|
Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog
 |
Thursday, July 31, 2003 |
collaborative learning and institutional culture. There have been a few interesting posts lately about collaborative learning. Many of them spout the relentlessly cheerful “we tried it and it was amazing and I wish more teachers would shift their paradigms because the students love it so much” line. (Hmmm. Perhaps my frustrations are already leaking through, eh?) Happily, Seb Paquet pointed me to Martin Blanche’s post on “Obstacles to collaborative learning.” (Permalinks are broken, alas, so go to his main page for now.) I’ll take the liberty of quoting them here: * Students and lecturers are more familiar with a knowledge-transmission model of education and don’t... [mamamusings]
More good stuff on the shift or not the shift to a more collaborative learning model. One thing I am sure of, try the transmission model on adults who have been away from school for a while. They hate it!
12:56:10 PM 
|
|
Great article about the revolution at Selfridge's in London. Like eBay it now focuses on creating the optimal environment for brands and resellers to do their thing. Gone is a the bureaucracy and the sameness. Gone are in house brands. Gone are most employees - they work for themselves or for the brands. In is theatre and design and fun.
8:39:16 AM
|
|
An excellent article on the need to be open - there are no secrets anymore. Good link to the Military's work in the early weeks in Iraq
How to Win the Information Battle — Lessons from a Modern War
By David Newkirk and Stuart Crainer
07/30/03
Business leaders can learn a lot from how the military manages the flow of real-time information.
The former British prime minister Harold Macmillan was once asked what made his job most difficult. “Events, dear boy, events,” he replied. In this age of information overload, events befuddle and bewilder leaders more than ever. From battles in foreign countries, to explosions in space, to CEOs’ defense of their honor in court, events are relayed to our television screens and computers in real time. Transmission and production delays in the media once allowed time for editing and perspective. Today, news is unfiltered — and rat-a-tat rapid. There are few guidelines (let alone rules) to help senior executives understand how to manage the outflow of information — or assimilate the avalanche coming in.
The best practices for managing information may lie not in business, but in the military. Long a supplier of metaphors and guidance for grappling with strategy dilemmas, the armed forces are also showing business leaders how to manage real-time information.
8:10:53 AM
|
|
|
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 |
My friend Andrew Clarke sent me this about Simone Weill's views that most work was in fact slavery
"Here's the logic chain:
1. Work is of fundamental spiritual importance because it offers us an anchoring connection to the present. If we don't achieve this connection regularly, our minds become too "unchained" and roam around in the past and the future. This part is not too far from the whole Zen notion of the role of "every day living".
2. Work is always organized in the context of a hierarchy (she got a lot of flack about this from her Marxist friends who believed that this was not true). The fundamental thing that differentiates an opressive hierarchy from a non-opressive one is the notion of consent. If you give your consent to participate in the hierarchy, you're free, and work assumes its proper spiritual role. If you don't give consent, you're a slave.
3. Your ability to give consent is dependent on your ability to perceive the connection of your work to the overall work of the hierarchy, and to your belief that the hierarchy's work is "good". If you cannot perceive the connection, then by definition you cannot give your consent, and you are therefore a slave.
4. Modern methods of organizing production (and she was talking about the factory experience here) either intentionally or unintentionally remove our sense of connection to the whole, which destroys our ability to give consent, which by definition makes us slaves.
There you have it! Amazing that she wrote all this down between 1940 and 1943.?
11:36:09 PM
|
|
Thoughts on the Intersections of Social Capital, Virtual Networks, Enterpreneurship and Innovation
I had mentioned a few days ago that I had to write a short essay outlining the main issues to be confronted in any attempt to understand the role of virtual networks in enhancing enterpreneurship and innovation, especially with respect to how social capital accumulates and impacts upon business dynamics.
Here goes then:
***
For the project to achieve fruition, there is a plethora of issues that need to be clarified. I will shortlist a few basic issues that pervade the work of leading researchers and practitioners and whose significance cannot be overlooked. First and most obviously, how could social capital be measured, especially within the context of virtual networks? Social Network Analysis tools are widely employed for such purposes, however, their effectiveness is limited due to the difficulty inherent in specifying which criteria should be used. Most analyses based on such tools (ie. Inflow) value the connections between disparate nodes of the social network in which they belong. When the social network consists of a relatively small number of nodes, the analysis will definitely unveil how frequently the nodes communicate and will choreograph the information flows among them. What though the analysis cannot tell is whether the relationship between the nodes in built upon strong or weak ties. Put otherwise, we can infer the existence of a relationship between two nodes, but we cannot determine the exact dynamics upon which the specific relationship is premised, and frequency of communication is not the best of criteria since it may denote hierarchy rather than intense team building or project work [1]. This difficulty aside, the Internet is bound to impact upon the process according to which social networks are formed, and hence the way social capital is accumulated, as “social capital is about networks, and the net is the network to end all networks” [2].
Secondly, the process of innovation is continuously changing in scope due to the amplifying character of all – pervasive communication networks, and this further hinders an analysis based on conventional metrics. For example, the nature of consumerism online can be radically different from the respective consumption modes observed in the physical world. Unhindered by physical matter constraints, users of file-sharing networks, such as the legendary Napster music file sharing network, redefine consumption as an essentially peer activity, which extends far beyond typical paid-for commercial experiences. In a similar vein, economists have a hard time explaining why people share information online without the requirement of quid-pro-quo relations [3][4]. Or in the case of Linux and collaborative software development on the Internet, the boundaries between producers and users are so blurred that this dichotomy between production and consumption loses its meaning. Some have argued that this is where the innovative potential of the Internet actually lies: networks of users providing help to each other without expecting anything in return, in much the same way that mutuals in the UK operate [5]. This peculiarity of the model has led many to assume the prevalence of a gift economy [6], however, it is a mistake to categorise the Internet as a mosaic of gift economies, despite that it arguably promotes the proliferation of certain kinds of gift economies. We should not neglect to bear in mind that the Internet is primarily a collaboration and communication platform rather than a marketplace aimed at co-ordinating exchanges of goods and services. Hence, it should come as no surprise that B2B e-marketplaces, which are geared toward communication and collaboration and aim at co-ordinating supply chains, are far more successful than B2C/e-tailing ventures that initially dismissed the inherently collaborative character of the Internet. And this is also reflected in the success of those early pioneers who have managed to stay afloat despite the current economic downturn.
