TLDR: On the eve of the Intelligence Revolution, perhaps it is time to reimagine the world of work, embracing a future that values passion, decentralization and automation.
"The antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest. The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness." - David Whyte (1)
Contents:
I. Soul Sucking Data Theft
II. Decentralized Fundraising
III. Case Study: Gitcoin
IV. The Future of Work
V. A Post-Capitalist Future?
I. Soul Sucking Data Theft
In many corporate environments, our most precious assets - our ideas, creativity, and personal data - are being systematically appropriated. Companies can often treat employees as interchangeable parts, valuing hours worked over unique contributions. Not always, but a concerningly large percentage of the time. This approach not only stifles innovation but also facilitates a concerning trend: the theft of our intellectual and creative output. (2)
The urgency of this issue is amplified by the rise of AI technologies. Our ideas and workflows, once captured only by spreadsheets, are being fed into large language models. (3) These AI systems are rapidly advancing, threatening to replace the workflows and ideas of the humans whose creativity they've absorbed.
This is because the system fails to recognize and nurture individual talents.
I see hope amongst a few entrepreneurs who are reimagining the concept of work, and questioning this system we've been a part of since the Industrial Revolution.
Andrej Berlin, a founder of the web3 design collective Deep Work, laments that in traditional organizations, "It's very rare that people develop a sense of understanding what they're really, really good at, or what they excel in, because they go through organizations that don't share that information." (3)
When we do manage to incorporate our interests into our work, the fruits of our creativity often become company property, without attribution. Our personal innovations, our problem-solving grit, our contributions to spiritual morale are subsumed into a larger machine.
The current model of work, rooted in Industrial Revolution thinking is, quite frankly, becoming obsolete. Could we reimagine a workplace that values human creativity, fosters individual passions, and respects personal data? As we face the challenges of AI and widespread job dissatisfaction, let’s potentially redefine the very nature of work itself.
II. Decentralized Fundraising
For years, the blockchain has broken my heart.
NFTs, IPOs, Apes and MemeCoins. It's Sam Bankman Fried, scams, grifts, automatic weapons bought with Bitcoin, and summer after summer of pumping and dumping. I agree, it's hard to take the blockchain ecosystem seriously, but remember that the American Old West was first lawless and disorganized too.
Let's try to remove ourselves from the technology for a moment. Let's focus instead on the networked collective of people working together towards a common goal, no matter where they are in the world. Forget tech, it's productive networked people.
Let's imagine a global group of individuals that meet up once or twice a week in a secure virtual space. Each found their way there by exploring different online communities and discovering groups tackling issues that matter – climate change, diversity and inclusion, accessibility, or some unique unimaginable altered experience. You vibe with the folks, then collaborate on a project, and then – and here is the part where it gets interesting --- you're writing grants.
Grants, generally seen as fundraising for non-profits or academics, is an old-fashioned mechanism for gathering and distributing funds for a cause. However, when you add the blockchain, you open the possibility of tens of thousands of globally networked people.
III. Case Study: Gitcoin
Let's examine Gitcoin. (5) I urge you to witness the millions channeled into social goods through this platform.
Kevin Owocki, known by his handle Owocki.eth, (6) co-conceived and spiritually guided a decentralized, mission-driven network to flourish. In a manner reminiscent of George Washington, he's demonstrated how a leader can “step away,” and continue fostering value within a fundraising network without compromising the ecosystem's integrity.
Gitcoin's platform simplifies the process for developers worldwide to contribute to open-source projects and receive compensation in Ethereum-based currencies.
Here's how it works:
Open-source projects post issues and allocate funds for solutions.
Developers discover these issues and submit their work.
If accepted, the developer is paid in cryptocurrency.
The Github-enabled realm of open source has consistently shown the wonders a strong community can work in software development. (7) With a way to pay developers, crypto enabled, open source, bounty hunting could very well be the future blueprint for software creation.
