Molly Ränge is a co-founder of the hybrid crowd funding platform Crowdculture.se, working at Fabel Communications in Stockholm.
In her book What’s mine is yours – the rise of collaborative consumption, Rachel Botsman introduces the thought of how we with every act on the web leave a reputation trail. Something that in just a few years will be possible to track and summarize in the form of a personal “reputation bank account” stating my trustworthiness in a digital economy built on social interaction between all people.
This idea follows a tradition of thought pandered by “webosophes” as Bard and Söderqvist, who write on the notion of “Affection” as the new dominant currency, based on Wired’s early netocracy discussion.
In a recent article the entrepreneur and blogger Nathaniel Whittemore enforces;
”Social capital does not work the same way as financial capital, and in persistent groups, social capital “transactions” are multiparty and extended over time.”
Whittemore is apparently repositioning Pierre Bordeus’ concept of social capital by using it in a new context, and further argues that the rise of what Botsman calls collaborative consumption, makes our need of “the institution” lesser since we now can choose to invest our time in building relationships and thereby social (and beneficial) capital in (digital) groups and communities, a behaviour that stands in contradiction to swarming around historically consolidated power centres with hope for a helping (yes funding that is) hand.
Show me your reputation trail and I’ll tell you where to shop
The important question this narrows down to is in which of all the swapping, funding, borrowing and sharing communities you better invest your time?
In relation to friends and associates you already have, the choice might not be more than a matter of preferred interface. But compared to the relations you are yet to build, the choice of preferred platform is a crucial matter of social arena, because they are as different as the dumpster cooking movement and the luxurious market Dean & Deluca, NYC.
That hierarchies grow where people interact is of course nothing new, they always have and always will. But the social ranking we will see rise in the crowd economy houses one important difference; it is a scenario in which we will fight for our right not only to buy products, but to invest in things we yet have not seen.
Or even more put to an extreme; to have a reputation trail strong enough to be allowed to be part of an international group of elite creators dream realization. So does your social media aura glow strong enough to allow you access to the most attractive funding/swapping/trading communities? Well, just show me your reputation trail and I’ll tell you where to shop.
Who is handing out the gold cards?
As of today we live in a society where a financial governmental body controls the publicly sanctioned monitoring systems e.g. economical fraud. Questions that come to mind in relation to a self-governed trust economy, is how such a structure will work to be perceived as “fair”? It is about whom are given the power to decide upon which behaviours deserve to be punished within the framework, when the infliction mechanisms are to be repealed, and who is deserving of a gold card?
The Nobel price winner in economy 2009, Elinor Ostrom, argues that a crucial parameter of community networks survival over time is the members potential power to affect rules and restrictions within the community. Adapted to this discussion, this means that your survival within the social economy is dependent on your way of taking active responsibility of “the memory of sanctions” within the structure.
It might sound difficult, but I would say we are already practicing to build on each other’s social reputation capital over time by, for example, writing endorsements on professional communities like LinkedIn.
In a close future we only have to imagine a “labelling”, similar to the credit rating system “AAA” commonly used in the (Swedish) corporate sector, that visualize our trustworthiness in the social economy. A personal stamp that is agile over time and constructed trough the conduct of fellow community members.
Towards real life Monopoly?
In his book “What Technology Wants” Kevin Kelly answers the question if technology make us better as humans with the simple conclusion that it does by providing us with choices. He further makes an important separation between finite and infinite games, where the latter is to be understood as eternal and in which the game mechanism are built around the possibility to play with the framework rather then within the same.
So is this a new eternal game with real time effects on my possible consumption on a new digital and socially controlled market? It might be if we choose to read it that way. But to refer the Dutch philosopher Gadamer (1900), one needs to fully understand the game he is part of to be able to make meaningful choices within the framework and thereby be an actual part in the act of playing.
A self-surveillance market built by your every tweet
So if we believe in the development of a digital economy controlled by social interaction through the construction of reputation capital over time, we must also be able to imagine ourselves as players in an infinite consumption game in which our success depends on our understanding of the ability to affect it’s value-based framework.
Because in a market relying on your ability to nurture social relations, your economical credibility is separate from your monthly income but dependent on the charisma surrounding your social media aura.
And all of a sudden the thought that my every tweet works as a micro building block in a digital version of Foucault’s self surveillance prison “Panopticon” seem just a bit too easily caught.
So where does all this leave us? Well, the question I myself will look forward to returning to is about the tension created between technology and morality where I see an obvious egg-or-hen drama to be revealed. Because if we as creators of funding solutions, social communities, and platforms for interaction are to be known as the game masters in this infinite economy, we also have a new kind of power in our hands worthy to be carefully aware of.