Amazon.com and eBay are probably the most succinct examples as they have both embraced the contribution of end-users and have continuously rethought their strategy in order to morph from e-tailers to platforms where people could do a lot of things [7][8]. eBay still portrays as the most gigantic marketplace in the world, however, its real strength lies in its ability to build a massively decentralised database of member profiles, which constitutes the pragmatic leverage point of the platform. Users of eBay rank other users they have engaged in some sort of transaction through eBay, and this ranking mechanism emerges as the definitive asset of eBay because it enables users to evaluate the credibility of other users and this is the least-hassle route to reputation building in a dematerialised world [9]. Amazon, on the other hand, invites users to submit reviews of books they have read, and in so doing, a conversational effect is evident throughout the Amazon platform with users seemingly carrying out conversations and forming temporary communities of interest [10][11]. The underlying technology or process, called Collaborative Filtering, has drawn quite some attention as it is reckoned to be in the epicentre of a radical shift away from content based e-commerce models toward user and community centric models. What is more important though, particularly with respect to innovation and social capital, is that the very same process of collaborative filtering enables the formation of social networks at a scale the world has never experienced before. Witness the success of community sites such as Slashdot.org, which recycle the web in real-time, and which rely upon their members to create content and generate value. This genre of websites is also known as weblogs, although the genre is as well defined as peer-to-peer to say the least. Semantics aside, the technology that powers weblogs is not really novel, but the impact on innovation and network formation is dramatic. Nowadays, scores of companies like Macromedia, Microsoft, Apple, Demos, Groove Networks and Jupiter Research to mention but a few, have started experimenting with weblogs in an effort to connect with their market and benefit from end-user innovation.
Perhaps, the greatest challenge and promise at the same time of seamless communication networks revolves around work organisation. As knowledge workers no longer need to be physically located in a specific workplace, and they can co-ordinate their creative output regardless of geographical constraints, the role of organisational structure loses its historic role of managing power relations at a distance. In much the same way, organisational boundaries tend to become more elastic and flexible, and it is not rare to confront organisations whose strategy is defined by their structure. Put bluntly, although at first glance conventional structures seem to gradually evaporate, the overall importance of structure is as important as ever. In a sense, structure precedes strategy [12][13]. In fast-pacing industries fraught with technological uncertainty and galvanised by rapidly changing consumer expectations, the only way to compete is by elaborating on a fluid organisational structure that allows for quick adaptation to environmental disturbances. Thus, strategy becomes of secondary importance, and day-to-day management is what matters now. Under such circumstances, a rigid structure is bound to result in managerial lethargy, and to ease this tension, organisation around teams and projects becomes the norm. Nevertheless, this is not to say that the boundaries of the network can be easily defined, as many organisational actors may not be even conscious of those very swiftly adjusting boundaries.
Furthermore, when average job tenure lasts for no more than a couple of years as it is the norm in the Silicon Valley, and the emerging model of organisation is modelled on Hollywood, where individuals form ad-hoc, temporary, project-based business networks and once the film – the project – is completed, the temporary network disbands, then the corporate world is certain to undergo for a major restructuring [14]. Needless to say, this process is further accelerated by cyberspace and the new legion of e-lancers that discover new opportunities through always-on communication technologies [15]. Some speculate that the prevalent organisational entities of the future will not be mega-corporations the size of countries, but small clusters of e-lancers brought together for a single project and continuously reconfiguring their dynamics and components [15]. So far so true, people no longer need to see each other in a face-to-face context in order to work together. But, how can they trust each other if they have never physically seen, touched, and handshaken them? And this is perhaps the greatest obstacle that virtual organisations face: how to establish trust in a exclusively virtual context where relationships and processes are in flux, and the lifespan of the temporary organisation is meant to be so short that most organisational actors will never get to really know everyone involved? The importance of swift trust [16] and weak ties [18] has been proposed as the antitode, however, the Hollywood organisational model, again, offers a glimpse of the future to come: intense team building through a shared goal and trust building through webs of trust. First, there must be no ambiguity as to which purpose the organisation seeks to fulfil, and most importantly, you trust the people whom the people you trust trust. After all, centralised trust systems have always been inherently risky.
References
[1] Preece, J. Online Communities: Designing usability, designing sociability, John Wiley & Sons, NY, 2000
[2] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, 2000, p.171.
[3] Richard Barbrook, The high-tech gift economy, First Monday, 1998, at http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/index.html
[4] Felix Stalder, Beyond portals and gifts: Towards a bottom-up Net economy, First Monday, Issue 4, No 1, 1999, accessible at
www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_1/stalder/.
[5] Charles Leadbeater, Up the Down Escalator: why the global pessimists are wrong, Penguin, 2002.
[6] Kollock P. The Economies of online cooperation: gifts and public goods in cyberspace in Smith M and Kollock P (Eds) Communities in Cyberspace, Routledge, 1997.
[7] Sandeep Krishnamurthy, Case study #1: amazon.com - a business history, in E-Commerce Management: Text and Cases, 2002.
[8] Tapscott, D. Digital Capital: Harnessing the power of business webs, McGraw – Hill, 2000.
[9] Boyd, J. In community we trust: online security communication at eBay, Journal for Computer-Mediated Communication, Issue, no 3, April, 2002, accessible at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol7/issue3/boyd.html
[10] Locke, C. Gonzo Marketing: Winning through worst practices, Perseus, 2001
[12] Langlois N. Langlois, The Vanishing Hand: the changing dynamics of industrial capitalism, University of Connecticut Working Paper, Version 3.02b, 2001.
[13] The McKinsey Quarterly Reader, “Strategy=Structure”, May 2002.
