# Meaning Conference Livestream @meaningconf

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [406]. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: video, 2012-10-01 (YouTube upload date), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU. Text: automatic captions, uncorrected
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009), before the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Context.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - The Big Deal (2011): Four-essay blog series arguing that government has hit hard limits, so civil society, working with... (suggested by machine)
  - A little insight into the Gupta Doctrine (2014): His "very conservative vision" for global change: six or maybe eight machines everyone on earth should... (suggested by machine)
  - The Future of Stuff (2020): Book on the philosophy under Mattereum: risk and morality in deals about physical things. (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - environment / green capitalism: Green economics: from oil efficiency to markets for facts about products. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - goat rodeo to warlords: The goat rodeo idea, from a 2010 blog post to a 2011 one-page paper to the opening chapter of Warlords, Inc. (2015). (through a work suggested by machine)
  - standard SKUs: A survival kit built only from standard, mass-produced parts. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: Open government & anti-corruption (30%); Capitalism, consumption & resources (10%); Climate politics & democracy (10%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: Wired (1 here; 22 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 1 undated); jobs (2 here; 85 sources in all, earliest dated 2003, 4 undated); communications (1 here; 81 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 5 undated); markets (1 here; 159 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 6 undated)
- Importance: core-text score 0.12 (1.00 is the top), number 492 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [683] [CommunityZ Chest - Vinay Gupta, Founder of Mattereum, In... (2020)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/683.md): close in content (cosine 0.91)
  - [572] [How To Address Climate Change: Diplomacy, Politics,... (2022)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/572.md): close in content (cosine 0.91)
- On the same works, just before: [321] [Vinay Gupta talking at FreeAndReal / The Telaithrion... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/321.md); [322] [Vinay Gupta at the Athens Hackerspace, 2012 September 2 (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/322.md); [408] [H4D2 review (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/408.md)
- On the same works, just after: [400] [http://hub.coe.int/forum-mondial-de-la-democratie-5-11-oc... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/400.md); [399] [Council of Europe World Forum for Democracy... (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/399.md); [725] [Vinay Gupta l Plausible utopias | Meaning 2012 (2012)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/725.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: Meaning Conference Livestream @meaningconf, video, 2012-10-01, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [406], https://guptaoption.com/texts/406.md.

Other speakers' passages are removed, so there can be gaps.

## Passages
[0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=0s) I saw the weather this morning because I thought that's what we're in and I would have loved it for the speakers who've come from all over to have enjoyed Brighton when the Sun's shining and the the beer is Flowing but what's going on in the world at the moment needs a different approach we've got massive issues the word business is toxic the practices of business are toxic in the main and it frustrates me because I think of myself as an entrepreneur and a business person and what means doing so we decided to put on meaning and we wanted to bring together speakers who had a unique Viewpoint that we felt was part of a hole and that that hole is what we need [Applause] I'm will McKinnis I'm managing director of Nix mckinness which is a social business consultancy and we work with large organizations helping them to adapt to these challenges and to make changes in their business in how they operate both technologically and humanly um I'm the curator of this year's event I also need to introduce my right foot because there's a reason why I'm not wearing shoes and it's not because this is some sort of musely knitting event as as tanin suggested this morning um it's because I can't fit my right foot in any of my shoes apart from a Croc and I didn't spend six months putting on a wicked event to wear

[2:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=150s) Crocs so excuse that so let me talk about our speakers I really believe in these people I have seen almost all of them speak that is the measure of quality that I have brought to bear I believe that they are world class but most importantly I believe that the aspect that they bring the facet or the lens that they look at the world through if you take it and you meld these meaning 2012 views and so I thank them for their time and the land inside the land you have the schedule so you can flick through and see who's on when our appro basically just going 101 these guys are going to talk at you we recognize there are lots of new formats in the events world um and ones we will experiment with in time enjoy do whatever you want please don't sleep though um be fun our organizer Louise um who has said has run a a cooking company um Cooking Company Food business Cafe all right a cafe has made taking great care to select to supplier so hopefully the food will be nutritious and enjoyable um yep stuff other stuff let's get going there's a man here stoy and he's a legend he's an authoritative voice on technology and particularly social Technologies over the last few decades and and specializing in Social Technologies for the last 10 years or more he's advised companies like Microsoft like AOL IBM and also startups like bitly and yam ranging kind of view of the future of work which is called Beyond social

