As above, so below
Today I was feeling as though I could actually, physically feel myself mutating in the shifting evolutionary pressure. No matter that this is not how biology, mutation, or natural selection works, it’s just what I felt like.
I changed a lot about myself when revenue-streaming went live. I realized that I really did have all sorts of interesting skills that were not quite up to paying the rent, but could certainly contribute to beer and pizza money while I made a living with a real grown-up job.
Oddly enough though, ever since the intercloud revolutionized collaboration, and the collaboration superpowers were identified, it’s been increasingly easy to perform whatever you are uniquely good at for enough money to sort of live on. It’s the same kind of ‘live on’ that I experienced as a grad student, but that life was good enough for me. (Besides, I had a small number of $tens of thousands waiting over my head while I fretted about what the 2008 stock crashes meant to academic monastics like me.)
Now my streams have settled into:
- Open source education; my research stream. These look a lot like the traditional academic career I was expecting—I teach on a real live campus, I talk about interesting problems with other mathematicians. But, my campus teaching serves to help me develop teaching materials, lectures, etc., to distribute to displaced people. My research stream is rated by other experts, and income arrives according to how important or interesting or useful it is—so, occasionally I get suddenly paid for old research when it becomes more relevant due to another discovery. The academic journal system is essentially dead.
- Instant consulting. What it sounds like—my research interests are posted, and I hire research assistants to seek out problems in industry which I can probably assist with. Greta and Pilar are promising young mathematicians, and their research interests are close enough to mine that they can catch potential modeling situations.
- Commissioned mindmaps. The artistic outlet. I mindmapped for years and years for my own use, and accepted many complements on them, but never thought I would end up being a professional artist! There are not many people who need a handmade mindmap of their ideas from an interview, and I barely make anything, but it makes me really happy that revstreaming allows me to get challenges and some pocket change from something I would be doing anyway.
- Proximity tutoring. Again, a tiny source of income. But it’s so much fun to get a ping when I have a moment, and run over to some kid doing homework. “I’m a mathematician, may I assist you?”
- Instant talking head positions. This rarely pays out, but when it does it pays well. I was a debater when I started college, and in the style of debate we did, about half the time you had extremely limited information on what the debate was going to be about until your opponents began to speak. So I am extremely comfortable not only with public speaking, but speaking at least halfway coherently about complex topics with very little preparation. So when, say, a guest mathematician is suddenly unavailable to explain to a general audience why anyone should care about the Riemanne Hypothesis being solved, I get a phone call. So long as I have time to make a mindmap and shave, I usually get to sound all smarty-pants on a videophone. It’s a really fun rush!
At any rate, I had to really examine my self in order to discover the possibilities that revstreaming had, and exactly the same thing is happening with the Superstruct project. I figured out how to use my more unusual skills to bring the full power of my creative abilities to bear on making a buck. I don’t know much about farming or nursing the sick, but I am morally obligated to use the time spent on abstract thought into helping those who can, do.
Rave or comment at: http://superstructgame.org/StoryView/290
