TheCapitalClinic

[This post has been updated on April 1, 2008 to expand upon the important notion of accelerated self-organization in human society - see below in red.]

This a repost of my note to Wildgabe and Clif whose recent discussions triggered the captioned observation, "Social Capital Wants To Be Measured":

Wildgabe [cc: Clif], re your comments at my "artist profile" at Arb/Algorithms [by the way, I use my Arb/Algorithms "band page" as a way to monitor how the fuzz folks are advancing the "tools for artists" on the artist dashboard and I am really more active and responsive on my various pages as thecapitalclinic]:

1. It is overwhelming for artists to find ways to support themselves doing what they love. There is an intriguing question relating to the intrinsic merit of "art for art's sake" without regard to the artist's livelihood; however, I believe that the future of music would be more secure if we can find a way [and it is tough] for artists not to have to face the brutalizing choice of pursuing their "careers" as "working artists" OR making a living without advancing their art. Yes, art should not be about the money, but practically speaking for the legions of artists out there who may be faced with the harsh reality of supporting themselves or, more importantly, their families who may depend upon them, it IS about the money. As I said elsewhere, "If you [or your family] can't eat, you can't create." I think many artists and passionate believers in the power of music/art find themselves at community music sites such as fuzz because they still have the hope that refuses to be extinguished that collectively we will find ways to develop what I refer to as a new "Cottage industry 2.0" [and we do not know what that may be yet] representing a way that individuals [rather than impersonal corporations that I feel are a failing structure of governance and capital formation) can be empowered by technology and community to create self-sustaining means of livelihood driven by the "truth-values" that they generate through their own energy, without borders or artificial constraints.

2. I was immediately taken by Clif's notion of SocialBuxx™ because this "neologism" [great word] encapsulated some "old ideas that have taken on a new cultural context" and I thought that, with some further nurturing and support from a community who cared, the easy-to-remember neologism could itself gain "currency" and help advance the development of Cottage Industries 2.0. If we can, indeed, make this happen here, it would be a huge win/win for artists and fans [and, oh, by the way, we would have developed in the process empirical evidence that social capital can be quantified and is, thus, more than a default metaphor for value that can't be measured!]

3. Back to Wildgabe's observation, "it's a community about sharing, but it's a community searching for money at the same time" [and I agree - see point 1 above], and the question: "how do they co-relate?" HA! This is the critical question that I have been pondering at thecapitalclinic for many moons [as I am sure others have addressed without resolution as well]. I think you will find common themes in search of an answer in many of my blogs and at my profile page [that I think of as my "landing page" because this is where most random visitors land - and I urge others joining fuzz to think likewise to advance content and personal development]. The more that I blog about the matter, I more I think that the answer lies somewhere in the notion that social capital wants to be measured.

I think this aphorism [that I will develop separately as we continue our search for practical benchmarks] well describes the observed phenomenon of accelerated self-organization in human society in the web-based era that things that "want to" become, do become.

It is my further intuition [to be developed at our Nightschool] that you can use the very dynamics involved in the process of "accelerated communications" in our digital culture to "guide" self-organizing behavior[!] if you can find and manipulate the sweet spot of time in web-based network connections. Why would this be so?

Sweet spots [think: X] tend to be replicated more readily than "non-sweet spots" [opposite of X] and, thus, are replicated according to a power law that constitutes the basic force of nature creating "order out of disorder" [which is, of course, my definition of excellence][lots of stuff here just to benchmark for development as we explore the possibliities of the web and the fuzz platform].

If we as a community can come up with a SIMPLE way to quantify "social capital", we will have found the keys to the kingdom of Cottage Industries 2.0. It's a theoretical conundrum begging to be solved that the notion of "social capital" [I don't want to get side-tracked by semantics here] has been largely seen as "valuable" but we can only validate it anecdotally and not systematically. If "social capital wants to be measured", the technological tools and the web-based community that exist here will provide the serendipitous back-drop to make it happen. I, therefore, watch this space with great agitation and expectation.

[ps: due to the unexpected length and wiki-development of this blog comment and it's relevance [for me] in advancing the community undertaking to find a way to quantity social capital, I will double post this at the related blogs on Virtual Capital and Power Laws and SocialBuxx™ - The New Social Currency Exchange , as well as create a new blog to introduce to the broader fuzz community and random visitors the concept that Social Capital Wants To Be Measured, for contemplation, reaction, and iterative development. Everything that happens on the web is a "wiki" development to push back the edge of chaos.]