Surfing the Singularity with Steemit

in #steemit-ideas8 years ago (edited)

Steemit is no doubt an emergent brand.
A seed has been planted, and its up to the users to shape it.

I've been pondering over the great potentials of this platform for the past two weeks now. It's onto something. It's perhaps the solution to all the big buzzwords so often used in startups in recent years. Think of these words: agile, adaptive, open-source, organic, collaborative,  borderless, sustainable, and simplistic.

Drawing these out from some offbeat presentations I've made before. Been using some of these as part of my free workshops in a blockchain enrichment venture. And after experiencing Steemit, I believe this may be the place for it as well. (Actually, more relevant compared to any other platform)

Let's see if it ticks any of your checkboxes. Bear with me. I hope you have fun reading through this!


1. Surfing the Singularity with Steemit

We are at a point in time when social policies and constructs are failing to catch up with the rapid growth of technological advancement. There is a massive systems problem.

  • All systems are based on certain predictions of the future to secure our position, and those we care about.
  • But the future is unpredictable, and better to be thought of as branching events of probabilities.
  • Nothing is 100%, evident in “Black-Swan” cases.
  • This posits that an encumbered / established plan will not work out over a long period of time - evident in failing systems around the world today.

As we approach singularity, organizations need to follow suit. Systems should be open and porous. Organizations that rely heavily on centralization will face the disruptions highlighted in the visual below.

If an organization is to be future-proof, it should be as antifragile as humanity itself. As relevance is intrinsic to the definition of the future itself, ideally it should revolve around:-

  1. Creating a peaceful, informed, progressive, and emergent business / community that benefits everyone.
  2. A strong foundation - a seed of change that further incentivizes individual motivations to make a good, relevant, and lasting difference - much more than monetary returns can do (after it passes a certain threshold).
  3. Design-thinking: Problem-solving using social, creative, technological, and environmental designs. A quick turnaround methodology to figure out potential solutions before intensive timesink in development: emphatise > define > ideate > rapid-prototyping > testing.
  4. Actionable, first-moving, highly disruptive, cost-efficient and grand-scaled strategies. 
  5. Relevance - a set of long and short term plans that are timeless, adaptive and effective in the current socio-economic and political systems. A true social university of the people, curated and focused on learning and problem-solving through a mix of the arts and sciences.


They're all big words, I know, but coming from something that we all do from time to time - designing the future. Do you see how Steemit's simplistic structure is fitting the bill above?


2. Designing the Future with Steemit

This part is a huge mashup, made extreme from things I've learned and applied in building startups.  Even threw in Valve Corporation's employment concept into the mix for good measure as well. Once absorbed by an "open-freelance-prosumer" community like Steemit's, I can only imagine the wonders that could happen.


There is a work-play vibe in Steemit. With its simple tagging and reward structure, problems to be solved can be posted by organizations all around the world. The possibilities are really endless for organizations seeking to be porous, inviting open-participation. And users themselves can seek to improve Steemit in whatever way they see fit over time.


3. Why Steemit? Look at the current systems.

I believe you can even see this happening for yourself. The current systems are:-

  • Unwieldy and slow to adapt - generated from multitudes of hierarchy and vested, private interests. Think: bank queues, office paperworks, levels of signatures, and such.
  • Self-cannibalizing: there are tremendous costs in the upkeep of an established socio-economic system - prisons, red-tapes, unrelenting consumerism, wastage, loophole-fixing, etc. Too many supporting structures with no innovative way of maintenance.
  • Time-consuming - generating unnecessary human suffering.
  • Specialists & Job Scopes - destroying 99% of your potential
  • A system that mostly incentivizes selfishness, greed, and destructive competition.
    (You can’t be kind and good when you’re putting businesses out by gaining a competitive advantage)
  • Majority of decisions driven primarily by mere opinions of a select few without fully referring to our life-supporting environment and without taking social evolution into account.


4. Think Big. Go Bold. It may be possible to use Steemit to organize certain aspects of society - from work to play to problem-solving. The world's biggest business problems are the world's biggest business opportunities. A platform that promotes free and open contribution will do wonders.


I'm keeping the information flow free-of-charge. If you need materials for your free workshops, just hit me a mail at [email protected]. Thanks for reading!

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Excellent information. The implications of this platform are truly infinite. I was just thinking today how easy one could Crowdfund something with a single Steemit post. I'm sure will be seeing new, innovative ideas pop up from within the community daily.

Yeap it's definitely a better "first test" compared to Kickstarter :D use it wisely!

Amazing amazing, you just gave me a braingasm Kevin! You've articulated something I've felt instinctively but was never able to really explain. Naturally the whole world is a very frustrating place when you see the potential for this kind of thing.

Your ideas have parallels to this book I reviewed The DNA of Future Organizations

Keep writing, keep producing and lets make the world a more Steem-powered place.

Ah I went through that book before - a good one! Personally, I've been through mental hell being stuck in a 9-5. I was particularly extreme in that line of thought, but it was self-imposed anyway. Wrote a lot during my free time back then :) Thanks for dropping a comment. Keep in touch!

Design-thinking: Problem-solving using social, creative, technological, and environmental designs.

Great that you mentioned Design Thinking as one of the core values that organisations should adopt. However, i am not entirely sure if it was "Design thinking" that you were talking about?

Just a correction that according to Tim Brown 's Design Thinking which is the "bible" in design thinking, Design thinking involves defining problem and designing solutions around the USER. Design thinking is not the design itself but the METHODOLOGY that ideate solutions, identify the most appropriate solution and subsequent protyping and testing. That's why we have steemit in beta mode as a protype to collect data and see how the users respond and make the necessary changes. For example, authors will collect 75%, instead of 50% of payouts effective on 4th July.

Ah yes perhaps I should have elaborated - the methodology is actually in one of the visuals - highlighted here.

designthinking

I haven't been with Steemit since the beginning so it would be great to go through the devlogs to see the flow of decisions made throughout the entire process :)

Yes, that's the right methodology. Yes might be a good idea to edit and elaborate since you have placed it there.

Excellent article - I want more! Where do you do the free workshops you mentioned?

thank you :) i'm currently doing it for a co-working / co-living blockchain enrichment hub in Malaysia. soon to hunt out for semi-commercialised islands so it'll be a more attractive co-working space.

have also been pondering the potentials of this great platform.
i have been hopeing a flattr 2.0 using the blockchain could come up sooner or later, and really love the idea of steemit for funding open source projects.
finding their steemit links on github or webpage and upvoting, really would love the open source community to come on steemit.

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