Art and Technology for Prosperity, Welfare, and Inclusion : Social Sculpture for Values-Centric Economy

Art as Capital

Art is a form of capital and a source of energy that drives values and reshapes societies and economies as Joseph Beuys put it back in the 1960s. Beuys was a Fluxus, philosopher, and installation and performance artist, who co-founded the German Green Party. He believed that everyone is an artist, we all perform to produce new meanings, and we contribute collectively to the evolution of societies and economies. How can we leverage the capital of art to drive the values of inclusion, prosperity, and welfare?

Technology as an Enabler

Technology, as W. Brian Arthur defines it, is a means to fulfill a purpose, an assemblage of components and know-how, and practices available to a culture. The encounter of technology and economy reciprocally impacts the evolutionary trajectory of them both, our societies, and the environment.

Like?infrastructures, solutions, and tools, the processes we design for our governance, values, and support systems are technologies driving the aforementioned. Autopoietic by nature, the convergence of technologies and their combinatorial innovations nurture our non-deterministic complex systems.

Enabling technologies could facilitate the interconnection of the physical, spiritual, and digital worlds.

How could an enabling design for technologies harness human, intellectual, and cultural capital and positively nurture the economy, environment, and societies?

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The Artistic Performance of our Systems?

The art of companies is manifested through their organizational culture, internally and externally, and how they relate to stakeholders, societies, markets, and the environment. Businesses perform their art through the sustainability, growth, and competitiveness strategies they undertake, sketched by people, decision-makers, executives, and boards.

In this scenario, value systems drive, support systems enable, and governance systems execute the artistic performance of our complex economic, social, and technological systems.

Observing from the perspective of art, how does it look like the landscape we’ve created in social, economic, and environmental viewpoints, and what’s the role of people and technology in the resulting outlook?

Design of our Value Systems & Incentive Systems

The design of our value systems is one of the most expressive forms of art that we perform. The latter is significant because values drive and define the tone for the evolution of our societies, cultures, and economies, and the way people, businesses, and built and natural environments interact. Around values shape the meaning of contributions and exchanges within the ecosystem.

As the engine of each value system, the incentive systems define the dynamics of the markets, influence the regulations, and affect the relations across the value chains. Incentive systems also form clusters and policies and influence the flow of resources.

How can the design of our value systems and incentive systems drive sustainability, equity, and inclusion?

Social Sculpture for Inclusion and Impact

In the same way that art has historically influenced our thinking and culture, realizing our role as Social Sculptures would shed light on the impact we have on the development of the culture of responsiveness for our economies, societies, and environment.

Relevant to our times, one way to look at social sculptures through the perspective of technology would be the digital representation of our ideas and values on social media. More than ever before, we’re exposed to the inputs, as the artistic performance, of people, businesses, and our established systems on social media. Unarguably, social media platforms have become one of the major scenes where we, as businesses and individuals, develop, showcase, and perform our art. We write, like, react, share our opinions, culture, knowledge, and ideas, and offer our services and many more, on different platforms designed for various purposes.

We’re all Social Sculptures on social media, digitally representing living sculptures, and reflecting the values we believe in. We get inspired by this exposure, find new meanings and opportunities, and develop businesses and our networks. We collectively contribute to the global scenery of our times by leveraging the capital of art, through our inputs and participation. Empowered by technological infrastructures, our markets and our incentive systems drive the evolution of the economy and impact our societies and environment.

How can companies and new business models leverage technology, design, and incentive systems to develop social sculptures, culture, and mindsets, and empower people to positively impact the world?

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How can Technology, Art, and Design foster Welfare, Inclusion, and Prosperity, eroded by the culture of Individualism, Capitalism, Consumerism, and Materialism?

Throughout history, technological advancements and new tools and means of productivity have triggered and driven paradigm shifts that restructured the social, economic, cultural, political, legal, constitutional, and institutional dimensions. The third decade of the 21st century comes across well-equipped with enabling technologies, empowering the backbone of the economy, information, communication, and governance systems.?

Enabling technologies could facilitate the interconnection of the physical, spiritual, and digital worlds.

The latter would drive the evolution of our societies and economies by productively engaging the contributions of companies, institutions, and people. Embracing technologies and studying their complexity and combinatorial potentials could help us facilitate human-machine collaborations and exchanges, in order to make sure the next economic and industrial revolutions are human-inclusive, where people, economies, and environments coexist symbiotically.

How would an innovative approach positively and proactively engage people, businesses, and institutions into collective collaborations for an embraceable future?