(2009-08-31) Vail Diagonal Economy

Jeff Vail has a series of posts on his Diagonal Economy thinking. I initially planned to use the phrase “ParallelEconomy,” but that sounds too much like a mere shift to black and Gray Market-s, instead of addressing the more fundamental, structural shift that I predict away from hierarchal organization to a flatter, peer-to-peer form of organization that I have called “RhiZome” (Network Economy) elsewhere. Perhaps “envision” is a better word than "predict"—I advocate for this shift, and think that it makes sense from several perspectives (fulfilled ontogeny and true sustainability in particular), but what I am not doing is suggesting, like some Marxist prophecy, that this shift is somehow our civilization’s destiny. I think this shift will occur on some level, but that it will meet powerful resistance. In the end, it is primarily a set of tools that will become increasingly available to those who wish to shape their own future. Here, I think that “diagonal” best captures this shift—movement along one axis (energy consumed and scale) and along a second (degree of hierarchal order of organization). The term also draws from a discussion (using the same label) in the Intermezzo section of Antonio Negri’s and Michael Hardt’s “Empire.” So what is the Diagonal Economy? Ultimately, I see it as a structural response to the various forces that will increasingly shape the coming century and beyond. A limited list includes Energy Descent (Peak Oil); other resource constraints; imminent ecological and climatic pressures; the limits of human ontogeny; information processing burdens; and the breakdown of the Nation-State system.

Hmm, he hasn't added all the links to that page - see his tag page.