Is our world re-building itself upon social rewards and human connection?
Have you noticed yourself getting involved with stuff — projects, movement, happenings, events, neighbourhood groups, making written contributions etc - where you know you’re not going to get paid in the traditional way i.e. cash for delivering a service, but get rewarded in other, more intangible ways?
Recognition.
Growing your network.
Approval.
Sense of belonging.
Community.
Discovery.
Learning.
New opportunities.
Let’s call them social rewards.
I wrote a post on Thrive Global about how a project that I am working on — the South London Arts Lab — created a new way of working, allowing us to become community designers and social designers using technology to reach like minded individuals and create a new micro-economy prototype based on social contracts.
I’ve been researching and writing about the future of work and how the type of work we do and how we do it is changing rapidly in our multi-stage lives. Social and organisational heirarchies are changing — an intangible asset like reputation is becoming more relevant than an assigned, arbitrary seniority level in the office.
And social rewards are becoming a bigger part of what motivates us individually and as groups. The platforms are there to facilitate contributions in order to receive these rewards: Thrive Global, YouTube, Wikimedia, MOOC, Medium
How far can this go as a currency of value?
The world of social rewards is a nascent one and we have a unique opportunity — and responsibility — to shape it with the power of human connection.
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