Introduction
Our world is currently inundated with low-quality products and advertisements, often disconnected from aesthetic value or authenticity.
Imagine a global market which selects for the most authentic and creative brands. Those brands are then responsible for creating the world around us: products, lifestyles, architecture.
In this new economy, the brand itself can have creative power. It can manage the funds and find the right people to implement its vision in reality.
What could happen if a consumer would have actual influence on the product or brand they believe in? They could be able to have equity shares in each of them - the ones they are incentivised to work on and embody.
In a way, in this new world, brands can have more truth and transparency to them.
Historical Context: From Gods to Brands
Let’s revisit the origins that allowed the brand to exist:
Long ago, language and stories of divine powers were defining early civilisations, both in external architecture and behaviour of their citizens. It was commonplace for the people to hold in their minds the names of gods directing their actions.
This profound influence of beliefs on human behaviour and societal structure has persisted throughout history, evolving in form but not in essence. As civilisations progressed, the pantheon of gods and mythical narratives that once shaped the collective consciousness gradually gave way to new guiding forces.
In our times, the names, stories and religious structures of old mostly became replaced by companies, brands and experiences. Though similarly, they still lead people to live and build the world around certain beliefs, translating them from imagination into reality.
However, the current system of laws governing creation of companies and brands has grown complicated and very expensive to enforce. It is now also being disrupted by digitalisation and AI, which makes the waters even more murky, with issues of attribution and payment for individual creators.
There are already some early attempts to upgrade this system for the internet era, like NFTs and blockchain tokens.
Over time, all this is leading to a new common idea of a creative asset - an intellectual property that is native to the digital space. It will be able to reimagine the existing ways in which patents, financial assets and creative works are defined, to make them more composable, transparent and resistant to unseen influences like market manipulation and corruption.
An even more crucial change is possible. Over time, these brands could come to represent identities, experiences, cultures, and entire ways of living. What if we could elevate our perception of brands—from mere creative assets to movements that shape culture and society?
The Power of Names: A Philosophical Perspective
A name exists in people’s minds. It is the identity itself, in pure form - it links language to a person, an idea, a thing or an experience.
We can look at a concept of a name via a lens of Whitehead’s process philosophy.
There, it is analogous to the moment of concrescence, which is a joining of:
- past aspects of reality - from historical record and experience of the senses
- the influence of platonic eternal objects, pure forms
In result, a new concept is created, which never existed before.
The new name then becomes more visible through its impact on the world: via the external aspects of civilisation (architecture, art), as well as by the internal beliefs and behaviour of people.
Of course, there is also a possibility that a name becomes more known by marketing and fame for its own sake. E.g. a large company doing a marketing campaign for another useless product or its own recognition.
This is akin to an over-obsessed mind, ruminating on ideas, with very few visible results flowing from them.
So how do we make sure the name’s influence grows, and is protected from distortions and other dangers, in a competition of all names for their allocated portions of human mind?
This competition should ideally be designed for a more truthful world, so that over time only those names should survive that are of the highest quality and are most relevant to the future they are creating or sustaining, not those that serve hidden interests and shallow motivations.
Brands with will and action.
Let’s look at the world from the perspective of a brand, as a living organism:
- Its "energy" and "power" in the real world come from its supporters. These supporters are like the brand's vital organs, each playing a crucial role:
- Some are the heart, pumping passion and enthusiasm
- Others are the brain, strategising, planning and innovating
- Many are the hands and feet, actively creating and promoting the brand's products or services
- It wants to keep its essence over time - as each organism tries to preserve its own shape, protects itself from pathogens and runway cancerous cells. It wants stay relevant in a changing environment
Just as a body needs all its organs to function, a brand needs a diverse group of passionate individuals to thrive and exert influence in the real world. Those people have limited energy, life time, and their circumstances may change randomly, so a process is needed to have the brand transcend the ability of the individual.
The brand would want to select people who would be inspiring to its growth and preservation, rather than those who would syphon the funds away or lower the quality of its products.
The brands we see today in the world are usually governed by a corporation structure, with a kind of legislative (shareholders) and executive (C-level employees) divisions of power. This makes sense, as different kinds of powers and energy are needed for each.
Also, a structure resembling a cooperative is possible, but it tends to give too much emphasis on voting on decisions, which is often too slow to be competitive where quick actions are required.
But what if we could use modern technology, to make shareholders much more numerous than today, while not sacrificing speed of execution?
Everyone could, via a use of simple apps, come up with brand’s policies; choose strategies and key executives.
