Last year, on October 23, 2015 at 4:04pm, to be exact, I posted the following little essay on 
(https://www.globalinnovationexchange.org)
under the topic: Social and Behavior Change. Global Innovation Exchange is a platform I learned about while attending IEEE’s Conference on Global Humanitarian Technologies. Here’s my post:
I’m concerned that there is nothing yet (Oct., 2015) on this Exchange site related to “social technologies”. In other words, we are focused on gadgets, devices and electronic communication platforms that increase developing world access to goods and services currently enjoyed in the developed world. We are assuming that the only way to distribute this real wealth is through a money economy in which employment has become a prerequisite for survival. Cultures that have other social technologies for distributing their wealth are rapidly being extinguished. We need to study these cultures before they disappear and consider alternative ways of organizing human society. The developing world may well leap-frog over the industrial age that the US and Europe has just been through and find itself unable to employ the very populations the Exchange is dedicated to helping. Whether we experiment with ancient social ways or develop new ones, automation threatens to expand personal poverty even in the presence of productive abundance. Let’s put some brain cycles into avoiding this possible future.
Mine has been the only substantive post under this topic, the others being all ads for drugs. Nothing further happened until today (May 10, 2016) when I received a comment in reply.
Thanks. Can you share more? Where do you think we should start?
from: SCHWAN SHAWANI
Louis Berger Group
Manager, Economic Growth and Financial Inclusion
Washington, DC, United States
Member since May 7, 2016
Implementer, Other, Researcher, Student
Here is my reply:
@schwan shawani, I suggest 5 different approaches pursued simultaneously:
1) Preserve endangered non-industrialized societies and study them for the new-old models they may offer us,
2) Practice global, system-dynamical thinking (now embodied in ecology and sustainability movements),
3) Engage in “gifting” rather than exchange whenever possible in our current market-dominated economy,
4) Cultivate personal self-actualization as a primary activity in everyday life in place of consumerism and the employment necessary to sustain acquisitive lifestyles,
5) Stop focusing on “getting a good job” as the motivation for education and emphasize learning to live a personally satisfying, dignified and simple life.
Obviously there is a lot to say about each of these topics. Implementing such practices will require some significant shifts in our long-cherished (if 300 years is long) social institutions. What’s important for folks interested in Exchange to realize is that money is not the only possible lubricant and motivator for the redistribution of goods and services between producer and consumer.
Let’s talk about this further, here, on NETAAblog (https://netaablog.wordpress.com) and wherever we can find thoughtful discussants. Keywords that may help us discover kindred spirits are: ‘New Economic Thinking’, ‘Postcapitalism’ and ‘futurism’ and ‘anthropocene’.
Clearly one must be patient when attempting to promote social change. I hope humanity doesn’t go extinct while we are gathering the courage to talk about how we might construct an alternate future.