[14] Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access: how the shift from ownership to access is transforming modern life, Penguin, 2000, pp.24-29.
[15] T.W. Malone and R.J. Laubacher. "The Dawn of the e-lance economy," Harvard Business Review, volume 76, number 5 (September-October), 1998.
[16] Meyerson D., Weick K.E. and Kramer R.M. “Swift Trust and Temporary Groups” in Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research. (Eds) Kramer R.M. and Tayler T.R., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp.166-195.
[18] M. Granovetter. The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1973.
[George Dafermos' Weblog]
Excellent stuff George
11:30:57 PM
|
|
Matt and Paolo are wondering if they are tired of blogging after a year. I too seem to have hit a one year wall. I want to shrink my blogging world. Why?
Then I remembered my 3 years at University and I wonder if there is predictable pattern here. When I went up to Oxford, I knew about 2 people who had been to school with me and I did not know them very well. My first year was an orgy of networking. There were girls to meet - a novelty for me then - and a host of amazing people. Like blogging, I too had to have something to offer and making one's rep was important in that first year.
Then in year 2, I found that I could not keep pace with all these contacts and I actually had to start to do a bit of work. By year 3 with finals on the horizon where the entire degree depended on three weeks of solid exams, I cut back to about 12 very close friends. These men have been the cornerstone of my life ever since.
Is there a pattern here that is familiar to you? Maybe the DNA of it is as follows:
- When you enter a new world, you have to develop your "name" and you explore widely all the new social possibilities - This is the investment phase
- After a while, you move to the discernment phase where your work life and your existing social links exert a restricting force on this new world forcing you to choose from the host of the new, the few that can fit inside your finite capacity for close relationships
- Finally there is the consolidation phase when you make the selection of the few new who will enter your circle of maybe 35 total relationships that you can handle at a level of some intimacy.
- If my university model works then these people enter the group who you become linked to both in terms of ideas and values but also in your personal lives.
What is so interesting about this new world is that unlike all others, school, your neighbourhood and work that this group is not bounded by place but solely by the link
9:07:59 AM
|
|
|
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 |
Enabling collaborative learning.
Sebastian has found Martin Terre Blanche's wonderful blog. He quotes a good post on obstacles to collaborative learning.
- Students and lecturers are more familiar with a knowledge-transmission model of education and don't always understand what is expected of us in a more constructionist environment.
- We have too little information about lecturers' and students' backgrounds, networks and skills - so often we don't realize that there is somebody in the group who could teach the rest of us a lot about some aspect of what we're studying.
- No or very limited mechanisms for students to talk back to the lecturer and (especially) to talk to one another.
- Inadequate 'course memory'. Lecturers often are the only bridge for this year's students to the knowledge created by last year's group - students don't get to see what last year's group did. There is no mechanism for students who want to stay in the group after the course is officially over (and who could be a useful resource for next year's students) to do so. [Martin Terre Blanche]
Reading through this list made me realize that the people who pioneer new modes of communication in hi-tech conferences these days are in the process of fixing these issues - through backchannelling and real-time blogging, the product of which most often gets turned into permanent, hyperlinked, googlable archives for the benefit of those who aren't there.
Here are some more obstacles elicited from one of Martin's readers.
[Seb's Open Research]
So good to have Seb back blogging again. The ideas in this post are dear to my heart as I teach online at UPEI. I have found that effective teaching online demands a really different pedagogy from the sage on the stage model of content transmission. I laugh when some e of my colleagues in the faculty worry about their content being stolen when I have found that what works best is dialogue, By about week 3, I hardly post at all and the class have taken over.
What I find works is to have a big idea for a class - This term we look at how businesses that use the principles of the Natural Step are not only doing good but doing well. Thus solving the paradox of the supposed choice between the planet or jobs which seems to paralyze movement.
We have at the core of the class 2 books The Ecology of Commerce by my old mentor Paul Hawken, who comes here to PEI on August 13-14th, and The Natural Step for Business by Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare. Each week we have a series of questions that we use as a formal structure and we have assignments which are posted for all to see. So far it looks pretty conventional. But 40% of the mark goes for participation judged on quality and quantity. I have found that this feature gets the juices going. With a class of 20 we get about a 1,000 posts in a 6 week half semester. Very soon we shift gears up from the abstract to how each of us can make a difference. We leave the world of the case studies and we look at ourselves. By week 4, we have lost the academic voice and we are in Cluetrain territory where all of us are revealing a great deal about who we really are as people. The material has become an excuse to explore our lives.
If we are lucky a student goes very deep and this stimulates the rest of us to open up as well. So the content is really only a catalyst. We have gone back to the Socratic method and it is hard to tell the prof from the student. We use WebCT which is very clunky but we mainly just use the discussion tool. I would love to use Groove which I find very smooth and has great features such as images and drawing tools. I have found that it is the quality of the conversation that counts the most. Asynchronicity is a popular feature with both me and the students. I get up very early and many of them work and post late. I have even taught while on vacation in Thailand! There is huge resistance to this type of approach from most faculty because they know no other way of teaching. Many of the younger students have a problem too as they have come from school, and also know no other way of learning. I have found that my adult students fit best as they have long ago left school and are very comfy with taking a leading role themselves. They also want o lear so that they know something new while many of kids take a course because they need the credit - very different.
A lot more has to change before this approach is commonplace. School itself is a huge barrier as it en-cultures the kids to be passive learners.
5:47:43 PM
|
|
How many social networks does it take to change a lightbulb?.
Welcome to Tribe.net.
 Very cool new social software app: Tribe.net. If you've been exploring social networking software services like Friendster lately, check out Tribe.net.
I just learned this weekend that an old friend and former colleague, Brian Lawler, is part of the dev team... very nice UI on this thing, and seems to facilitate certain kinds of interaction (read: non-gonad-driven) more elegantly than some of the other services out there right now. They're still in beta, but they say they hope to move into general release pretty soon. So far, I'm liking it a lot. Not ditching my Friendster account anytime soon, though.
