In late 2018, Joi Ito, Director MIT Media Lab presented his draft Phd. dissertation on the “Practice of Change“. Organised in 6 chapters, he articulates how to intervene in complex systems. It's a fascinating, long and deep read on how to keep our humanity at heart in this fast changing world. What is refreshing in this dissertation is that Joi is looking at a possible future where growth is not the main driver. He also seems to drop the notion of progress – in the sense of always more and better – and suggests a critical design to enable human flourishing.

A key graphic in Joi's thinking is Krebs Cycle of Creativity, a synergy between science, engineering, design, and art. Joi expands on the motivations in such systems based on “currencies” as in “current-seas”, a term coined by Arthur Brock, founder of the Metacurrency Project and Holochain projects.

It really gets interesting when Joi explains the concept of “markets of currencies”. In economic markets, the currency is money. The Internet's currency is attention. What would be the currency of humanity? (Hint: maybe happiness…?)

This is a guest post by Peter Van.