I came across a few cool projects today that made me wonder when we’ll have a currency for sustainability. I’ve written a bunch about how our conceptualization of “money” and “currency” is being expanded as we find new ways to measure and make transparent aspects of wealth that were previously hidden. For example, services like PeerIndex and Klout seek to measure influence, authority, trust, and how well your message resonates with an audience, hence establishing online reputation currencies.I’ve also read before about the weakness of GDP in determining the actual health or wealth of a nation, as it misses out on major indicators of human and environmental well-being – which are arguably more important than the measurement of consumption. Other systems have been proposed, like the Genuine progress indicator (GPI), which attempts to measure whether a country’s growth have actually resulted in the improvement in the well-being of the country’s people.Another fun one is Gross National Happiness (GNH), which attempts to measure quality of life or social progress in a more holistic way, focusing on sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance. This idea was further fleshed out a few years ago as follows (from Wikipedia): Continue reading →

There has been much speculation recently about the role Facebook Credits could play in becoming a global virtual currency, and even the possibility of Facebook becoming a bank. In many ways, it already is becoming a bank – just not in the traditional sense. Facebook is harnessing the power of the social graph, and has certainly adopted an expanded definition of what ‘currency’ means. It’s time for the rest of us to hop on board.

As I’ve been conducting research for The Future of Facebook Project, the experts and thought  leaders interviewed shared some compelling views about the evolution of virtual currencies, and Facebook’s potential role in their development. A big takeaway is that while we typically associate currency directly with money, the rise of the social web and quantification is shifting that reality to become more inclusive of kinds of capital that were formerly intangible.

Money is a tool we use for arms-length transactions, where there isn’t an assumption of any kind of relationship or trust between parties. But as data is being mapped at an accelerating rate – from self-quantifiation, to the contextual and relational data about our location and interactions, to our preferences and opinions, to our exchanges and transactions – we are being granted access to a much richer base of information in our decision-making toolkit. Continue reading →