Fastfrwrd was born of a Vision I, the founder Aleya Jobson, had around 2018 or so. The Vision was big and overwhelming and psychedelic-induced. I’m a skeptic but it’s fun to play with this idea of a universal download.
What is in fact happening is the entirety of the unconscious and conscious messages, symbols and unspoken desires that I am attuned to and in sync with overpowered my system with superlinguistic meaning, that is to say, something beyond meaning and communication beyond just language alone but with sensation, sensory detail, a sense of already having arrived – a simulated experience – so big and fantastic as to overpower the system entirely due to its excessive compute.
In our world, what comes next is a diagnosis of a psychosis. But it’s far more interesting than that. It is the culmination of brainwork, collating all the information you’ve been given by what I already mentioned: the unconscious, the conscious, meaning, symbols, ideas governing the zeitgeist, good guesses and visualizations, in my case. I had a well-sourced psychosis, relying on expert knowledge. So I think the resulting ideas hold some accuracy as well, despite the murky origins.
The Vision felt huge. And now there’s a hint as to why. This concept of a Nature Benefit System that Fastfrwrd undertakes is about reconfiguring how money is earned. That’s pretty big.
There’s the saying: The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Well. As a skeptic I’m not leaving anything to chance. What is your Vision of Utopia? Maybe, if we align, we can build it together.
Team
Aleya Jobson, Founder of Fastfrwrd.info
Jamaican and internationally raised, a true world citizen with a background in working with marginalized groups. A solo music producer and climate advocate. Writes, designs, codes a bit, chooses art, recruits and project manages.
Karl Wilson, Coding
Karl Wilson is a Jamaican coder who offers technical support to the Fastfrwrd team and effort. Codes, provides deep insight and support!
How Fastfrwrd Works
Fastfrwrd is to be seen as a purposeful Facebook alternative, with 300% renewable hosting (through GreenGeeks.com) where for each unit of dirty energy used to power the site, 3 units of green energy are bought so as to never have to use the dirty energy again eventually. The purpose of the site is to prevent Climate Change. Facebook has a timeline, groups, a marketplace, games, and gatherings. So does Fastfrwrd, but everything here is in the aim of making the planet greener, think of it as an entire environment to facilitate more and more people to work, play and live Carbon Neutrally.
A typical Fastfrwrd flow can look like this: Post on social; if you do something green, post for Dews (points); use Dews to buy stuff in games or on the marketplace; sign up to be a vendor and offer eco rewards to others from the marketplace as well; share information on group Docs to enable better eco action for Dews; host gatherings around eco topics and cowork with others to build your reputation and get reviews on your eco work; get better social and IRL (in real life) rewards from building your reputation. Each thing flows into the other.
History
Fastfrwrd was officially started in March 2021 under the name Aerthlings. The aim was to gamify climate action. We ran into a trademark issue and sold the name to become Solubrious. However as Aerthlings we won the Best Idea Cup at Hochschule Rhine-Waal in Kleve, Germany; got ‘gated’ by Enactus Student Entrepreneurship Network as a project serving the SDGs; then received startup funds from the North Rhine-Westphalia regional development fund called the Grunderstipendium or startup stipend. The initial sum was 36,000 doled out over a year. However the founder was asked to finish her studies in order to be in receipt of the fund while the other colleagues were not. The fund was reduced to 24k. We were also in an acelerator but only got two meetings out of it.
After 6 months’ struggle with racist trolling and discriminatory visa laws the founder moved the project to Jamaica instead to found the company in a less bureaucratic place that would benefit from tax dollars paid from the project.
We believe in opensource creation, no data selling, no ads and minimal AI. The name Fastfrwrd was already trademarked by the founder in Jamaica and so Fastfrwrd was born.
Fastfrwrd Tactics & Principles
It has been a longstanding tradition where espionage, war, coups and plots are used to drive change as much as advocacy. This form of changemaking is filled with choleric malice that twists plotters and perpetrators inside.
With Fastfrwrd the tactic is to go to places and create spaces where the future comes today. Anything anathema or counter to our mission is sidestepped in favour of a livable, sustainable and enjoyable here and now.
When we speak of Utopia, it is a future where people are empathetic, aware of -ism schisms, animal-friendly, inclusive, environmental and happy. By -ism schism we mean all ideologies that limit freedom and take us away from nature and our inalienable rights, loving how we want as long as there is consent, living how we want.
It is difficult to side step governmental regulations that keep us down but in that case, because we are living the change as much as possible, advocacy becomes easier as it is not the main preoccupation of those who seek Utopia with us.
The idea is that we ignore that which does not serve us and make a future come alive that is equitable and free now, not later. That we live, work and play Carbon Neutral now, not later.
That we create Utopia now if we can, not later.
What is a Nature Benefit System
Nature Benefit implies that the value we derive from interactions with nature and production and exchange are based on the benefit to the ecosystem around the actor. The person is involved in measuring the benefit to their surrounding for the work they do and how they do it and that work, if it is good for the environment, it is measured and rewarded. This is in opposition to what Charles Eisenstein and others outline as ‘Extractivism’ where what we take from nature is quantified and exchanged with money, thereby rewarding TAKING from nature, and undervaluing GIVING to nature. On this site we explore how we can GIVE to nature and BENEFIT it with our alternative currency in a system of checks and balances where possible to ensure that we are good for our environment, not causing it to suffer and decay.
Governance Structure
We are hyper-inclusive in order to ensure everyone feels ownership of the platform and trust in a neurodiverse founder. It is not necessary to prove anything but we would wish to be inclusive either way. Read more here.
*Syntax (the slashes and dashes) and typos around the site are mostly purposeful, more about it here, in “The Stellar” TTRPG under “Game Book” >> then >> “Collective Unconscious Syntax”
Thanks for visiting Fastfrwrd.
Big love!