Four replies and an uncomfortable question

I did not begin with a database. I began by sending people a website.

This is a perfectly normal thing to do until the website is trying to connect human wellbeing, economic value, institutions and systems modelling. At that point, “would love your thoughts” starts to resemble an unpaid interdisciplinary examination.

I had completed my Master in Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. So I started with people whose judgement I trusted: a classmate, a former professor, people in an open-source community, and someone working around systems change. Familiar doors into an unfamiliar proposition.

The excerpts below are from private replies I received. Names and identifying message details are omitted. The words inside quotation marks are theirs; the interpretation around them is mine. These exchanges do not imply participation or endorsement.

The classmate: the head-spin test

i have to say, i'm a smart & curious person, but it's absolutely making my head spin.

A useful reply. Not the reply a founder necessarily orders, but the reply the kitchen should send out.

If a curious reader cannot find a way into the idea, I have learned something about the explanation. I have not learned that the reader is insufficiently curious. Complexity does not excuse me from providing a front door.

The professor: encouragement, and another read

Vow - this is outstanding!!!!! And way beyond my simple humble mind!!!

Let me have another read

Then a suggestion:

Under spirituality you may want to bring in the concept of conscience - But your entire effort might be about pricking peoples' conscience

I took the warmth seriously. I also had to take “another read” seriously. Encouragement is a gift; it is not an independent test of a model. And the suggestion about conscience opened another question: what might the architecture leave out when it makes human experience measurable?

The open-source reply: a question of fit

I think the scope of internet of value is very broad.

The response explained the community's focus on open source and the software ecosystem. One phrase stayed with me:

The idea of the internet of value transcends software ecosystem

The message's conclusion was that the proposed discussion was not a good fit for that community. That is a boundary, not a verdict on whether the idea is true. I had brought a question larger than the room's stated remit. The room was allowed to have a remit.

The systems reply: which kind of systems?

I thought systems people might be the natural next stop. That word, too, turned out to contain several rooms.

I am not such an adept systems modeler to be honest - and systems dynamics is probably less of my interest than complexity learning so I might not be your best theory partner. But happy to be useful if I can.

This was a generous, precise distinction between kinds of expertise. It was not a refusal to help. The reply made something embarrassingly obvious: “systems” is not a universal adapter.

The question changed

Four exchanges cannot establish a general finding about any profession. They can change the question one founder asks next.

I started wondering who could understand the whole proposition. I ended up asking which combination of people could examine its different parts, including the parts that ought to fail.

1. Four different replies
2. Different kinds of expertise
3. A portfolio that can test the idea

That led to the search for 100 thinkers. The number arrived before the method. The method would spend the next few chapters correcting that situation.