Disclaimer
Sorry this page is currently so underdeveloped.
Truthfully, we're keeping the MetaCurrency Project focused on geeky technology development and steering philosophical conversations to other venues.
In the meantime, you can dig deeper into the principles behind our work here:
- Our New Currency Frontiers Shared Blog
- Our Ideas Web Site with interactive tools for developing a currency pattern language and cataloging currencies according to their design principles.
Some other valuable resources which are slightly more peripheral:
- A vision for currencies as an operating system for planet earth: OS-Earth
- Personal blogs of Eric and Arthur
- Open Money Info site and Ning Community
- The Transitioner Wiki and Ning Community
- Money Fix: The Movie
Why these are required for an Open Source Economy
Open Identity
True identity management requires a non-centrally controlled (even by a naming authority like ICANN) system. It shouldn't cost you anything to have a name (just like in real life). And you should be able to grant names to participants in your currency spaces without having to pay somebody else.
Open Transport
A common protocol for currency transactions across all currencies and all participants. This must include more than just financial currencies, but reputation currencies, membrane/membership currencies, etc. All other currency protocols so far have been money based. Imagine if the Internet didn't have a flexible underlying protocol and could ONLY send email messages. That's the state of currency protocols today.
Open Rules
Consider that both currencies and games operate exclusively in accord with social agreements. You expect to be able to know the rules to a game your playing and to be told when they change. But today, nobody knows the rules of the currencies we're using (not even the people making the rules). And you aren't told when they change. If we are to move toward a rich and open ecosystem of currencies filling different niches, you need to be able to see the rules of any currency you're considering participating, who gets to change them, and if/how that game is rigged.
Open Data
This is the foundation of restoring mutual sovereignty between groups and individuals. Participating in a currency is a function of group/social agreement, but that doesn't mean that your data and the tokens of value that you've produced shouldn't belong to you. Until we have an open means for distributing data which still ensures tamper-proof data integrity, then we have key powers concentrated into the hands of the few who control the information. Even as the kind of geeks likely to be given such control, we see the inherent flaws in this approach.
[Placeholder content for one of us to write later.]
What we mean by "open source economy."
Why having a level economic playing field requires open currencies non-monopolized money systems
Define/Clarify: Non-monopolizable or non-enclosable architectures
Clarify the difference between Open Source currency software and open currencies.
