On Friday I presented a talk at the 2009 OpenWeb Vancouver conference entitled Collapsenomics 101: Finding (Open) Opportunities Amidst the Chaos. You can view the slides from my OpenOffice presentation as a Shockwave animation by clicking here (click to advance to the next slide).

I began by talking about the economic downturn and the first slides show what's been happening with various economic indicators over the past year as compared to the Great Depression of 1929. As you can see most indicators show steeper decline. I emphasized that Europe and Asia have been affected more strongly than the US which has resulted in a flood of investment into the US dollar and has really helped prop up the US stock market especially since January. This will not last.

Then I talked about unemployment and showed a series of slides that show job loss & gain by region in the US since 2004 (as the DotCom crash was just ending). Especially noteworthy is the massive job loss in the past year (last two slides in that series). You can play with that data here.

Then I talked a little bit about the relationship between the economic collapse and peak oil with a few graphs showing the price of oil since 1947, a chart of the price of oil for the past 10 years, followed by a current chart of the price of oil for the past 5 years with emphasis on the fact that the price of oil is now climbing again (with some like Jeffrey Rubin claiming that we will see triple-digit prices again with 12 months). My point here was that the price shock we experienced last summer with oil climbing to over $140US/barrel and the ensuing financial chaos (some studies have linked the price of oil directly to last fall's economic correction) followed by a series of shock waves where the price climbs up and then crashes again has been long predicted as the way Peak Oil will play out.

I mentioned Thomas Homer Dixon's research into why societies collapse and his assertion that societies can generally withstand one calamity at a time but they can't stand up to multiple disasters happening simultaneously. The events that he cites that fall into this category include peak oil, climate change, pandemic, economic collapse and environmental resource (incl. arable land) depletion.

All of this was a preamble to the real discussion which started with a mention of increased uncertainty in what the future holds for us. My suggested solution here is to simplify - downshift your life beginning by a line by line item of budgets with the removal of anything that is a luxury rather than a necessity (eg. extra mobile phone services, cable TV extras, athletic club memberships, magazine and newspaper subscriptions, etc.) Then think about how to re-struucture your living  situation to be more of an extended family-style model. In terms of what you choose tto do with the money that comes your way I suggested re-examining the ancient Chiese formula for social harmony in which you spend one third, save one third and give one third away.

I spoke about the future of money as suggested by a presentation I caight a few weeks back by a local integral researcher (and Buddhist meditator!) named Julian Gonzalez. He offered convincing evidence that we are quickly moving into a world with one global currency, several dominant national currencies (eg. Euro, USD, Yuan) and numerous 'alternative' currencies. Citing Julian's presentation I explained that there are some issues around the scalbility of alternative currencies but you can structure your currency to achieve certain goals. I gave his example of the steady state economy of Japan which uses an alternative, regional currency to help provide community-based health care.

Moving on to the actual part of the talk where we looked at opportunities I began by mentioning my top picks for those sectors that are about to disappear including SUVs (and private automobiles in general), airlines, dirty energy, anything to do with the suburbs (eg. strip malls) and print publishing.

I then gave a quick list of the open (web) technologies that I feel are the most interesting to pursue opportunities around: Linux (Ubuntu), GNU Radio Project, Android, Moblin, Cloud Computing, Drupal & WordPress (etc.), Google Wave and the Semantic Web.

Then I presented several areas that we should be looking at for emerging opportunities to help deal with collapse and move to to where we need to be including alternative transportation, community resiliency, health, energy efficiency, and education and training. I emphasized the City of Vancouver's recent motion for "Open Data, Open Standards & Open Source" as a concrete example that a local government which will have numerous spin-off effects for those of us working with the open web (and society in general).

Lastly I presented a quick overview of the AQAL model with emphasis on the lower right quadrant and explaning how the economic collapse really just represents the end of the stage of the Corporate State and our transition into Value Communities. Evolution is catalyzed by (and requires) crisis.

I ended with a quote from J. Krishnamurti - one of my favourite philosophers:

“When the mind revolts within the pattern of society, such a revolt is like a mutiny in a prison, and it is merely another form of ambition. But when the mind understands this whole destructive process of the present society and steps out of it, then its action is not ambitious. Such action may create a new culture, a better social order, a different world, but the mind is not concerned with that creation. Its only concern is to discover what is true; and it is the movement of truth that creates a new world, not the mind which is in revolt against society.”

I then let some eco eyecandy roll while I facilitated a short dialogue on some of the ideas in my presentation. I stated that Keith Grennan's presentation on meditation (which followed mine) actuallly flow together with mine, as he would be concentrating on the upper left quadrant in the AQAL model, and that I believe that meditation and the exploration of inner states is one of the best forms of preporatory work that we can be doing to help as we transition from the Corporate State stage of evolution into Value Communities.

Much of what I drew upon has come through the collapse sub-reddit since October.

Thoughts?? Comments?? Drop 'em below!