The Exaptive Economy: Accelerating Innovation and Bridging the Public-Private Divide with AI, Blockchain, and Spatial Computing

tl;dr

• Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, spatial computing, and blockchain technology have the potential to revolutionize work, especially artisanal or expert work.
• The source of profit is an information edge. To maximize public and private benefits, we should seek a balance between allowing individuals to profit from their information edge and sharing that information for the common good.
• Exaptation is the process where a solution to a problem in one domain can be highly applicable to another field. AI and data sharing can facilitate exaptation.
• Spatial computing and data streaming can help capture individuals' tacit knowledge in real-time; that knowledge can then be shared and consumed by others via AI and blockchain technology.
• This new model can accelerate innovation and make work more satisfying. In the weeks ahead, I'll publish articles on how business leaders, independent consultants, and "artisanal knowledge workers" can adopt AI (and a radical growth mindset) to make some of these abstract concepts concrete and thrive in the exaptive economy.

Introduction

As emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, spatial computing, and blockchain technology continue to evolve (and soon converge), they have the potential to revolutionize the way we work. This article explores a new architecture for innovation (the "exaptive economy") that leverages these technologies to bridge the public-private divide, accelerate problem-solving, and enable a more equitable and efficient market.

Traditionally, the source of profit has been an "information edge," i.e., knowing how to do something that no one else knows. A private individual or corporation can protect their expertise through:

• Maintaining secrecy;
• Exploiting the natural difficulty of codifying it (because the knowledge is tacit, local, or embodied and thus not easily converted into formal language);
• Cornering resources (including raw material and ecosystem stakeholder relationships); or
• Publishing patents.

However, private profit sometimes comes at the expense of public benefit: Someone who might benefit from "secret information" won't be able to access it unless they transact with the owner; hence, public goods have traditionally been subsidized by third parties (e.g., the state), although this is almost always inefficient (and, unfortunately, often ineffective).

I argue that at the intersection of certain emerging technologies, a new economic system (the "exaptive economy") might be possible that allows producers and consumers to participate together in a global community (and market) and realize a more optimal—and just—balance of benefits that come from the various private and public goods downstream of innovation.

Exaptation and Innovation

At the core of this new economy is the concept of?exaptation, a process through which a solution to a problem in one domain ends up being useful in another problem space. This phenomenon appears in fields as diverse as biology and engineering (h/t to Dave Snowden for?brilliantly explaining and illustrating this idea).

Moonshot Projects: An Example of Exaptative Innovation

For my favorite example, let's look at how the capital-intensive Apollo moon mission led to the development of CT scanners.

In the 1960s, researchers?developed technology to scan the moon's surface?to plan for a safe lunar landing. Only a few years later, this same technology was repurposed into core components of CT scanners, now widely used in medical imaging.

Paradoxically, moonshot projects can lead to groundbreaking innovation in seemingly unrelated fields. To achieve a breakthrough in one domain where progress has been slow or frustrating, pushing boundaries and taking extreme measures in a different area might be necessary. These ambitious projects can help solve more immediate, proximate problems in other domains, leading to a more comprehensive understanding and advancement of knowledge across various fields.

Consider this: Might it be possible to address climate change on Earth by first figuring out how to terraform Mars?

Information as Both a Public and Private Good

The mechanisms of this new "exaptive economy" would incentivize workers to solve local and specific problems while also contributing to the broader public good by sharing the results of their work. How? An innovative architecture combining:

• AI's power to process and synthesize vast amounts of data,
• The security and trustworthiness of blockchain to enable decentralized information sharing with flexible and fine-grained permissioning, and
• The immersive capabilities of spatial computing to capture and transmit tacit knowledge.

This new system would allow for the seamless flow of information between individuals and organizations, unlocking new possibilities for collaboration and value co-creation. Moreover, it will enable a more just and ethical distribution of wealth by allowing those who develop an information edge to benefit from their innovations while ensuring that the fruits of their labor are eventually made available to the public.

Comparing the New Architecture with Traditional Intellectual Property

You're probably thinking, "Isn't this what the patent system is for?"

Roughly, yes—this new tech-enabled system is similar to the patent system in that it aims to balance the interests of public and private goods. Both approaches encourage innovation by allowing inventors or creators to profit from their work for a certain period and making the information available for eventual public benefit.

However, the system I'm proposing has three key features that the patent system does not:

1. Real-time sharing of machine-readable information: Unlike the patent system, which requires a more bureaucratic process and a significant amount of time for information to become publicly available, infrastructure for the exaptive economy would support the continuous sharing of incremental data through endpoints legible to computers (e.g., via traditional REST APIs).
2. Passive information capture and shared benefits: Thanks to AR, high-fidelity information derived from our interactions with objective reality will be more easily and passively digitized, allowing each of us to focus on solving problems and creating value without worrying about the logistics of packaging up (and protecting) intellectual property. We'll let AI handle post-production.
3. Dynamic and adjustable privacy settings: The new system would allow workers to choose how much information they want to share and when to make it publicly available, unlike the patent system, which has a fixed timeframe for public disclosure. This flexibility allows creators to optimize their profit-seeking interests with the broader public good.

