The gaming industry is larger than the movie industry.  The hunger for more powerful computer games...for better play...has driven the evolution of both raw processing power and the complexity of simulated environments.  What if our hunger for play could be harnessed for our personal and collective evolution?  Role-playing games allow us to stretch our sense of identity and develop skill-sets in a virtual world. 

What if that virtual world was the co-created, vision-targeted future of 2020?  What would that world look like to you?  Who would you be willing to become, to bring your vision to reality?   What feelings would you be willing to stand in the face of, in order to live today, in the full light of your most attractive, magnetic vision of life in 2020?  Looking back, as the person you have become (your avatar), what feats would you have attempted in the intervening years?

I envision a simulation platform that captures the growing capacities of its "players" within a Spiral Dynamics Integral developmental memetic map, and facilitates evolving strategies for reaching the vision-target vortex of 2020.  

Now, you may ask how 1,000,000 + people, or even the current group of Zaadster's, could agree on a vision for the world in 2020?  Instead of thinking in terms of particular ideologies, outcomes, or specific laws addressing specific inequities,  there is a deeper level of dialogue that is possible.

In Spiral Dynamic terms, our belief systems are a reflection of,  and adaptation to, the challenges of our environment.  They serve a vital function within the context in which we live.  Avatar 2020 will provide a simulated enviroment for exploring different challenges in different environments so that we can learn viscerally the consequences of both the positive and negative expressions of each memetic code.  

Imagine foraging for food in the jungle of the Amazon or the jungle of an urban city in America (Beige). 

Imagine honoring your ancestors at a Shinto shrine in medieval Japan or communing with your spirit guide in the hills around Sedona Arizona (Purple).

Imagine fighting for dominance of your tribe, clan, or gang and defending your territory from all rivals, or defeating all your rivals in the world's longest bike race 7 times in a row. (Red) 

The more we understand the functional requirements of each code, the more we will be able to build bridges between the various levels, both psychologically and in terms of improving life conditions throughout the world.  They are inextricably linked at each level of the spiral.  Every part of the spiral has an evolutionary function, still...   Honoring those memetic codes and finding healthy and masterful expressions for them in harmony with the challenges of our unique life conditions honors our genetic and cultural heritage and can provide the foundation for realizing our evolutionary potential.  It is also a way of understanding and proactively engaging across cultural divides of tradition and belief systems.

So a vision-target of 2020 could be based on determining the functions and capabilities of humans within an evolutionary context and institutions designed to promote and support those capabilities and functions. 
 
By identifying the necessary conditions (principles, dynamics, and memes) of the 2020 vision-target,  we could begin to reverse engineer the communities, alliances, businesses and cognitive scaffolding that would support development in that direction. 

I want to unleash the ability of communites to vision together, evolve together, adapt to new challenges and act in concert faster than any existing organization or government - to facilitate the emergence of human being and action that would be a revolutionary force for the sake of evolutionary development.  To paraphrase Don Beck, "to thrive and help thrive... for the health of the entire evolutionary spiral".

The magic of RPG games happens inside your own head.  Although I am exploring opportunities for computer-based game development, the nuts of the bolts Avatar 2020 can be played without it.  Many RPG fanatics only play computer RPG when a live or online game is unavailable.  The magic in your head is enhanced through interaction with real players, so communities of interest play a pivotal role in the development of your avatar.  Your avatar becomes an expression and embodiment of your passion in life focused through the clarifying lens of a specific future time and place.     

Who would you become if you stood in the face of your fear of stumbling and looking foolish? As you meditate upon and become anchored in that identity-target, what wisdom would your avatar whisper in your ear in order to live today in the full awareness of your unique evolutionary path?

For those who worry at heaping more illusive identities upon the illusive identities/programming we carry from our past, I say:
What better way to exercise the natural goal-seeking part of our brain, counter-balance the negative images we still carry, and weaken the unconscious hold on this image as me, or that image as me.  

Your avatar is part navigational computer (for that part of your brain that is future and goal oriented), and part phantom as all possible self-images are.  But in the spirit of play, what if we could consciously create the image that most inspires our own evolution when future-oriented (planning our calendar, business, education, project, campaign, etc.) and also free us to consciously release that operational "i" when not needed and just be?  

What if by learning to turn on the avatar, we can also learn to turn that part of our minds off?  What if we could find the peace we knew as children playing in our front yards --spinning around and laughing in the bright sun until we collapsed onto the grass?

What if we could do all that and co-create the future too?  

[If you're looking for "What is Avatar 2020?" scroll down to next entry]

I offer these resources to spur thinking about what kind of structures we might put in place to promote the evolutionary development we seek for Zaadz.  

What structures and systems would grease the wheels of possible e-commerce growth? How can we create an evolutionary capitalism within this web-enabled, contextual and communal space?

I recently read that the vision of the founder of e-Bay was to create a "perfect market- place".  Look how close he has come. By creating the right systems and structures (imagine a irrigation trench to channel water) he created a pathway that channels an incredible amount of economic activity that is largely regulated by the customers of e-Bay through their rating system.

The question is what kind of systems and structures would best support the cultivation of world-changing Zaadz ideas/projects/campaigns/businesses to fruition?  Depending on the skill of the cultivator or the intelligence embedded into the cultivation system... you open up the possibilty of break-through solutions where the law of the harvest comes in ( with returns of 30 fold, 60 fold and 100 fold being very possible).  Nature rewards those who understand her ways.  Remember Malcolm Gladwell's book  The Tipping Point?  Zaadz is on the edge of that tipping point right now, where a My Space type explosion can occur.  So the question of structures and systems is even more vital.   

For example, http://www.fundable.org/ offers a structure for raising money for specific projects (no size limit I think), through a pledge system. Once the goal is met then the pledges are called in and the project is funded. If the target is not met, then the lack of "support" for the idea was a "no" vote in its current form - back to the drawing board.
Just a very cool way of embedding more intelligence into Zaadz existing structure.

To me business incubation is a fundamental activity Zaadz should be developing, so as leaders how can we begin to create opportunities to capitalize on the ideas generated by Zaadster's?

Have you heard of time/dollar? Check out http://www.timedollar.org/ for a way of greasing the wheels of cooperation through the bartering of time. This is a proven tax-exempt, community-based economic model. We could increase its power exponentially by combining it with e-commerce.

Have you heard of ESOP's Employee Stock Ownership Plans? Check out http://www.esopassociation.org/ I first heard of the idea in an old book by Christopher Hills, The Golden Egg. It's worth a read, but the essence of the structure is available online.

Brian mentions the Zaadz Foundation as a way of giving back money, equity and time. What if as a business incubator Zaadz could provide resources for approved startups and projects (or shares tracked by the fundable.org software in exchange for an equity share in the project?

The Zaadz foundation idea could be expanded to capture equity sharing of both Zaadz shares and shares of the companies birthed by Zaadsters. Zaadsters membership / contribution could be recognized by receiving shares in this ESOP foundation.

Finally, what existing tools can be licensed by Zaadz and which ones must be created by our own staff resources. The opportunity to license software at a deep discount for a growing community like Zaadz will be very attractive to companies that are creating online distributed tools. Have you heard of http://www.basecamphq.com/ ?
It's a simple, distributed software for collaboratively managing projects online. Why reinvent the wheel where we don't have to? 

How can we extend Zaadz's functionality most powerfully and quickly through strategic alliances?  How can we prepare our systems to handle viral growth?  What do you think?   
 

Jim