Where else online could I schmooze with Satan, Carbohydrates, Mister Roboto, and vast legions of Goth/Burningman/Straightedge twentysomething hotties, all under one roof? Wait, don't answer that. Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]
So Mark Pincus' and Paul Martino's baby finally sees the light of day. I've been helping out, pushing in a few different directions. danah boyd is also involved. Come on over and try it out!
[Marc's Voice]
Ok I have finally reached my limit for joining these things. I had enough trouble trying to persuade friends to join Ryze, let alone Friendster, LinkedIn, EveryonesConnected,...
I got some benefit out of Ryze but not enough to justify paying for it. It's hard to see what being yet another member of Tribe.net would yield. Maybe if these networks worked out how to federate membership (and still make money) but I don't see tangible benefits in being a member.
I'd be interested in hearing stories from people who do.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]
I agree with Matt - I can only sustain a few relationships. The ones I have I want to pay attention to. Once I start to breach the laws of Magic Numbers, it all falls apart.
8:19:10 AM
|
|
PLACE-ORIENTED BLOGS.
 You may have noticed that I (sometimes unfairly) group blogs in my blogroll into artistic, business/scientific, environmental, news, and political categories, with Salon blogs listed separately because...well, because they're my community. Recently I've discovered another type of blog that is primarily geographical in nature. These have been self-styled as 'place-oriented blogs' or 'blogs of place'. Although most of us write from time to time about what's happening in our physical community, place-oriented bloggers write almost exclusively about the history, geography, and current events (often with photos) of their community.
They're actually very entertaining (and sometimes educational) to read. Here are some of the best of the breed I've found:
London and the North - London & Yorkshire, UK
Faultline / Creek Running North - California
Lifescapes - Texas
Bowen Island Journal - British Columbia
Laughing Knees - Japan
Life at the Edge - Tasmania (whence the photo above)
Ecotone - A wiki with more Bloggers of Place, and more about them
Some of our Salon bloggers write more about their physical location than others, especially those living outside the country as ex-pats. What do you think -- is your blog a 'blog of place' or do you just write about home when there's nothing more urgent to write about? Is this a legitimate new genre of blog? I have occasionally posted about my home on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario, but not with any geographic thoroughness. Should I write more about place? |
[How to Save the World]
Thanks Dave - you and Chris on Bowen Island have got me thinking this morning about why PEI is so important to me. I was at a wedding this weekend of two friends - one from Germany who owns 600 acres here and his new wife from Argentina. Many aspects of the wedding link back to place. We held the wedding at his "place" a cabin that he had built with friends in the woods. He has been living in Paris where his wife is at school and could only turn up here on PEI a few days before the event. She is organizing the second wedding in BA later this month - so his friends organized this wedding. Everything came from the farms and smokehouses of people that he knew. The cook was my daughter, the serving staff the daughters of friends - the wine waiter - me. The photographer was a friend who taught his wife last year at the community college. In effect he was truly married in front of his community. On PEI, our place in our place demands that we really help out our neighbours
His final words in his speech of thanks though were not to the people but to the land - the great pull that this "place" has on all of us who live here. He like me have in effect come home to this place after many years of wandering. Like the Odyssey maybe?
I wonder if most of us have forgotten the power of place. We live such mobile lives. I think that I have moved more than 20 times. We get so busy that we cannot pay attention to the detail of our place. Yet for our ancestors place was everything - you would know every bump, every tree every wave of new growth of the wildflowers. Like Chris on Bowen Island, an island helps reinforce the sense of place as it has boundaries. Not just physical ones but community boundaries. Not being born here I will never become an Islander. Good clubs have tough rules for membership. I think that such community boundaries push those from away together and push us to contribute. At least when I die, people may say that I have helped my community - not bad for a foreigner? Dying here on PEI is a huge deal - funerals are command performances and supplant any other social or business arrangement. Going to a funeral can get you out of anything. For a while I thought that this was quaint - but living close to death all the time has given me a new perspective. People matter here - they come first in fact. So when a family member dies - the whole community pulls together. After all we all end here.
Dave talks about the value of walking his place with his dog Chelsea. I find that Jay and Mildred have also taught me a lot about my part of this place. We too have ritual walks around the boundaries of my place. The dogs poo and pee at strategic places just outside our legal boundaries. The dogs like running through the hay fields where they periodically jump like dolphins from below the tops into the air where they can see where I am at the edge of the field. At dusk Jay stands at the 4 corners and barks defiance to the foxes and coyotes who lurk just beyond the boundaries.
We have an old horse training track around a field that I mow. Inside the field is either hay or barley. On the perimeter that I don't mow is a bank of wild flowers that shift in their own rotation as the summer moves into fall. We have a tree house that you can go up into to look around the place. I find that mowing - 4 acres twice a week - is not only a form of meditation but also allows me to sense the minute changes in the place. Changes in soil moisture; Changes in the insect world; Changes in the bird population; changes in the weed rotation . I have been surprised in that I now can notice the smallest changes in our local environment.
Most of my work too seems to be moving in a direction that supports this place. When I work to help the health system it is of course my health system. When I work to help an Island business to do better, it improves my community as well. This has changed my view of work from being a narrow relationship with a client to a broader relationship to my place.
Thanks again Dave for a good jolt this morning
8:15:42 AM
|
|
|
Monday, July 28, 2003 |
Paul Martin has a Weblog. "Paul Martin (quite possibly Canada’s next prime minister) has a weblog. I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me thinks it’s great that weblogs can be used in mainstream politics. Another part of me is finds it creepy and suspicious. To their credit, the writing is good. It appear..." (155 words - posted by steven) 5 replies [Acts of Volition]
Well if Paul Martin can blog - the rest will sooin.
8:58:23 AM
|
|
It is likely that there will be an election on PEI this fall. I wonder how blogging will fit. My sense is that while it may be a slow start, that the tight community here will be ideal for Island Politics. I can imagine the type of connection that will build and the opportunity for real dialogue.
