This document discusses the concept of "hive mind financial ecosystems" and proposes using virtualization, gaming, and simulation to re-embed finance into the physical economy. It provides background on what finance and money are, exploring them as a series of innovations to improve usability of exchange and trade. The document aims to explore how games could be used from both "bottom up" and "top down" civic planning perspectives to attract more investment into cities and industries for the benefit of many. It suggests workshops using simulation games like Euro Truck Simulator 2, Minecraft, SimCity, and The Sims to model aspects of financial systems and economies.

1. Europe 2.0: Hive Mind Financial
Ecosystems
Supply-side financial reform as a
driver for change
1Nicholas Robinson BCPE IEEE

2. Hive Mind Financial Ecosystem(s)

3. All was going well until out of the
blue..
• The bees all swarmed, downed tools and left the nest!
• Financial systems can also be thought of as unstable systems if
pushed beyond certain limits of stability.
• The hive mind can be a collective or swarm intelligence that insects
use to perform more complex tasks by grouping together!
• We humans used to rely on our group or swarm behaviour as well
as our own gut reactions when exchange trading
• However it is argued that we are now far better connected and
informed as individuals than our predecessors, and, are capable of
operating autonomously using the networked information we each
and all have at hand
• We don’t need swarm behaviour to operate now – we have the
technology!
• Swarming (like war and recession) based on rumour and
misinformation is damaging and wasteful!

4. Aims and Objectives
• In a nutshell, hive mind ecosystems are a proposal to re-embed finance more
directly into the physical economy through virtualisation gaming and simulation,
where objects become ‘sticky capital’.
• In the past – capital and finance have comprised a series of innovations that create
and distribute wealth increasingly as we will see by deconstructing finance into its’
history
• sticky capital referred to investment in libraries, hospitals and universities both as
places (bricks and mortar) repositories (knowledge and resources) and as services
(people and skills)
• Could “Constructivism” be the answer?
• We will explore some games from ‘bottom up’, ‘top down’ to include commercial
and civic planning and ask: could capital be more readily attracted into invest in
such and regenerate our economies?
• Could re-inventing our cities and industries in cyberspace create a new wave of
investment for the benefit and inclusion of the many as well as the few?
• Swarming is wasteful!

5. The Hive Mind

6. What is Finance?
• A series of innovations to improve the
usability of exchange trading
– a means of ensuring each party gets what they
want
– eliminates bartering
• A means of speeding up exchange and trade
– Increases the number of trades in a given time
– creates records
– creates a surplus

7. What is Money?

8. What is Money?
• A medium for rapid exchange of goods
• Historically Gold and Silver
• Improves usability of trade (speed, frequency)
• The ‘Alchemy’ of turning Gold into paper!
• A leap of faith
• A promissory note
• The root of all evil?

9. The Bank promises to pay the bearer
on demand ..

10. Belief in Money
• Belief in Society!
• Definitions of Economics
– as a social science ..
– as a means of trade, production and consumption
of goods ..
– Look for the signature of the European Central
Bank Trustee on your Euro notes

11. Belief in Finance
• As Edward Robinson (2014) has shown....
• “Our current financial sysems are unsustainable.
Differential wealth accuulation by the few is
skewing wealth distribution unfairly and denying
access to opportunity, investment and
employment for the many. Resources need to be
re-invested more fairly into longer-term economic
growth rather than shorter-term financial profit-
takinng based on trend analysis of traded
commodities.” (Giddens, 1984, p. 33).

12. Workshop - 1
• Group 1
Read Me First! Euro Truck Simulator 2 introduction
featuring single-user operation with “AI traffic”.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 featuring single user, with spoken
commentary, with GPS, ‘bottom-up’ freelance driver
with tractor operation and discovery-led load-
processing – think here of the game within the game as
goods and as embedded transaction processing
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMeVfdPmfOQ
• http://www.twitch.tv/snuslepp

13. Workshop - 2
• [deutsch] Minecraft pvp mit euch auf twitch
• http://www.twitch.tv/thebietz
•
• [English] Sims4 multi-player
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9SpVdNLreA
•
• SimCity twitch multi-user
• http://www.twitch.tv/simcity/c/3389127
•
• Sims: new job and pregnant!
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2zE8lPR52c
•

14. Workshop – 3
• SimCity Telephone City twitch
• http://www.twitch.tv/simcity/b/486885138
•
• Building (constructing) cities of tomorrow
• SimCity strategy argued – green or industrial?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YceL2C4TW4Q
• SimCity cities of tomorrow extn. pack intro green or
industrial? ***
• https://www.youtube.com/user/SimCityEA