35+ Social Lending Platforms Around the World
I’ll be giving a presentation on ‘the future of money’ in a few months, and am trying to wrap my head around all the emerging disruptive tools and services that are shaking up the financial industry. I plan to do a few posts covering these areas, and hope we can have some interesting discussion about what it means and where we’re going. In the meantime, here’s a general resource of social lending platforms/marketplaces across the globe. If you’re aware of any I’ve missed, please let me know! Thanks.
Social Lending
Social Lending, or peer-to-peer lending, essentially brings individuals together to lend and borrow money directly from each other, cutting out the middle man (the bank). Borrowers are able to get low cost loans, lenders are able to get great returns while helping their fellow man, and both parties win. Read more…
Conceptual Framework for Online Identity Roles
I just wrapped up a final project for an aesthetics course this semester, the assignment being to create a “Database of the Self.” I chose to make the database as a representation of the roles we play in terms of how we interact with information online. The roles are overlaid on a panarchy, which shows a visualization of adaptive lifecycles. Though the evolution of every idea or meme won’t necessarily follow this specific path, (it may in fact be rhizomatic, with multiple feedback loops), this begins to flesh out what we become as nodes within an enmeshed series of networks. Read more…
This is part 5 in a 12 part series.
:: conscious awareness ::
A recent article in the New York Times, Building One Big Brain, prompted me to write up the next skill in this 12 part series. The piece quotes Nicholas Carr’s opinions about how the Internet is reducing the “capacity for concentration and contemplation,” scattering our attention and reducing our ability to focus.
It goes on to posit that “technology is weaving humans into electronic webs that resemble big brains.” (It’s nice to see this concept going mainstream… we talked about that idea here last November in the ‘Twitter’s Intelligent, Welcome to Web 3.0” post ). The next stage in the line of thinking is that this process is part of our species evolution:
Could it be that, in some sense, the point of evolution – both the biological evolution that created an intelligent species and the technological evolution that a sufficiently intelligent species is bound to unleash – has been to create these social brains, and maybe even to weave them into a giant, loosely organized planetary brain? Kind of in the way that the point of the maturation of an organism is to create an adult organism? Read more…
What are the Emerging Values & Business Models of the 21st Century Human/Organization?
Juliet Schor: Plenitude from toddboyle on Vimeo.
I just watched a talk by economist Juliet Schor, Plenitude: Building a Post-Work Society with Resilient Community Technologies, with some interesting thoughts about where things are and where they’re going. An overview:
There are a number of drivers and trends that are shaping the direction society and business is going – global recession, jobs created offshore, labor displacing technologies, and growing environmental costs that our economy is going to have to pay (scarcities of energy, erosion of ecosystems). Duration of unemployment is rising, and we haven’t created a solution. (In order to just get employment rates to pre-crash levels, we would need about 500,000 jobs created a month for 21 MONTHS.)
She asks:
“Can we continue with a “business as usual” economy driven by fossil fuels, consumerism, and a “hands off” attitude to market outcomes, or do we need another way?”
She posits the corporate sector is not the engine for wealth creation that is needed, but rather we need to create economic structures that are mindful of both wealth AND well-being – a new economy needs to create TRUE WEALTH, that actually improves lives and avoids top-down elistist solutions.
How? Read more…
Guidelines for Group Collaboration and Emergence
I’m in the middle of taking a course on Virtual Learning Environments (syllabus here), and reading a few chapters from Adaptive Software Development by Highsmith. It approaches the team-building and collaboration process from the perspective of complex adaptive systems theory, and contains some interesting insights in evolutionary development and creating environments where emergence can occur. I’ve created a summary of a chapter that I’d like to share, as I think it can be valuable for many of us, and specifically for the community of practitioners around the junto concept.
Collaboration is an act of shared creation or discovery. (schrage89) Read more…
Junto: overview of concept, philosophy, and components
Hi all! In the past few months, there has been a lot of excitement and momentum building around the Junto concept, which has been great, and expanded all of our views of where it could go. I just wanted to take the time to reclarify the philosophy, definition, and components of Junto, so that we know what steps can be carried out to bring the vision closer to a reality. Thanks again for everyone’s involvement in this collective learning and building process! Read more…
[This is part 4 in a 12 part series. The topics covered so far are Pattern Recognition, Environmental Scanning, and Network Weaving.]
