Crowdfunding in a Networked Age

The Nature of the Future Dispatches From the SocialStructured WorldInteresting excerpt from a book review in the Economist, an example is taken from The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World authored by Marina Gorbis where she is making the declaration;

One example is Kickstarter, a crowdfunding site for creative projects. In 2011 the amount of money raised through Kickstarter exceeded the annual budget of America’s National Endowment for the Arts. If individuals can bypass government and the market to finance music videos and art projects, surely the same can be done in other fields. Marina Gorbis uses this premise to suggest a series of future scenarios in “The Nature of the Future”. Universities need no longer have a monopoly on higher education if people were permitted to create bespoke programmes for small groups of students. Governance could be modelled on the jury system with “participation determined by algorithm”. Patients would share health details to create databases and self-organised groups would conduct informal clinical trials. Ms Gorbis calls this process “socialstructing”.

This is an interesting contrast  where she is comparing the amount raised to a significant government agency.  Extrapolating this further and extending this approach to eduction and the possibility for disaggregation in our traditional system.  Perhaps Ms.  Gorbis should get together with Clayton Christensen, the Innovative Disruptive theorist, and his thoughts on The Innovative University?

What is certain though, the revolutionary concept of crowdfunding, and the power of efficient allocation which it is queued up to begin – is only in its infancy.



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