Conceptually, this distributed grant model could extend beyond software to various forms of work - from project management to design, entertainment, and creative media of all kinds. Envision a new work paradigm where we wake up and connect to platforms offering a smorgasbord of bounties, contracts, and initiatives. Tasks, not skills, are disseminated across the network, each with its associated payment.
The way you care about your favorite app, you will care about a network. Everyone becomes an investor, a builder, or a collector in smaller, interoperable, open source tools and media. The network's strength lies in its participants' belief and willingness to back it with their money or labor. Ultimately, the massive group of networked individuals has a novel opportunity to invest in what they believe in and wish to see materialize. Imagine this on a global scale - just as we summon an Uber for a few dollars, we'll pay the network for small, fractional creations, or invest collectively to solve massively global problems.
As the industrial revolution changed us, humans invented the concept of a company. A company comes in many different shapes and sizes. Some examples include local “Mom-and-Pop” companies, non-profit companies, media companies, and multi-national companies. A company is a legally bound, conceptual framework.
The generative revolution is changing us now. This is the beginnings of a framework for something new, that we just don’t understand yet. (8)
What might this look like?
IV. The Future of Work
As AI advances, the focus will begin to shift from specific skill to vision and values. Simple prompts can generate content, while AI-powered tools will seamlessly integrate into our systems. In this new paradigm, what you choose to do matters more than what you can do. Your moral compass and project choices define your professional identity. It's not just about skills anymore - it's about purpose.
Roles become fluid. You might manage a project one day and build on the next. You will forever be learning, master of one thing, amateur the next. AI will take care of the hard stuff, empowering the contributions based on ideas rather than just technical expertise.
The concept of "work" evolves. Your actions in many networks can grow your holdings. Ideas, relationships, and digital assets gain tangible value. When networks recognize your worth, your very existence becomes valuable.
Imagine your digital footprint as a living portfolio, showcasing your contributions and worth in real-time. Every contribution, big or small, gets etched onto a global supercomputer. It's a permanent record of creativity and collaboration, immortalized in the blockchain.
What if these Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, born from crypto trading, are maturing into legitimate systems for production and cooperation? It's not just about blockchain - it’s a different ethos entirely. It's about building a culture of trust by fostering authentic collaboration and honest feedback.
“Your contributions are tracked... You can feel a sense of ownership over what you've contributed by putting it into the ecosystem." - Andrej Berlin, Deep Work
V. Post Capitalist Future?
While capitalism has been the dominant economic model for generations, it's important to remember that for much of human history, it didn't exist at all. (9)
Manifesting in the Renaissance and maturing into our modern system throughout the last five centuries, it has brought innovative practices and technological breakthroughs. With the centralization of big tech monopolies, we are facing the potential outcome of a few players controlling the majority of the power, data, money and resources. (10) Considering the problems we face, and the acceleration of AI, this may not be a viable option.
As we enter an age of potential mass abundance, the limitations of our current system become increasingly apparent. If AI can create a world where scarcity is no longer a driving force, could we begin to imagine new forms of value and purpose? What if we could break free from the endless pursuit of money and instead focus on the things that make us truly human – our creativity, compassion, and desire to live in harmony with the world around us?
This is where the idea of a post-capitalist future of work comes in. (11)
It's a vision of a world where our worth is no longer measured by the size of our bank accounts but by the impact we make and the connections we forge. This is not scarce, but sharing-focused economics, powered by distributed crypto computing. By leveraging the many well funded blockchain ecosystems, we could create networks that enable people to work together, share knowledge, and contribute to projects that benefit everyone. I believe these grant funding networks, and the “DAOs” that are emerging, are the first steps to this.
This approach could potentially promote transparency, trust, and equity, while reducing waste and inefficiency. The sustainable and lower cost option. Of course, getting there won't be easy. Most of us are still trapped in the centralized and capitalist mindset, unable to envision an alternative.
Andrej acknowledges, "It's so embedded in our social network, that it's a default behavior and a way of live… People believe it, and think it's normal."
Well… no time to argue.