I think that Ross is on the money here - Blogging and the net will transform our democratic process.
One thing is for sure. When Dean showed he could raise money on the Net, politics changed forever.
Previously the Net had demonstrated its ability to influence decision makers through individualize pluralism, beginning when Kevin Werbach set up the first citizen feedback email address. Over 2 million emails were sent by citizens on the issue of media ownership, at last count according to Reed. Blogs have also demonstrated the ability of an influential deliberative network to force the media to play their role as the 4th estate, Lott being the poster child.
But now the Net has become a constituency. Decision makers like to say they are accountable even the poorest residents of their districts, but money is the source of their power and the group they serve is the group that elects them with it. Dean has shown the Net as means to money. And now every politician is finally paying attention.
Reed's talk last week was on the digital polity vs. the analog polity. He spoke eloquently about the rising constituency and how its "not just that things reoccur, its that they get better." There are core ideals, parties are means towards those ideals, but are largely ineffective. A new party of a digital polity is emerging that holds certain core beliefs:
- We know more than our leaders
- We pay nobody to say what we want to hear
- Information is percipient and wants to be free
- We are build on systems and networks, not organizations
- We synthesize the whole instead of constructing barriers and silos
- We believe in truth and civil debate
Now I may not have everything word for word (thumbed it into my Palm). He also stated digital polity principles of privacy, representation, honesty and equity. He implies that leaders still have utility and a role to play, but they need to engage the digital constituency and build trust. We don't depend upon the media because we are skeptics and experts, we are global and can engage in collective action without government. That said, digital needs to negotiate with analog. But these are powerful and re-occuring themes.
What is encouraging, if not remarkable, is that Reed is a civil servant, nay, politician, who undertands his new constituency and its reasonable demands.
At the end he did casually remark that we should abolish the US Senate, as they are a distortion of representation, serving only 15% of citizens. The point he is making, though, is that leaders fall behind their citizens (especially in times like these). Perhaps because they are not engaged with their constituents. Perhaps because their interests are conflicted. But the difference is our representatives need to recognize our new found powers to deliberate and represent ourselves at a pace they need to understand.
Which brings me back to Dean. If a candidate and causes can raise money on the Net, they can engage in institutional pluralism. Direct participation within the social network of decision makers. This scares most policy makers, as the game has changed.
Its a grass roots game ripe for changing minds and policy. Valdis forwarded a paper, Encouraging Political Defections: The Role of Personal Discussion Networks in Partisan Desertions to the Opposition Party and Perot Votes by Paul Beck, that I found absolutely stunning. We are bi-polar in our political views by nature, tend to filter out news we can identify is from the opposition and are comfortable in the absence of change. But when an issue is socialized we have a greater chance of changing our minds. When our social network provides new ideas and affirmations, we are more likely to take new positions.
Perhaps that's the power of Dean's use of Meetup. Meetup collapses time and space for deliberative groups to get together. Inevitably, some participants are strong ties for affirmation and weak ties for new ideas. What Dean is doing is opening up discussion at the social level to enact political change. How neofunctional of him. What Dean needs to do, however, is get more of us to debate -- instead of the candidates. [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
8:52:53 AM
|
|
It has been weird not even looking at my weblog for nearly 2 weeks. I have also learned how much energy it takes me to keep current on it - a lot! It will take a few days to get back into the swing.
The work front has been full, plus my daughter Hope has catered a large wedding where I was a slave and finally Robin has had a knee operation which has not gone well.
8:23:32 AM
|
|
|
Sunday, July 20, 2003 |
This very long film film, 223 minutes, has just been released in DVD (July 2003). Most of the formal reviews have panned the film. I have now seen it twice and I feel compelled to make a case for it being actually a great film. I don't mean to use the adjective lightly. I mean great in scale and in its humanity: it addresses mythic material in an epic form. The initial reaction to the film was poor in the mainstream press. It was too long. It contained many subplots and themes that could have been excised to increase the pace. It did not pay enough attention to the evils of slavery. That the religiosity of Jackson and the pedantry of Chamberlain were jarring.
I think that these are criticisms of those that are so entrenched in their "modern" world view, that they cannot access the most moving of all forms of human communication- the Homeric Epic.
When I was a boy I read the Odyssey and Moby Dick. At the age of 9, these appeared to me to be only adventure stories. I think that most of the reviewers of Gods and Generals used this type of lens to "see" the film. I am going to be a bit mean now, but maybe this is the only level that they were prepared to experience life? One reviewer complained about the lack of blood! One thought that the subplot with Jackson and the little girl had pedophilic undertones? Many complained that not enough had been done to show the evils of slavery - they wanted more cruelty on the screen. In particular, many felt exceptionally uncomfortable about Jackson's faith in God and his willingness to converse with God at all times. All negative reviews felt crushed by the pace and the length of the film. Maybe if they were to read the Odyssey and Moby Dick today, would they would make the same type of criticisms? I suspect that they would find the books long-winded, slow, with too many subplots. Many would find the scene where Ishmael and the Harpooner share a bed at the beginning of the book homo-erotic. They would miss the meaning completely as they did with this film.
I fear that we, as moderns, have been cut off from the epic by the pace and the superficiality of modern life. It is hard for us to go beneath the surface any more.
Maybe the DVD and a bottle of wine can help to expand the frame. I sat enthralled and mostly in tears throughout the 3 hours plus of this film. Central to my emotion, was the interplay between choice and destiny.
At the heart of the film is the clash of two civilizations. We witness, with Jackson's death at the end of the film, the first step of the death of an heroic world where character is central. Where relationships are intense between people and where God, Place and Family are worth dying for. The South relies on imagination, flexibility and skill but is overwhelmed by a machine world where economic power is central. Where human relationships are replaced by machine parts
The first part of the film shows the issue of choice and duty. Lee cannot take up the leadership of the Union Army as he owes his greater allegiance to his "country" Virginia. I fear that many modern reviewers simply miss this point. They cannot know the role that Lee, Jackson and other southern leaders have previously played in the Army of the union in Mexico. Nor do they know of their time at the Point. Many of these men were as brothers. Armistead and Hancock are best friends. Pete Longstreet was the best man at Grant's wedding!. Lee had been a central figure in Mexico and had the enduring trust of Winfield Scott. The men who lead both sides had joined the Army of the United State and gave their oath at a time when oaths meant something. But for the Southerners, they answered a higher calling, their "country".
