5 Systems Design books every social artist should read

There are many books out there on social change, better economic models, and how to make the world a better place. It can be tough to know where to start — but don’t worry, we’re here to help. In this blog post, we will discuss some of our top picks for books every social artist should read. Whether you are just starting out on your journey towards change or you are a seasoned activist, these books will provide you with valuable insights, gain a better understanding of new economic models and tool kits for social change.

1. Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown

Inspired by Octavia Butler’s explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.

If you’ve been following MetaCurrency for a while, you know our work is based on the patterns of natural systems (biomimicry.) In her book, Emergent Strategy, Brown goes through a set of real life examples for social change using emergent strategy as the first principles. Emergent Strategy is described as a study of how complex systems and patterns arise out of simple interactions. This book is a great read for change-makers who want to better understand how shift patterns in the world around them and get different perspectives and real life examples of how to do so.

“Emergence shows up that adaptation and evolution depend more upon critical, deep, and authentic connections, a thread that can be tugged for support and resilience.”

2. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development to health care to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this insidious bias, in time, in money, and often with their lives.

A lot of change agents have the best of intentions, yet miss dynamics of the systems they are trying to change and end up producing unintended consequences which are quite the opposite of their original intentions. In her book Invisible Women, Perez does a masterful job at talking about how designs all over the world and possible solutions aren’t truly complete unless you have complete data. Perez focuses on the data missing being women, and the mistakes and harm that comes from taking the white/cis/male perspective as the universal human experience and how to avoid this. Perez goes through different examples that will be incredibly beneficial to experienced and otherwise currency designers and social artists alike.

3. Rethinking Money by Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne

In the domain of Currency Design, this is a classic work. Rethinking Money by Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne is a comprehensive guide to the subject. The book covers the history of money, from its origins to its modern incarnations, and explores the use of alternative currencies in a variety of historical contexts. The authors also offer their own insights into the future of money, and how new designs can be used to create more stable, efficient economies. “Rethinking Money” is an essential read for anyone interested in Currency design, and provides a wealth of information on case studies that are often overlooked.

In Rethinking Money, Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne explore the origins of our current monetary system — built on bank debt and scarcity — revealing how its limitations give rise to so many serious problems. The authors then present stories of ordinary people and communities using new money, working in cooperation with national currencies, to strengthen local economies, create work, beautify cities, provide education, and more.

4. Cloudmoney by Brett Scott

Brett Scott tells an urgent and revelatory story about how the fusion of Big Finance and Big Tech requires “cloudmoney” — digital money underpinned by the banking sector — to replace physical cash. He dives beneath the surface of the global financial system to uncover a long-established lobbying infrastructure: an alliance of partners waging a covert war on cash.

Hot off the press, Brett Scott’s Cloudmoney offers perspective on how the plumbing of our modern, digital financial infrastructure actually works. Since “the cloud is just someone else’s computer”, and since the merger of Big Tech and Big Finance means money being pulled out of our wallets and into their computers, the challenge before us is not just about maintaining money as a public good but also fighting the monopolization of our financial data into single databases. And cryptocurencies on blockchain are not a simple panacea either, especially when their architects sustain naive notions and inaccurate myths about money, trust, decentralization, and sovereignty.

If you’re looking for perspective on the key conversations taking place among elites and activists alike, this book is for you.

5. Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber

In Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber explores the long view of money through the lens of anthropology and historical evidence, instead the stories we tell today as if they are true. He uncovers a rich variety of non-monetary economies and uncovers the roots of money as a tool for political and social control. If you’ve ever had the sense that something greater is possible for humanity than a small number of people shackling the rest of the population to a lifetime of working off their debts, this book is definitely worth the read.

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems — to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods — that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.