::Foresight::
The ability to develop foresight is a cornerstone for forward thinking individuals and change agents. I can say that on the personal level in my own life, when I did not have a clearly defined goal or vision of what I wanted or where I was going, I floundered. My ability to “see” potential opportunities or pitfalls was clouded, and I fell into a rut or holding pattern in life. Then, when those wild cards and “black swan events” did occur, I was completely blindsided and unprepared to handle them. I think this applies at the individual as well as the organizational level.
So what exactly is foresight? Here are a few definitions from the wikipedia page on Foresight (Futures Studies): Read more…
As the months have gone by, I’ve become more and more committed to the work I’m doing on this blog, and developing these ideas and relationships. It started as just a blog for ideas in October, and now has been my portal to the world for sharing my passion with others. Ideally, I would like to continue to do this as my career or life work. As the months have ticked by and graduation is visible on the horizon (December, woo!), I’ve begun to feel an apprehension about what’s next. I don’t want to have to “get a job” – (i.e. do work other people want me to do) – but instead continue to follow my passion and figure out a way to have a sustainable income while doing it. I’d like to think that what I do here – discussing the evolution of technology, communication, social dynamics, culture, business, and consciousness itself – is a valuable and worthy pursuit. From the constant positive feedback I receive here, it seems others would agree. So, based on these observations, and some helpful suggestions from people who advise and guide me, I have a proposal for a business model that I think could work for many of us who are committed to advancing humanity for a globally cooperative, collaborative society. Read more…
Conversation with a Healer
This post is another personal development experience, detailing a healing session I had yesterday with a local practitioner in my area, Eileen O’Hare. If you’d prefer to just read about technology and the future of the web, wait for my next post. If you’ve never participated in an energy healing session and are curious what it’s like, read on!
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today i went to eileen for a healing session. a lot of things have been cropping up, and it felt time to let go of some things that were no longer serving me. we started with about an hour and a half long conversation, centered around the topic of aloneness and isolation.
she asked me how i felt about being alone.
i said that i enjoy my isolation, that i need that time to think and reflect, that it makes me a better person for others when i have time to myself. though i spend much of my time behind a computer, it is not done aimlessly browsing the web. i am actively engaged in conversations all day – either on twitter, google chat, or in video discussions on skype. though i am alone in physical space, i am not lonely.
she asked if i feel alone. Read more…
[This article is crossposted from Jorge Jaime's blog, in response to my video post a few weeks back about "The Conversation." I recorded an hour long chat on skype with Scott Lewis (@jazzmann91), broken down into 5 minute clips, in which we discussed the concept behind Junto. Namely, it is a conversation platform we are inspiring to be built around the intention of creating a respectful space where people can engage in generative dialogue and come to a place of understanding and shared meaning. Scott and I discussed what that looks like, and what kind of core values people may embrace in order to have meaningful, productive conversations that lead to positive action. In the comments section of that post, Jorge suggested someone break down the content of the discussion so that others could learn from it. I suggested he do it. He did. And here it is below! Very thorough breakdown, thank you Jorge. Original post here.]
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A week ago Venessa Miemis shared a conversation where she spoke with @jazzmann91. In that conversation they talked about how to have The Conversation and some key points that we needed to take into consideration while participating in ‘The Conversation’. I suggested that it will be good to have all of the points treated there organized into a post so that we could go back and read when we were about to participate in ‘The Conversation.’
‘The Conversation’ is a debate where people discuss ideas around a topic, problem or area and try to make an impact and change the reality of that particular theme. Here’s the post that I hope will help us create a ecosystem for collaboration and will help us develop ideas a bit further.
The Internet is the ultimate human communication tool, yet communication needs certain guidelines to be really effective. In international business the cultural differences are studied in detail in the negotiation workshops. This is because communication is key to build open and honest relationships. In fact that is one of the core values of Zappos: “Build honest & open relationships with communication”.
The power of the web could be enhanced if communication could be made easy. The web is a way to accelerate serendipity, people from around the world will gather together and collaborate, something that was impossible some years go. This on-line social gatherings could help us form tribes of people willing to make a change. Take for example the myriad of collaboration tools created to help Haiti where people from different countries gathered and made projects work in days.
We’ve given a tool that can help us drive change faster. The Internet if used with the right purpose can help people gather and work towards a shared higher purpose. But for this awesomeness to happen we need to nurture and create long term trust relationships. The guidelines in this post were conceived so collaboration could flow.
These guidelines are often thought as obvious and you’ll probably think all of these points are, but it’s good to have it written down as a reference point in case we forget them. The human mind gets distracted or carried away easily and having guidelines could help reshape the way we think and in this case collaborate. Read more…
