So I think I’ve seen the future and I think it might work – not for me or us, and maybe not even for my kids, but for their kids, really maybe. Because this morning my daughter’s Kickstarter project became fully funded, a week before its deadline, which means that thanks to the kindness of friends and strangers, she is going to cut her CD. And she didn’t have to go to a Venture Capitalist for her $3,000 (musicians; studio time; marketing). And she didn’t have to get a loan from a bank. And she didn’t have to play her guitar on 300 streetcorners for 300 hours as the quarters and dollars dribble into her guitar case in 4 degree weather in Burlington.

She asked the 99 percent for money, via a charming video and a great song, and they answered, emphatically: Yes. Go for it.

Here’s why I think that this goes beyond my own personal pride in my daughter: Thanks to my son, I know that Kickstarter isn’t a new paradigm; it’s an extension of a philosophy whose beliefs were given a face by Occupy Wall Street – the passion of the son, who managed to get himself quoted and photographed last fall down in Zuccoti every damned weekend, as if he had a personal publicist: everywhere from the lead of the LA Times to interviews with Italian television stations to CBS’ national website. OWS told us that – despite the idiotic naysayers who dismissed the movement as aimless and unfocused, when it was anything but – that the distribution of wealth had to change.

And then, as of this morning, my daughter’s backers proved that the change can work.

This is another reason why I think the tipping point is getting closer. At a dinner last weekend, the woman to my right and I spent half the meal trying to convince the men across from us – money men, they were – why Kickstarter worked. They were very reluctant to believe in it, since neither of them could see how the site made a profit, since it has no advertising. Now, I’m assuming the Kickstarter guys will just sell the thing for lots of millions. So it worked for them. And I think they’ll probably put it to good use.

But as the woman to my right pointed out, Kickstarter investments are real investments: not just monetary. The investors are being altruistic, which is one of the strongest and loveliest urges that guides the species. And at last count, there were 48 people who’d backed my girl: 48 people who said, “There’s money for art. There’s money for exploration of the new boundaries. There’s community.”