Return
Having spent the better part of the last three months writing a book for another, I am back now wanting to stretch some ideas of my own. Having spent the better part of the last six months dabbling with ideas via social media, largely LinkedIn, I am now wanting to explore that thinking in longer form writing.
I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to write a book. It has let me explore ideas tangential to my interests, ideas close to my interests that do not supplant them. And it’s not the book that I would write for myself. It has taught me that there is another book in me, and given me the discipline to show up every morning, and write.
Which is where I am now. Having established that routine and with the draft manuscript now away, I have itchy fingers and a restless mind buzzing with ideas. Both fingers and mind need to be stretched.
At the moment I am intersecting lots of thoughts, drawing them back into thinking around waste, because I believe everything interesting comes back a the tangible problem.
I will explore those intersecting thoughts through an evolving series of Medium posts with a view to forming them into my own book. This particular post is the first shot upinto a starless night, a flare that lights up the richness immediately surrounding.
It foreshadows some of the ideas to be explored. In time I will be able to add links to where I explore those ideas further. Right now, as I write for the first time, those links don’t exist because the posts don’t exist. Give it time.
Complex Adaptive Systems. Waste is a complex adaptive system that is surprisingly poorly understood. It’s the byproduct of society, in itself complex. There is little systems thinking applied to it, and so the waste sector is pushed at one point and “perverse outcomes” squeeze out somewhere else. Increase landfill levies to make recycling more cost competitive, and you get waste hauled hundreds of kilometers to landfills where levies do not apply. And so the list goes on. Understanding complex adaptive systems is such a exciting and rich vein of enquiry, and I am in the process of learning more.
Integral Theory and Self-Sovereignty. I’ve been enjoying interviews with Ken Wilber and Jordan Greenhall in Neurohacker Collective. They talk about the responsibility for self, for creating the best you. As Jordan Greenhall describes it, to be able to participate in Plan B, a world in which you show up as a complete regenerative person rather than as a partial self squashed into an extractive box. And for waste the same applies. How do we make materials show up as their full potential, how do we make enterprise realise the full potential of materials. How do we shift an extractive model to a regenerative one.
Blockchain. I do believe that blockchain offers immense potential for humanity to shift. At its fundamental level, it offers a way of assuring peer to peer trust rather than mandating centralised trust. That’s a big deal, because the costs of centralised trust are immense. I think the potential of blockchain to open up value in the real world (not just crypto-currency bubble) is also immense and nowhere near mapped out. To start with, think of the power of peer to peer micro-transactions of resources. Capturing the value of organics cycling through the economy. It goes on and on. Gunther Sonnenfeld at Novena Capital is doing excellent work in building the connection between real world assets and blockchain. There is such abundance in this space.
Moonshots. This feels very Silicon Valley, and came to me after listening to Astro Teller talking at Abundance Digital, but this 10x thinking has been liberating for me. It sparks an internal dialogue that spirals progressively higher. Testing lots of ideas to quickly come to a BIG idea — 100 ideas for the one killer idea means that you’ve got to be comfortable with failure. Doing a pre-mortem of a project you’re in. Devising action lists ordered by priority of learning rather than priority of importance.
Sensors. Creating systems that can sense materials, and at the very simplest level this is detecting what they are (or even more interestingly, what they might be) as they pass in a processing centre. But on a larger level this is about building a broad picture of the movement of materials, without impinging on human privacy, to then understand opportunity points. Sensors on rubbish bins to know when they are full is a simple, simple first step. There is so much more to be achieved.
Artificial Intelligence. I am fascinated by the potential for AI to steer imperfect decision making. Connected with an increasing sensed world, as we gather increasing amounts of data, we can see more distributed mapping of what is happening with our materials and so design intelligent, self-learning approaches for the recovery and regeneration of those materials. A nervous system, if you will, that is far more intelligent than what we have now. And for that nervous system to work best it needs to be highly distributed rather than centralised. Just as it works in the human body, so too it needs to work in the social body of humanity.
Micro economies. There is perhaps a better word for this, but this is what I am calling my adoption of the thinking in David Fleming’s Surviving the Future. A communal world where micro transactions form a new economy. It’s what inspires me about Plasticbank. Releasing economic value for everybody in the economy, and not just those who control the means to production (ie the wealthy and already fortunate). That’s less about Marxist rhetoric and more about creating a world of abundance — how can we claim to realise humanity’s full potential with the majority of people are essentially excluded from fully participating?
I’ll leave it there. These are ideas, thoughts to explore further. They will inspire further ideas in myself. It’s likely a confused list, for which I don’t really apologise because it has been made for myself in the hours of 5–7am. A buzzing humdinger of thoughts.
Til next time.