We who are so mobile today, Americans move on average every 5 years, have no experience anymore of what it might be like to be part of a stable society. We know little of the power of place.
The film offers a number of these choices to us at its outset. A son rejects his father's appeal to move back to the North with him. Jackson's first father in law leaves the south to wipe the dirt from his feet on crossing the Potomac. These are powerful and poignant choices. We watch Jim Lewis, a slave, sign up to serve his country too as Jackson's cook. This is no fabrication of the director. Lewis walked behind Jackson's coffin alone holding Jackson's horse at his funeral. In an epic, there is no simple relationship. The film shows the paradox of the burden of slavery in the context of the relationships. Masters and slaves were also people who shared a place and had feelings toward each other. Jim prays to be free but is also a native Virginian and is the friend and confidant of Jackson.
We witness Chamberlain in a painful confrontation with his wife. He leaves her like a Greek warrior for Troy. She can hardly bear to see him go. What wife could? We see in Chamberlain's going to war with his brother Tom another aspect of the particular acting for the general in epic.
This was the time when units of the army, especially in the south, were formed regionally. 6,000 men served in the Stonewall Brigade, all from the Shenandoah Valley. All were brothers and sons, cousins and Uncles, friends and neighbours. Can we come close to imagining what this was like in our anonymous age? So Tom and his brother, whom he constantly fails to call Colonel, are the mythic brothers for all the brothers. Only 200 of the 6,0000 who served in the Brigade survived the war. The region lost all its men. Since then the US Army deliberately does not have locals serve in the same unit.
In true epic, a single person embodies the larger theme. So Jackson embodies the South. He is a two-sided man. Much of the film explores his tenderness and also his fierceness.
A reviewer pours scorn on the scenes in the film where Jackson develops an intense relationship with a 6 year old girl. Maybe he, the reviewer, needed more context. Jackson had been orphaned at 7. His greatest fear was the loss of loved ones. The girl's greatest fear was that her Daddy would not come home. There is a remarkable Christmas scene, where Jackson asks her what she wants and she tells him that she wants her Daddy to come home. He embraces her and says "All the daddies will come home" - Of course Jackson means that they will all come home to God. Everyone that Jackson had loved has died. His parents, his first wife and his first child. What he fears the most is that his current wife will also die with their child. When this little girl dies of scarlet fever, he breaks down and weeps in front of his staff. One asks how can he weep for this girl when he has not wept for any of his men and even for his friends. Dr McGuire answers that he is weeping now for them all.
We also see his fierce side. He advocates taking no prisoners. He, like Grant, knows that war is not a game. That it should only be pursued with great force so that it can end as soon as possible. Jackson is a man whose life is an adventure. His enduring faith in God enable him to accept his destiny. He fears not his own death knowing that it is inevitable. So he is quite fearless and hence inspiring in battle. This sense of destiny and the immanence of God pervades the film and offers us all a other way of being in the world.
The film, like the Iliad, is an intermix of intense human vignettes with grand battle scenes. A reviewer noted that Ron Maxwell should look at Private Ryan for lessons in how to make a battle scene. Really? This is a different time. Here the issue is to show how men summoned the courage to march into a hail of bullets - to stand yards away from your enemy and to return fire and reload when completely exposed. I found the battle scenes enthralling. 7,000 re-enactors who really know what they are doing knock the spots off any CGI effect. Witnessing the Irish Brigade charge up the hill in a foreshadowing of Gettysburg was a great moment of film. The men accelerating through the fire, crouched as they ran as if they were trying to shelter from rain. Men standing shoulder to shoulder 30 yards from the wall and their enemy. What we see is pure courage.
Ironically we then we see Armistead and Pickett, who were to do the same only 4 months later, comment on the bravery and the folly of such an act. We know that Armistead will die on a wall just like this and that Pickett will have his division and his life destroyed on a wall just like this.. The cheer of anguish and salute of the Irish brigade of the CFA at the wall after they had slaughtered their brothers of the Irish Brigade of the Union was a Homeric moment. This cheer too foreshadows another moment in the future. In the years after the war, a great tradition emerged at Gettysburg. At the reunions, long lines of grey-coated old man would walk stiffly up the hill to Cemetery Ridge where at the wall a long line of old men in blue awaited them. When they reached the wall, their union brothers would reach across and pull them over the wall into their embrace.
The flanking attack at the end of the film just before Jackson's shooting, is also a great moment. For me it is the blend of action with thousands of extras and the score. In silence, the men stand still at the edge of the Wilderness. Then they walk and then run still in silence as the score picks up the pace. It is balletic!
The film takes maybe 20 minutes to show us Jacksons' death. Too long? What we witness is the death not only of one man but the death of the South. From this moment it is downhill all the way. In his single death we see the death of all the 600,000 who died who left their wives and children, their fathers and mothers, their brothers and sisters all behind. In his death, we also see the end of any chance that leadership in itself could make the difference. Now it will be only a game of mathematics where the numbers and the economic might of the North will grind the South down.
My advice for Ron Maxwell and Ted Turner? The complaint heard regarding both films was that they were too long. Yet we see 13 hours of Band of Brother as being OK. Maybe HBO is the venue of the Last Full Measure? LFM demands an even grander canvass. I cannot see how a 3 hour film can do justice to the scale of the last year 2 years of the war where the scale expands and the drama deepens so much Maybe these films are in fact too short? The modern audience cannot easily take a 3 hour film in a cinema but can take a 13 hour series at home if well made. HBO have shown that they are the masters of this format.
