A slightly edited version of the current presentation, last given to the Windward Entrepreneurs Meetup, December 2012.

1. The Infinite Economy:
The landscape of emerging
economic possibilities

2. Richard A. K. Lum, PhD
Vision Foresight Strategy LLC To assist clients with envisioning and realizing
Chief executive officer critical and preferred futures through
www.kikilo.biz foresight development and strategic analysis.
Institute for Political Futures To support intelligent and critical discourse on
President the futures of governance, citizenship, and
democracy.
kaipo@kikilo.biz
@kikilo, @thethirdera

3. The Infinite Economy is the potential for a new
material reality that emerges from the co-evolution of
a broad landscape of technological, social, and
philosophic changes.

4. No place is in more dire need of a new paradigm…
THE HAWAI‘I IMPERATIVE

5. The most isolated habitation on the planet
90% of the energy we use comes from somewhere else
85% of the food we consume comes from somewhere else
90% of the consumer goods we use come from somewhere else

6. THE INFINITE ECONOMY

7. The Landscape of the Infinite Economy
Infrastructure Infinite Capital
Emergent Models
Platforms of The Infinite
Production Mindset

8. History, patterns, and models frame our expectations
ANTICIPATING CHANGE

9. “Analysis, whether economic or other, never yields more than a
statement about the tendencies present in an observable pattern.
And these never tell us what will happen to the pattern but only
what would happen if they continued to act as they have been
acting…”
Joseph A. Shumpeter. Can Capitalism Survive?: Creative Destruction and the Future of the Global Economy.

10. Prediction: a statement about the future intended to be accurate.
Real futurists
Forecast: a logical statement about the future.

11. If Futurists Don’t Predict, Why Do They Have a Job?
Ubiquitous
Complexity ?
Pace of Change
Knowledge
?
Information
50 years
Industrial
250 years
Agrarian
6000 – 7000 years
6000 BCE CE 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 2025 2050
Adapted from A. Tuominen and T. Ahlqvist, 2010

12. The Long History of Human Prosperity
Trade Specialization
“Exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is
to biological evolution.”
7000
World GDP Per Capita
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
1 500 1000 1500 1913
Matt Ridley. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves; Angus Maddison. The World Economy.

13. “Creative Destruction,” Long Waves, and Economic Change
Joseph A. Schumpeter. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy; The Economist, February 20, 1999

14. Reinterpreting Long Waves of Technological Revolution
Technological Techno-economic
revolutions paradigms
Successive “Techno-economic paradigms”
Carlota Perez. Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages.

15. Other Dynamics of Economic Growth
Physical Social
Technology Technology
Physical Technology: the means for manipulating matter and energy
Social Technology: how we organize to get things done
Social technologies in turn shape what is deemed appropriate to pursue
Richard R. Nelson. Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth.

16. Takeaways
Understanding that such
change is clearly possible
Anticipating a new techno-
economic revolution

17. “… progress can involve significant changes in direction; that
accumulation may require ‘disaccumulation’ from time to time; that
what is installed may have to be ‘uninstalled’… that learning the new
can require unlearning much of the old.”
Carlota Perez. Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages.

18. The new infrastructure supporting the new platforms
RAILWAYS OF TOMORROW

19. Past Industrial Revolutions
Assembly Electric
Trains Telegraph
Line Motor
Steam Electricity
Coal Oil

20. The Infrastructure of Today
Renewable Vehicle Mesh Ambient
Fuel Cells Smart Grids Wi-Fi 3G/4G WiMax NFC Storage Analytics Algorithms
Energy Storage Networks Informatics
Power Communications Data
Computing

21. Our ever-expanding pools of resources
INFINITE CAPITAL

22. ?
People
? ??? Power
Infinite
Capital
Machines Finance
Feedstocks

23. The core families of technologies
PLATFORMS OF PRODUCTION

24. Emerging Families of Technology
Digital Nano-
Fabrication fabrication
Bio-
production

25. The sensitivities of real revolution
INFINITE MINDSET

26. “We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great
deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer
a different vision. What if humans designed products and systems
that celebrate an abundance of human creativity, culture, and
productivity? That are so intelligent and safe, our species leaves an
ecological footprint to delight in, not lament?”
William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.

27. The Evolution of New Worldview

28. The evolutionary algorithm at work
EMERGENT MODELS

29. Experimentation, Exploration… Co-evolution
The space in which everyone is
experimenting to find what works
Changes in the Perception of the
Environment
Long Tail
Transition
New Technologies Towns
Coworking
Localization Open Source
Anticipation of Transformational Shifts Co-
production
(defining new “economies”
before they appear)
Sharing
Economy DIY/Maker
Creative
Commons
Service Alternative
Economy Currency
P2P Service Crowd-
Informal sourcing
Economy
New Assumptions,
Principles, and
New Models for “how Distributed
Regulatory things get done.”
Processing
Regimes

30. The Field of Action
Intersections,
Transition
combinations, and Towns
Localization Long Tail
recombinations
Co- Alternative Creative
Coworking
production Currency Commons
Service Sharing
DIY/Maker Open Source
Economy Economy
Informal Distributed Crowd-
P2P Service
Economy Processing sourcing

31. THE CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY

32. A New Image, a New Future
The strategy implicit in the Infinite Economy is about shifting our communities from merely recipients of long
global economic flows to more coherent economic systems in their own right, embedded in increasingly dense
global networks of cultural and informational flows.

33. This is about images and inspiration

34. The real danger to our civilization is
slowing down. What we really want is
greater cultural evolution.