[5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=300s) Imagining the postnormal business and I would like a huge round of applause to get this man on stage thank you very [Applause] much I don't know if huge was necessary but thank you it's good to be here um I'm going to spend my time up here today to talk about a bunch of closely related ideas which candidly was the outgrowth of a personal struggle I went through this year when I was starting out to write a book originally called The Business of social business and I found myself ultimately rebelling from the books timidity and small-mindedness um it lacked courage actually so I've thrown that book away and I'm building something completely different and I wanted to start out with uh something the Wired Magazine a published in their their first issue guidelines to wouldbe contributors and they said put aside your article and write us a passionate letter about the topic that you're interested in mail us the letter and throw away the article so this is the letter then that I'm writing to you about a few ideas that are originally and and ultimately once again connected to social business and a letter that is much more passionate than the book was writing much more courageous actually um and so what are these ideas first idea is that the model of social a business that is implied by the social business uh tools and techniques is out of dat and it's better suited to the 20th century than today normal and set the stage for what business might be like in this new era and talk about the drivers that is causing that and most importantly I'm making a case that we have to actively imagine a not too distant future where the foundations of society work and business have to deeply and fundamentally change like the state of the climate that we're in now now and some of these

[7:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=450s) have been forced upon us and some of these changes are vial we have to make them happen ourselves we have to want them to happen and someone asked me last night what do I want you to take away from this talk today and what I want you to do is to realize the urgency and promise of our time you'll hear some opportunities for optimism inherent in our social connection the way that we think about each other and the way that we collaborate and then you'll see that we have to move Beyond Way Way Beyond the kind of social that is realized in today's social business thinking which is candidly just as timid as the book I was originally planning to skip hello oh it's this way that's interesting that's me I'm going to skip talking about me you can look up my bonafides later um and I will be putting these slides up somewhere so everyone can get at them um does an interesting challenge when you start talking about the future with people and that is as this quote says um it's invisible to us the invisibility of the environment During the period of its Innovation man is only consciously aware environment and thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world the present is always invisible because of its environmental because it's environmental and saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly thus everyone is alive in an earlier day this is Marshall m in 1969 so we have this problem which is we're always in a world that has changed and it hasn't caught up to us yet it's like when you stub your toe you feel the stubbing of your toe before you feel the pain shooting through your leg and that's exactly what's going on today um and what is the nature of this change well one way to characterize it

[10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=600s) oh this way okay not there not there thank you I should have asked that before I guess so the pace of innovation has sped up very quickly I think you know will said a minute ago the last 25 30 years things have changed he was saying it was you know changing not necessarily for the better but the rate of inovation in general and changes in our our world have been exponential worldwide in all sectors and the greatest Chang has happened in the last 5 years so it's not surprising that we're not caught up to it yet and so that may seem positive when you're thinking about something like cancer research but when you're thinking about something like the rise of in uh in incurable staff infections in the United States that are caused by feeding too much antibiotics to pigs it's not a positive so we see the rise of social media for example and all the good that comes from us being involved in participative media and the rise of the AR jobs and out the careers and we really don't know where investigative journalism is going to come from in the future it's unknown if it is and so we have this horrible dilemma where we have both good and bad coming from this and so it seems that whatever the web touches it changes very quickly and the growing fluidity of the world is speeding up mass media is uh collapsing into social media is becoming more participative mass belonging and identity are waning or changing our relationship to large organizations of the past things like unions and the church and the government is diminishing and the relationship between employers and employees is loosening as well now there's some good to that but we'll see there's also negatives social business has been an attempt to adapt to those changes and they show the same kind of combination of positive and negative so why social business and why now um it's a new set of management ideas based on drivers like new technologies really things that arose in the social media world and then people got infected with them if you will The Innovation started to come into the the business and start to change it but I don't want to think about this in small e m microeconomic approaches like

[12:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=750s) productivity or something I think we have to back up and look at this macroeconomic is uh the rise of the Social Web the growing mobility of the workforce and low cost ubiquitous Computing and so on those things are all true but more importantly these are really turns out to be superficial drivers the big the big picture the macro world uh drivers are much more important and are actually a representation of why it is that this social business concept is actually pretty quotidian did I go backwards so outgrowth of this modern world the stuff that's happened since the 70s um the post industrial era that people have talked about um we've had a big transition away from a western economy that was primarily oriented around manufacturing to uh services and knowledge work and new economy as a result of that we also have witnessed some major transitions in the world like the fall of Neo of colonialism the fall of the Soviet Union and growing civil rights in the world like the the ultimate near eradication of slavery and uh in continued efforts to uh stop child labor for example but we've also had a non smooth transition as a result of all these things globalization dramatic increases in uh Western income in inequalities Inc increased personal debt things have changed dramatically and ultimately it has included uh a decline in well-being for the first time in the United States in recent history for hundreds of years um you know the the the average lifespan of [Music] certain have lost five years of uh lifetime projected in the last um 10 years so this is a negative we're we're going backwards in things that we would have considered fundamental and the other most important thing perhaps to include on this list is