The Importance of Technology in Realizing the New Architecture

One key aspect of this new architecture would be?the role of AI?in facilitating the exaptive process. By continuously analyzing the data streams generated by individuals and organizations, AI systems could identify connections between seemingly disparate domains, enabling rapid knowledge transfer and novel solutions to complex problems. Unlike Google searches, which yield inch-deep and increasingly ad-ridden results, AI can take into context a searcher's circumstances, goals, and constraints, and then provide extremely precise and particular information drawn from abstract principles grokked from a wide breadth of information space.

Blockchain technology?would also play a crucial role by ensuring the trustworthiness of information in the public sphere and incremental expertise "paywalled" behind a public endpoint (see:?ZKPs). Individuals and organizations could collaborate more effectively—perhaps through AI assistant intermediaries who barter for nuggets of insight on their humans' behalf—while ensuring that the value generated by their labor is commercialized via bespoke transactions (versus rigid packaged offerings).

Spatial computing (VR/AR/XR)?will provide the means to capture and transmit the embodied knowledge that was previously difficult to codify and share (AKA MIT Professor Eric von Hippel's "sticky information"). By enabling individuals to interact with their physical and digital environments more immersively and intuitively (versus being chained to a desk or glued to a phone screen), spatial computing platforms will both facilitate more interactions between users and objective reality while also generating richer and more detailed multi-modal data streams—streams available for retrospective mining that drives innovation across other domains.

An Example: The Master Boiler Technician & the Martian Engineer

Tacit knowledge as a private good

Imagine a boiler repair expert in rural Pennsylvania who specializes in fixing early 20th-century models. He wears a spatial computing headset that records his daily labor. The raw feed from his headset is published to a public endpoint, with AI processing and extracting key insights. When a new homeowner in Texas encounters a similar problem with her boiler, her AI assistant scours these endpoints to find information that might lead her to a solution.

The AI assistant discovers the expert's solution, obtains the relevant information for a fee (say, via digital USD or Satoshis)—perhaps even automatically given a person has given their AI assistant control of a pre-set budget—combines it with contextual information about her mid-20th century model and the tools she has access to, and finally guides the person step-by-step through the repair process. This way, the expert benefits by sharing their knowledge, while the homeowner in need gains access to specialized information that allows her to solve her particular problem.

The expert starts earning passive income without investing in creating training content, video-based courses, custom software, etc. He can focus on doing high-quality work.

Artisanal workers and subject matter experts would, for the first time, be able to scale the value they can provide (and capture) without having to sacrifice quality or decelerate due to bureaucratic friction; as long as they continue to move forward on their pocket of the innovation frontier, they will be able to increase the value of their equity in the private repository of digitized info that generate through the process of getting results for customers at higher levels of need.

Tacit knowledge as a public good (via exaptation)

Imagine a scientist working on a project to create a low-cost water recycling device for a Mars colony. She faces unique (and largely unprecedented) mechanical engineering challenges. By tapping into the "exaptive economy," her AI assistant searches for potentially relevant information across various endpoints.

The AI assistant discovers the boiler repair expert's insights, which, some years after he first streamed them, are now part of the public domain. A particular engineering solution used in the early 20th-century boiler just so happens to apply to an engineering bottleneck in the water recycling device on Mars. The scientist utilizes this information to develop the recycling device, successfully solving her proximal problem.

This example highlights how the "exaptive economy" can enable connections between seemingly unrelated domains, leading to innovative solutions and breakthroughs. By sharing knowledge and expertise, we can accelerate problem-solving and drive progress in areas that may have been previously unimaginable.

The Future of Work in the Exaptive Economy

Together, these technologies (i.e., spatial computing, blockchain, AI) will form a lattice at the foundation of a new economy characterized by the rapid flow of information and the continuous process of exaptation. Similar to how spoken (then written) language, the modern state, the printing press, the joint stock corporation, and personal networked computers have allowed for coordination at greater levels of scale, I hypothesize that the aforementioned technologies will enable similar ends but at an unprecedented level of scale. Optimistically, this could lead to a more efficient, effective, and equitable distribution of resources and new opportunities for collaboration and value co-creation.

Instead of spending our workday curating, packaging, and repackaging information (or anxiously clutching our sources of information edge close to our chests), we'll be able to delegate the most drudgerous work to machines and keep moving forward on the frontier, investing more attention into the most deeply human activities—those of creation, relation, and contemplation—making contributions to the common good, while also being justly rewarded for our labor.

And at our current rate of progress (see:?recent ChatGPT improvements?and Apple's?forthcoming AR headset), this exaptive economy might be much closer than you think...

That's why, in the weeks ahead, I'll be publishing a series of articles, each written for particular workers whose roles will undergo massive transformation in the years ahead (e.g., CEOs, coaches, designers, home services specialists), on how to adopt mindsets and technologies today that will adequately prepare them to meet the opportunities and challenges presented by the 21st-century exaptive economy. Stay tuned.

(Or get a head start by reading about how I use AI daily to work more efficiently and effectively in 2023.)

Get Your Business Ready for Digital Transformation

I help business leaders use cutting-edge information technology like AI to gain leverage across marketing, product development, and business operations —?and prepare to participate in the exaptive economy.

If you're interested in learning how to use next-gen IT to level up your business,?send me a LinkedIn message?or?schedule a time for us to chat live.