The Future Of Money: Mark Vanderbeeken and Irene Cassarino on KashKlash

Last week, I interviewed Mark Vanderbeeken and Irene Cassarino of Experientia, an Italian user experience firm that was instrumental in setting up KashKlash, an “open forum and web project focusing on alternative economies in a post-money future”.

As Irene described the project back in February, Kashklash is “a collaborative project between Heather Moore of Vodafone, Experientia and a group of independent visionaries. The project started with four bright and innovative provocateurs, Nicolas Nova, Joshua Klein, Bruce Sterling, and Régine Debatty, and as the debate gathered steam, contributions, comments, flickr photos and twitter streams rolled in from more than 50 additional participants to shape and envision possible futures.”

I have already interviewed Bruce Sterling, and plan to follow up with Nicholas Nova and Michael Linton (another participant) in the next few weeks.

My discussion with Mark and Irene started with background about Experientia and the goals of the project, which was quite unusual for Vodaphone. We went on to discuss other work that Experientia is involved relating to the change in values in the modern world, and the way that the concept of exchange is changing when so much of what we are doing is not directly economic. A great discussion.

A PDF of a set of essays from the early Kashklash workshops can be accessed here.