Internet Free Bank

No technologies and practices, no matter how well thought out and how well intentioned, can ever produce a sustainable human world so long as the fundamental assumptions of endless economic growth are built into the very logic of the money supply. In order for permaculture, sustainable design and other varieties of open source economics to really flourish, they'll need to be provided with a currency that embodies the 'gift economy' spirit in which all are practiced.

You might have seen Charles Eisenstein's Reality Sandwich essays on a demurrage currency as opposed to a debt currency, an idea this group is meant to develop. If you haven't read the essays, here they are:

Money and the Turning of the Age
Money and the Crisis of Civilization
Money: A New Beginning, Part 1, Part 2

It's entirely possible to set up a web-page running a simple script that will provide people with a source of demurrage currency that generates itself out of conventional transactions, much as promotional points are accumulated at various chain stores. This network, however, would allow small business either on the web or off to access the same benefits, and then to retain the 'points' to be used in further transactions. Points not spend quickly disappear (due to demurrage) and so there's every incentive for people to spend or even simply give away their points (new points, in this system, being generated by gifts as well as by transactions.)

Some early thoughts on the system can be found in more detail here Free Currency Wiki.

There's nothing coercive about the system. Unlike government fiat currencies, it is anyone's free choice as to whether or not to use them. However, those who choose to participate will become part of a growing currency network whose members have every reason to be as generous with one another as the family they in fact are.

Well, that's the dream, at least. In order for it to happen the dream needs talented people, people who can write code and people who can create beautiful pictures (imagine tokens being handed out, announcing the new currency to an area's citizens, whose imagery makes use of sacred geometry to communicate simple messages that subtly untangle the programming on the back of every dollar bill.) This is something that can be gotten off the ground with just a few people and a little hard work, but it has the potential to open a lot of doors for a lot of others.