the incentive provided by activity points, because the usefulness or value of a social-interaction site is dependent on the amount of activity by users. Because the number of users is another key element of the value of a social-interaction site, it would behoove okcupid to award activity points for referrals of new users.

However, if too many users gain enough activity points to avoid ads, then the business model of the site will collapse, unless some other way is developed to pay back those who provide the services and technology that keep the site going.

This could be addressed through a currency that acknowledges social connectedness, an unmeasurable, non-tradeable form of wealth. Since okcupid’s continued existence presumably increases society’s overall connectedness, society could choose to acknowledge those who run okcupid with some sort of currency. Perhaps if okcupid staffer Stephanie wants to create an antisocial blog with a bigoted theme, she can spend some of her social-connectedness credits for the right to do so. Same for okcupid staffer Boris, who wants to disseminate an addictive, isolating, single-player video game.

Who would decide how many social-connectedness credits would be issued for running a site like okcupid, or how many social-connectedness credits would be demanded for running an antisocial site? And who would issue and demand these credits? All I can think is that it would be the community as a whole, through some sort of deliberative process. If people produce social connectedness more than they create isolation or alienation, then this social-connectedness economy will grow.

Reactions? Thanks!

Riley

It seems to me that what transactions are prevented is a key defining factor in a transactional currency, as this logical analysis of your system thingy shows.

Transaction-prevention can be encoded at various levels.
-The basic rules of the currency [you cannot spend money if you don't have it]
-Societal/trust factors [community currencies only]
-Laws [you cannot spend money on cocaine]

This opens the question of whether two currencies are linked. If currencies are linked, transactions which are prevented in one are prevented in the other.

In a barter-only no-loans world, income inequality is caused by capital inequality, which can be divided into physical, human, and mental capital.

Human capital inequality: cannot be solved unless spending is completely divorced from earning, i.e., money’s function as incentive is lost. But human capital differences are not that big, so it’s OK.

Mental capital inequality: Arguably effective systems which can be seen as monetary would work to effectively spread around IP/mental capital. I was actually working on a hybrid reputation/transaction system that might work out mathematically.
Also, more free public education.

Physical capital inequality: the only way to solve this seems to be the equal/collective ownership of physical capital. Monetary systems could be used to regulate collective ownership of physical capital, but they don’t seem to be able to cause it.

Thoughts?