Let's also be aware that the threat of automation is very real. The world with the weekly paychecks and 401k's may be threatened by reasoning neural networks, (12) self-driving machines, (13) English-speaking agents, and legal systems negotiating with smart contract backends. We are beholden to a handful of techno-overlords who will essentially decide whether or not to share the enormous surplus value.
I'm motivated to share these ideas, not because I desire my fellow dreamers to embrace this brave new world of work. Sure, it's a compelling vision, but few will take it seriously. Instead, I'm motivated because the chance many of us will lose paying work in the years that follow, is a very real possibility.
Let me be clear. Yes. AI is coming for your job. (14)
Already, we are seeing optimized workforces, and companies moving, nay, sprinting to adopt AI systems in lieu of new hires.
But as Andrej points out, "If you're afraid of losing your job because someone automates it, then that means your job was actually not desirable in the first place. There are probably a lot more things that might be desirable that you haven't thought about or felt within yourself that you want to connect with."
Let's begin to imagine this new vision for work for a chance at a better future, but also because it may be the only one we have to support ourselves. If we have the courage to seize this moment, we just might create a more vibrant, more equitable, and more fulfilling society for tomorrow.
Thanks for reading. Make it happen.
July 1, 2024
Nye Warburton is a creative technology something-or-other, game philosopher and dad. He believes in the power of human creativity, and hopes for a collective future where everyone finds their purpose.
This essay was written with editing assistance from Claude 3.5 from Anthropic. Images created in Stable Diffusion in Leonardo.ai.
Special Thanks
This essay was inspired by an interview with designer and entrepreneur Andrej Berlin from Deep Work.
Andrej Berlin - Medium
Read writing from Andrej Berlin on Medium. Designer by day, Magician by night. Every day, Andrej Berlin and thousands of other voices read, write, and share important stories on Medium.
I encourage you to learn more about Deep Teams:
Also…
Mike Peck (@edtechpeck) from Ed3DAO
Nick Dine, Mike Mancuso and Joette Jones from SuperVague
and Alex Nguyen from Ven Council
Notes:
David Whyte | https://davidwhyte.com/
“This approach not only stifles innovation but also facilitates a concerning trend: the theft of our intellectual and creative output.” | https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-property-problem
“AI technologies. Our ideas and workflows, once captured only by spreadsheets, are being fed into large language models.” | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2024/06/21/1080-the-potential-reach-of-llms/
Andrej Berlin, Deep Work Studio | https://www.deepwork.studio/
Gitcoin | https://www.gitcoin.co/
Kevin Owocki | https://owocki.com/about-kevin-owocki/
“The Github-enabled realm of open source has consistently shown the wonders a strong community can work in software development.” | https://press.stripe.com/working-in-public
“This is the beginnings of a framework for something new, that we just don’t understand yet. “ | https://ethereum.org/en/dao/
“While capitalism has been the dominant economic model for generations, it's important to remember that for much of human history, it didn't exist at all.” | https://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens-2/
“With the centralization of big tech monopolies, we are facing the potential outcome of a few players controlling the majority of the power, data, money and resources.” | https://www.wired.com/story/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-interview/
“This is where the idea of a post-capitalist future of work comes in.” | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostCapitalism
'“The world with the weekly paychecks and 401k's may be threatened by reasoning neural networks,” | https://situational-awareness.ai/
“self-driving machines,” | https://waymo.com/blog/2024/06/waymo-one-is-now-open-to-everyone-in-san-francisco/
“Let me be clear. Yes. AI is coming for your job.” | https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5ypy4/openai-research-says-80-of-us-workers-will-have-jobs-impacted-by-gpt
I also recommend the following books:
The Essential Drucker, by Peter F. Drucker |
The Wealth of Networks, by Professor Yokai Benkler |
The Alignment Problem, by Brian Christian |
Brian Christian
A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them. Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us-and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing.
Read, Write, Own, by Chris Dixon |
Read Write Own - Chris Dixon
A potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the Internet-and how that affects us all-from highly influential entrepreneur and
The Future of Ideas, by Lawrence Lessig |