[14:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=893s) the growth of the contingent Workforce where if we want to Noble it picking their own path in life but it also includes people that are being forced to work part-time or temporary jobs that they wouldn't want to work otherwise but they have no options and they're getting increasingly marginalized in a world where the laws are set up the tax laws for example the loosening of the connection to employers and employment of long-term duration has been largely negative um and of course we're also seeing the ephemeralization of work where more and more work is being taken over by computers or smarter and smarter robots and you know huge the rise of autonomous vehicles in the US to say that's going to ultimately end taxi driving as a business well considering the taxi drivers in New York maybe that's not so bad but aside from that there'll be a lot of people out of work again so oh sorry I want to leave that there I'm still here um it's AR this social business is postm is Arisen as a tool set partially trying to adapt to the changing pressures of the business but it's really just a veneer on top of the old postmodern business it's kind of like we renovated a building by sanding the floors and redesigning the foyer but we never moved any of the walls around I have some cartoons that I'll I'll I'll show in a minute um so we're going to need to see more radical changes in the business than a facelift and um social Technologies can be the springboard to

[16:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=1004s) that but I want to talk specifically about what makes the postnormal era postnormal and this is a term that originally grew out of work done by the uh the military actually looking at the the the new forces that make it very difficult for people to make has fed up so much it's as as if we're living in a war so they use the term vuka for this volatility uncertainty complexity and ambiguity and the idea behind this is um things are changing so quickly you can't wait long enough for better information to uh help you make decisions uh things are so complicated that you really can't analytically look at a system you have to turn it on and let it run to see what it will do and as a result you have this enormous ambiguity you can't see if you will through the fog of war in order to figure out what's going on and so the problem is we're we're confronted with a world like that we have amazing changes going on like uh global climate change I won't beat that drum again although we are heading for an invertible catastrophe if we don't do something another Factor that's going on is the

[18:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=1080s) rapid and unprecedented migration of people across the world into urban settings um more than 50% of the world now lives in cities now this has never happened before we just turned that uh that line if you will this year and over 80% of Americans now live in urban settings we're the most urbanized culture that's ever existed in the world society if you will it turns out that there's something really interesting and promising in there and that is that cities like social networks both increase social density and there is a real Allure to this the reason that people move to cities is because they can make more money think it's cheaper to live there if you average everything together um cities in size and they also correspondingly have a less than half uh benefit of of uh super decrease in resource uses for example New York city has the smallest number of gas stations in the US because it's the densest population in the US and it's not just gas stations because uh you know we we don't drive cars much it's also in other things that this actually turns out to be amazingly interesting because we have the possibility of some real great things coming out of this increase in so density in cities but it's also supported by what we're doing with social tools so the last thing to say about vuka is something I would like to do a whole presentation on all by itself it is a chapter of the book and that's that really undo the premises of leadership today what what the leader has to do in a business today is completely different because he has she or he have completely different barriers to their understanding things that stand in the way of conventional kind of leadership World War II to use the historical term that was the modern era of American Business and this is where not American part me worldwide or Western business and this is this is something that everything is based on in a sense the U hypothetical hierarchical business company broken up into functions reporting relationships as the primary mechanism of people working this is all

[20:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1CbuZLzaKU&t=1230s) so deeply oversimplifying everything but I wanted to talk about how this has been impacted by the adoption of of uh social technology so we have to social Communications which are looser and F faster than the kinds of relationships that people have inside of a business um and this arose originally uh as you can see over with the marketing people because honestly is those of us who are around at time remember that the marketing people wanted to latch onto social media as yet another way a better way a faster way a cooler way to communicate to their potential customers or markets and they did that but what happened is they became infected by The Innovation and wonder of Wonders they started to use the stuff internally you see the marketing people started to you know Twitter amongst themselves or use Facebook or whatever and instead have to slop over into the company here you get the CEO and somebody in engineering it started to influence people and they

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End of [406] Meaning Conference Livestream @meaningconf. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.
Read next: next on the same works, [400](https://guptaoption.com/texts/400.md) http://hub.coe.int/forum-mondial-de-la-democratie-5-11-oc... (2012); the most closely related, [683](https://guptaoption.com/texts/683.md) CommunityZ Chest - Vinay Gupta, Founder of Mattereum, In... (2020); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.