Ron and Ted - please do not give up. I know that you want to make a difference. Having the 3 films made would be an act of great historic import. The birth story of the US is the Civil War. This is the furnace from which has come our modern age. LFM above all shows how Lincoln and Grant understood this and how our own time was created. We have to see how these titanic forces were mobilized and applied to understand who we are today.
We have to go to the Mississippi. We have to follow Sherman to Atlanta. We have to go into the Wilderness again and we have to end up at the entrenchment, at the first mine and we have to find our way to the small courthouse where we have to witness the meeting of Lee in his best uniform and Grant in his dusty clothes. We have to see that all of Lee's brilliance was of no avail once a new leader emerged that understood what the real job was - to wear Lee's army down to nothing. We have to see how Lee was bled not just of numbers but of talented subordinates and friends. We have to endure all of this with him to see why at the end he can make the choice not to throw away the last remnant of his army. We have to see that he did give indeed the last full measure. We have to see how, in spite of all of what has happened, all the horror and slaughter, that honour still remains. We have to see the supreme moment of coincidence, when Chamberlain leads the guard of Unions troops in salute their defeated brothers as they march off into history.
9:53:04 AM
|
|
|
Thursday, July 17, 2003 |
This is a test
4:31:05 PM
|
|
|
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 |
Why Ebay Works.
Meg Whitman:
"We make our money one dollar at a time, literally $1.72 per listing, and a final value fee if the listed item sells."
"our users are on track to trade $21 billion worth of merchandise. "
"what eBay does is create efficient markets where there were quite inefficient markets before. We’re the major player in the two inefficient parts of the overall [product life cycle] bell curve. "
If you want more details and don't my slogging through powerpoint check out the latest corporate presentation.
[Micah's Weblog]
I think that eBay is the best example of the Support Economy yet. Anyone who cannot see the power of creating a trusted place and facilitation as the new way of doing business - look out. Check out the PPT has a gold mine of stuff - Adam Cohen's Book - see link - is great too.
6:09:54 PM
|
|
70% of the US healthcare costs are driven by chronic disease. Diabetes would be at the top of the list. Read how a group of health professionals are dealing with this in the US. Would be great here
5:59:44 PM
|
|
One of my favourite writers is Matthew Fox. One of my favourite books "The Reinvention of work". There is a forward to the book that goes like this:
"To Tristan (July 10, 1975 - June 15, 1992) my companion and co worker for 17 years, who was a grace to all who knew him. Whose work was play and who was always connected to the great work and whose work was finished on June 15, 1992 at 10.30 am - Thank you"
I was mystified - was this a child? But if you look at the picture of Matt on the end page, you will see a little white dog peering around Matt's legs. Later, I met Matt several times and we talked a lot about Tristan. Jay does the same for me. Matt would be pounding away at his keyboard, as I am now, and finally Tristan would get fed up and start messing with the pages on the floor. "Time to stop using your head Matt and use your body!" Jay is asleep on the floor next to me - but in about an hour he will tell me that it is time to get the paper and I will go outside into the world.
6:28:10 AM
|
|
|
Monday, July 14, 2003 |
Thank you Augustine for bringing Jay to the blogosphere
5:31:47 PM
|
|
This is Avi's alter ego Marty - the king of procrastination
4:54:40 PM
|
|
I am big now and the guardian of Rob's place but I wasn't always like that. I was abandoned as a small puppy and someone took me to the humane society. They told the visitors that I was part German Shepherd and part Lab. I think that this frightened a lot of folks off. Every day for four months I hoped that someone would take me home. Other dogs that did not find a home soon went off and never came back. I wondered where they went and I wondered why they did not take me away as well. But one day, a noisy family came by with lots of children in tow and the woman, Robin, looked me in the eye and I chose her. Here I am later the next day having my first bath. I hate baths! I have sad eyes don't I?
Rob has let me visit his blog. He is not bad at talking about head things. But he is rotten at talking about heart things. So that is what I will do now and then. Hi Augustine - talk more later
4:32:49 PM
|
|
The next 2 weeks are very busy and you wont hear much from me.
1:03:20 PM
|
|
|
Sunday, July 13, 2003 |
I am doing some OD work for a university. One of the issues confronting all universities today is a quantum increase in organizational complexity. My ingoing sense is that the mechanism's for managing complexity are poorly understood and that as maths changed at the turn of the century to take complexity into account, so we have to look for novel ways of managing complexity at universities.
My thesis is that we manage today as if cause and effect were our universe. Our systems are too complex for this midset and if we remain in cause and effect, conflict will be the only result. Some type of systems tool is required. A start may be some type of council that brings all partiers to the table - but I get ahead of myself.
Let's look at the world of 1969 when I went up to Oxford and then at the world of 2003 for a modern urban university in Canada
When I went to Oxford 35 years ago, my college, Christchurch was mainly an undergraduate college attached to a cathedral. The Dean ran both. He and the Dons ran the college with a handful of secretaries and a lot of servants and he and the Canons ran the Chapter again with a few secretaries and a lot of servants. Christ Church was part of a Coop called the University where a few Dons sat on committees and set policy. That was the University - a few committees.
Our world was really the college. Small and compact. 90% of the teaching was in the college. We all lived in college. Each college had a its own funding. Christ Church was immensely wealthy with large endowments of land that had accrued over hundreds of years. There were few of us. All of us that went paid fees and it cost me then about L1,000 a year in fees and I spent about another L1,000 on having a good time. We were heavily subsidized by the college but it also lived well within its means. Our accommodation, though splendid, was also spartan as only an all male place of the time could have been. In my quad, the only toilet was on the ground-floor, and the building was 6 stories high. We used the sink for most things! The only baths were in the basement in one corner of the quad. When this was pointed out to the dean who built the quad, his reply was that " they are only here for 8 weeks at a time". I think I only had a handful of baths in the 3 years that I was there. I would go home on the weekends for a clean up.
Again my point - a simple set up with not much money flowing either way and almost no government involvement. The world was the college and the faculties. Being small there was little managerial complexity. All who were not faculty were in effect servants or students. There were no money problems and, apart from maintenance, little need for capital investment. The money fit inside the capital envelope of the college. The university ran a few libraries and exams. The simple college was our world where everyone knew everyone perhaps better than they wanted too.