Let’s see a possible scenario of how it could work:
- Brands are beliefs about the world and its future (supported by evidence / simulations)
- Each person has an ownership stake (shares) in each brand they genuinely believe in
- The brand human+AI intelligence selects the best people and resources to make it into reality
Each person’s representation of the brand over time could then define the level of wealth they can get access to.
Representation
Representation is a combination of:
- Embodying an aspect of culture related to the brand (e.g. being genuine, leading by example)
- Knowledge and labour contributed to the brand
Many people would want to spread beliefs about their lifestyle, e.g. in this case by being influencers, sharing it on events, or giving out subsidies for new people trying it out.
One could imagine that those particularly affluent in their actions, would get resources to create even larger events and products related to their beliefs. Those events would then aggregate into specific cultures - people being immersed in living out their beliefs via their brands that they collectively own.
Let’s come up with a few examples.
Example A:
- Sarah believes strongly in sustainable fashion. She holds shares in EcoWear, a brand committed to eco-friendly clothing
- By actively promoting and living the EcoWear lifestyle, Sarah gains access to the brand's products and services
- If Sarah's actions don't align with EcoWear's values (e.g., frequently buying fast-changing fashion), her access might be limited, as she is no longer a truthful representation of brand’s values
But who would judge if she is actually being authentic? It’s potentially difficult to objectively decide upon, so an open source algorithmic+AI approach might be needed to evaluate e.g. her financial transactions and other data.
Example B:
Michael, representing healthy eating choices, could get access to those foods supply chain. This would have to have some balancing mechanism, where inadequate representation (e.g. overeating) would result in diminished resources.
Takeaways
- This system ensures that belief is backed by real commitment, influencing a person's ability to access goods and services
- The distinction of being or not being an employee could become more blurred
Brand predictions and simulations
A brand should have a specific vision for both the current and future state of the world that includes itself. While modern company management often relies on predictions and data, new mechanisms could be developed to shift the focus towards products and experiences rather than just financial outcomes.
Making such predictions more public (which could align with marketing strategies) could foster competition. This competition, in turn, might ensure that customers receive higher quality outcomes overall.
There are a well-defined existing theories describing this process, with good evidence - known under the names predictive coding and free energy principle.
Predictive coding is a theory in neuroscience and cognitive science that proposes the brain constantly generates and updates internal models to predict sensory input, using the difference between predictions and actual sensory information to refine these models. It is now used to explain many cases of mental illness and ways of learning. It’s also being used in the AI industry by Verses.
And in the context of a company or a brand, it’d be rather uncontroversial to say that the model should include the state of the world overall (as realistic as feasible) and not just abstract financial data.
Visions
With many brands encompassing many predictions about the world, it might be necessary to simplify it all for the end-consumer. There could be a higher concept encompassing the brands: let’s call it visions.
A vision is a specific idea of external and internal aspects of future that are necessarily distinct from other visions:
- A cultural set of behaviours and rituals
- Architecture and style of products
The overarching goal is to foster a greater diversity of different implementations of a high-tech civilisation - for overall diversity of cultures and ideas.
Existing movements similar in essence to visions are those of cyberpunk and solarpunk. Someway related is also the concept of cultural capital.
A vision could be imagined to govern most aspects of a person’s life, perhaps similar to today’s (and past) idea of a nation, but the cities or neighbourhoods under a specific vision could be much more decentralised, as in the concept of a network state. There might be a need for an economic dis-incentive for a person to switch visions, as if it’s common, overall culture authenticity suffers.
Within a single vision, there might be even no need for a concept of money - instead, shares could be exchanged in many transactions.
There is also another reason for a diversity of visions - in the last decades we could see a conflict of globalisation versus anti-globalisation (increased nationalism, degrowth movements), where the latter came about largely as a reaction to the former. But globalisation is not the only approach - its place could be taken by a global collection of open source code and infrastructure, being then tailored to unique cultures and territories and being enriched by innovation coming from them.
Role of AI
This approach to economy is compatible with an extensive role of AI in society, as:
- Stakes in brands are owned only by people
- This stake capital is a primary basis of wealth and access to goods
- Brands are by default governed and implemented by a combination of AI and humans
If a person’s labor is replaced by AI, they can still keep their stake which corresponds to their contributions so far, and still earn more by representing the brand in a different way, or contribute to a different selection of brands.
Competition
There is always a tension between individual differentiation and collective cooperation, on many levels. While some groups may work together towards a single vision, they might still be competing as a whole with other visions on particular territory. Compering ourselves to others is often it very much required for infusing the external reality with works of art.
The goal of the overall system design is to turn those competitions to be creative and not destructive.