Designing a Future: Wealth and Experiences

A better way to measure wealth is how many unique experiences you have had

I came across an ‘old’ book in my now rarely accessed bookshelves. Perhaps old enough for it to be all boxed up and incinerated, or sold as paper scrap, or better, passed on to an eager learner who wants to better discern today and to subsequently help shape a future.

Leafing through the book’s pages again I remember how back in the late 90s what was written in them were unthinkable and unimaginable on the scale the Internet is today.

The ‘old’ book is Release 2.0 by Esther Dyson, a visionary and a responsible netizen before Google, Facebook, and digital platforms were preponderant. Release 2.0 was published in 1997. Aptly its subtitle is a design for living in the digital age.

Futurist Esther Dyson vividly pictured how the future of the Internet will be — as outlined in the book’s chapters — for business; organizations; work; education; governance; privacy; security; intellectual property; anonymity; and, most important of all, community.

As a tribute to one of the early thought leaders and ‘activators’ of the Information Age, here is a bite-size interpretation of an outcome in one of her lines in Release 2.0. The original line:

A better way to measure wealth is how many unique experiences you have had.

The interpretation as it happened or is happening today: A better [and simpler] way to measure [success of both your online and on-ground presence] is how many positive experiences you are able to provide people with every product, with every service, in any space, on any platform, on any device.

How have your digital experiences been lately?