I am Tito Bagas. I am a senior citizen. Although I am able to use most of Microsoft office programs (word, excel, access, and powerpoint), I am still grappling with how to efficiently use the computer and similar gadgets.
##The Knowledge Economy
When I was still employed, Peter Drucker was one of the management gurus that stimulated me. I remember him as the first one to talk about the knowledge worker and the knowledge economy. At that time Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock was captivating the interest and imagination of the knowledge workers in the Philippines. The World Future Society’s publications were gobbled up and were constantly the subject of discussions by the intellectuals. The knowledge economy was appealing not only because I am a knowledge worker, but because the presentation was compelling in its logic. Quotes like “… in this journey, there’s no home to come home to baby…”, meaning the quality of change would disorient one in its magnitude. Although The World Future Society’s articles cautioned about culture shock due to massive changes, the concept of the knowledge economy was hazy to me. The idea of change was ubiquitous, in fact the intellectuals subscribed to the mantra at that time: “Nothing is constant except change”.
Since then, I have slowly but steadily followed the saga of the developments that would show the materialization of the knowledge economy. The literature of the futurologists warned that the changes were not to be expected to arrive in a coherent and linear fashion; spurts of unrelated and innocuous changes would appear in different realms and would likely surprise you when you discover that the disparate occurrences are related after all.
For years, I have been trying to learn about the monetization of content. Each online guru has a way of presenting his or her expertise. I can no longer catch up with the flood of materials I have to read and consume. From a senior citizen’s perspective, it is encouraging to read about teenagers’ account of how they succeed in the digital economy; of how the knowledge economy changed the playing field. Various platforms; various ways of doing business. I have read an account in the internet that this age- this time- can be compared to the time when the printer was invented by Johannes Gutenberg. That means mankind will see innovations, developments and variations in how things will be done in ages to come.
From my readings, the various digital gurus present their narrative on their involvement in the knowledge or digital economy according to their personal experience and circumstances. Most of them prescribe and recommend producing content based on one’s passion and expertise. In my case, I decided to focus on the area of psychology, human resources management, and agriculture or organic farming. My academic background is Psychology and this area prepared me for employment in the realm of human resources management. Upon retirement from employment, together with some colleagues who are Guidance Couselors and Psychologists, I ventured into providing services. My team is involved in facilitating groups and such services. I shall write about the things I do in my blog.
Dabbling in agriculture or organic farming is a senior citizen’s way of toning one’s muscles to delay, (since I can not totally prevent) physical atrophy. My nephew and I am experimenting on vermiculture production. Vermiculture is earthworm production for vermicast as an organic fertilizer. In the course of my research on organic farming, I first read about www.steemit.com when I came across the article written by @pak ganern. I shall write about organic farming in my blog. 
Before the first industrial revolution, during the Middle Ages, source of income was agricultural production and self-employment of craftsmen who were honed and developed by the Guilds. These craftsmen gave way to the factory workers and technical employees in the industrial revolution. Entrepreneurial craftsmen and landlords graduated to become robber barons who graduated to become industrialists. Our present online entrepreneurs correspond to the craftsmen during the pre-industrial era. They are not employed by industries, they are self-employed. Although I am not yet an expert about computers, I now have a better idea of the knowledge economy that Peter Drucker talked about.
##Steemit
I have been studying the http://www.steemit.com literature and trying to divine the logic of a social network that monetizes one’s participation and involvement. And blockchain and cryptocurrency are two new concepts I have to understand.
In the course of my due diligence exercise on the steemit platform, I religiously read all the steps provided by the menu- read the quick start guide, read helpful posts from steemit users, all those posts, and followed the instruction to follow two entities- the CEO @Ned and @steemitblog. At this time I was already preparing myself to write my first post- Introduce Yourself. I searched for samples of Introduce Yourself posts. While searching for @ned’s Introduce Yourself post, I saw an interview on Ned Scott and Dan Larimer conducted by Jeff Berwick at Anarchast published on You Tube on August 6, 2016. That succinct interview provided me a fuller dimension of the steemit system coming from the founders themselves, on top of the “helpful posts from steemit users” that I had read previously. The concept of a radical presentation of economics fueled by a more egalitarian distribution of benefits through the steemit vision aroused the activist stirrings in me. Here is a vision of a platform that can help a lot of people via a very democratic and populist method.
In the Philippines, years of civil war has conditioned citizens to think in terms of ending inequality, injustice and improving the system of governance. I tend to believe that the choice of studies I made may be an effect of the experiences I had during those years when the social fabric was in a state of flux, when young people, especially students, became highly politicized as a totalitarian atmosphere was engulfing the land. These experiences planted the seed of a questioning attitude on the status quo.
In college, my liberal arts degree had more political science subjects; but in later years, I gravitated towards the study of Psychology and loaded more psychology subjects during the last two years. After college, I wrote in my resume that I had two majors: Political Science and Psychology. The study of political science was a decision anchored on the basis of self-preservation , to prepare myself by knowing something about a highly politicized environment. I attribute this tinkering with psychology as a result of my response to oppression and the decaying society during my time. In an oppressive and totalitarian society, the society breeds victims that need more succor from sociologists, social workers, psychologists and practitioners of behavioral sciences, and human rights activists. This explains how I developed my propensity to question the status quo.
In my continuation of due diligence, I saw Dan Larimer’s Introduce Yourself post. It was an affirmation of the impression I formed while watching the August 6, 2016 You Tube interview by Jeff Berwick’s Anarchast program. His personal experience fueled his drive to initiate a movement such as steemit that would attempt to bridge the majority’s yearning for fairness and equality vis-à-vis the pragmatic Darwinian framework. An economic movement spawned by a passion that sprang from a rebellious reaction to structural and systemic deficiencies in our society , an aspiration to initiate a culture to defend life, liberty, and property via community empowerment. These echoed aspirations I held and still hold. Although I have no handle on the details of the system, I can follow the idea and the concept. I support this vision and I am confident that this will propel steemit to success and I will surely partake in the benefits. I will hitch my wagon to steemit! This is a worthwhile cause to sink my teeth into during the remaining years of my life.