Flow Space Paradigm

The inspiration for this comes from ideas about language acts and an open currency design called Flow Space. The lowest level or atomic elements of this design are fundamentally actions in language. The complete theory will be important, but one class of speech act that is special is the declaration. A declarative speach act is characterized by the way that what is spoken constitutes the action performed. Whether it is a judge declaring guilt or not, or a couple expressing commitment in reciprical "I dos", the words spoken make something true that wasn't before they are declared. A declaration is pure action in language. It isn't about the action; it is the action.

Flow Space is a website design that supports a cycle of wealth building that we will call the wealing cycle based on the analogy of health to healing.  As we look at the action points that advance the cycle to the next phase, they are all declarative acts. They will certainly be supported by assertions of facts or assessments drawn from those facts and experience, but the actions that drive the cycle will be declarative.

Going through them in a quick summary, first we have declarations of intent that will provide boundaries for the whole cycle and thereby all of the phases. It provides the destination so that in the final phase of assessments that lead to declaration of value we know what to be grateful for and what outcomes are a disappointment. In the second phase we are declaring our commitments for actions in the next phase where all of the work is actually performed. The action might have nothing to do with words or language but we need to declare the work complete and ready for comparison to our intentions and goals from the first phases. In the last phase we declare gratitude and give thanks and praise when conditions of statisfaction are either met or surpassed.

If there are shortfalls, we can respond by declaring a new intention and starting the cycle over. We can also speed through this cycle in quick exchanges where most of the work is done in the declaring and acknowledging. One person declares intent to change or be different and the responder acknowledges the declaration, implicitly agreeing to help them by progressively acknowledging the work as needed. In other words, how a coach or a mentor might work with us.

This process doesn't depend on implementation as a website, but if we support the cycle with software the wealing cycles can be more easily spread out across space and time, and we can connect the intentions into meaningful network with different sorts of dependencies and relationships. An intention might be part of a larger one, a subtask of sorts, or one might need another to be completed before it starts and so on. Computers and software are great at managing complex networks of connections, and can even automate semantic tasks like making the connections.

Something is missing from this picture, I wonder how many people see it right off. You need currencies to measure and track everything. Again, you don't need a computer system or even money, but it will only work with small groups where the number of connections and mutual obligations can be managed by memory. It might be tempting to just use conventional money and create markets in scarce currencies, but the real potential here is to implement a flexible system of currencies that can be created at will by declaration of a community's intention to use them. These currencies are fundamentally speech acts and governed by the First Amendment and not by monetary and financial laws.