I use Oxford as an example because it was the model for many other universities. But now what is the university world?
Money and social engineering are compelling drivers. The state has entered the game in most countries and has funded a huge increase in enrollment which has driven a huge increase in the capital requirement. Coed is the norm and modern plumbing has entered the male preserve at great cost. Equipping my college with toilets and bathrooms on every floor cost over L20 million! Imagine the plumbing issues in 16 -1 19th century buildings.
So what are the issues in many Canadian Universities today. They have a president whose job is to fund-raise and to deal with governments. His job is mainly a business role. He has to get the budget and make the money work. He has to compete for capital donors and he has to lobby government for more research and operating funds. He is supported by a staff that would not be out of place in any large commercial enterprise. But he has no power to tell the faculty what to do. The Product end of the university has not changed much since I was an undergraduate or indeed since the middle ages. The faculty is divided into separate disciplines who jealously guard their turf. Now usually unionized, my Tutor Charles Stuart must be turning in his grave, they hold back the online world as they know that this will destroy how they work. They do not want to teach because they move up the tenure track and in status by publishing. So they employ armies of servants, TA's to you and I, to teach and mark in their name. In my day all the dons in every discipline met every night over dinner in hall. Today they all go home to their SOS's and children. So the linkages between them are poor. All the fertile research ground has been tilled and new entrants scrap for weeds deep in the mud.of their field. There is little sense of collegiality.
They fear that the president will make their university into a BUSINESS - horror of horrors! They sense that undergraduates already pay too much but that is the President's problem. They sort of know that demography will send fewer young their way - but that is the president's problem. After all they don't want to teach them anyway. . They reject any idea of using technology to teach differently - they fear that their precious IP will be lost if they make what they do accessible. So reducing the cost of teaching is the-President's problem. They have their heads firmly in the sand but will not give an inch of thie power up to help.
Governments want every one to have access to university. They have set up a loan sharking business to facilitate this. The average debt for BA is about $30,000. The theory is that BA's get high paying jobs and will easily pay this off. Not so. Most are caught and flip hamburgers or some double up and go onto graduate work. Students will find new ways of getting what they want and will turn away from the traditional delivery and costs - they have no choice.
While the students are finding university too expensive. 50% of the faculty will be in the retirement zone in the next 10 years. Already a bidding war for the new talent is happening. In key areas, new hires are earning more than the old guard. resentment is building and costs are going up.A classic squeeze play is emerging. Costs are too high and rising. Each party balmes the other.
Universities have become huge. They now have armies of Administrators and Technicians who are still treated like servants by the faculty. They are unionized as well and have a deep sense of bitterness and entitlement.
So who would want to be a University President?
How can universities reduce this complexity. Maybe they can take a lead from our Provincial Politicians. They are recommending the formation of a council where the premiers meet as a matter of course with the Prime Minister. The underlying idea is that there is no process other than confrontation to meet the complex needs of a diverse set of groups who live under one hat, Canada. So maybe for universities. Currently each powerful group has to attack the others. The poor President is stuck in the middle.
Maybe this is true for all organizations? Management and the rest was OK for simpler times. The 3 body problem demands a more sophisticated process. It recognizes that once there are more than two parties, then using cause and effect as the metaphor leads to conflict and failure. Most organizations are more complex than two body systems now. Understanding complexity and chaos will become essential tools for managment. More later
3:54:16 PM
|
|
I am reading Simon Singh brilliant book on Maths "Fermat's Enigma". (See link) Fermat's problem is based on the one equation that even the most dunce maths brain such as my own understand - in a right angled triangle, the Square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square of the two other sides. - Fermat's problem is based on this simple equation. But that is not my point today. My point is that Pythagoras was struck by how the natural world, such as music and so on, was run by a series of numbers. Numbers can be found at the core of most natural phenomena and relationships. Did you know that you can calculate the actual length of a river by multiplying its crow's length, the point to point, by Pi (3.14)? How weird!
My aha for today is that, why should not human relationships be also governed by numbers? If so, we are underplaying the importance of magic numbers. Why are nurses so unhappy? Might it be that they go to work as groups and not as teams governed by the rules of magic numbers? Why is there bullying at school? Might it be that we do not organize them by using magic numbers? Why do many of our social and work organizations need so much bureaucracy? May it be that we do not use Magic Numbers. Why do all armies have the same core organizational structures of 8 - 15 - 35 -150 and 500-600? Might it be that they have found out intuitively that these sets work best under stress. Why are all HG groups functions of 15 and 35.? Why are larger tribal groups not more than 500? Why is 150 such a perfect number for getting complex work done?
I am beginning to feel that much of the inhumanity and stress in our work place is the machine culture that pays no attention to these hard numbers.
2:54:21 PM
|
|
|
Saturday, July 12, 2003 |
Project Management and Horses.
Project Management and Horses.
Spotted this gem on Anders site:
The tribal wisdoms of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that 'when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount'. However, in many companies as well as in the UN and NGO community a range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
1. Changing riders
2. Appointing a committee to study the horse ...
It just gets better from there.
[High Context]
It does.
[McGee's Musings]
And we think that we are so civilized and clever!
6:16:06 PM
|
|
It is only fair, if I was writing about Mothers and Daughters, that I should mention Fathers and Sons. There appear to be two areas of angst that I hear about the most.
The "Lost father" and the "I'll show him father" .
The Lost Father is a set up where the son feels that he never really knew his father. Where he saw his father have fatherly relationships with other young men - especially at work so he is aware that his father has the capacity to be a father but this relationship does not happen between the true son and the true father. The saddest example of this is Col John Boyd (the father of the OODA Lop and Shock and Awe) who was one of the great mentors of the modern era but who ignored his own sons. In the final irony, as he lay dying Boyd called out to his intellectual sons as his natural son sat by his bed in the vain hope that maybe, at the moment of death, his father would acknowledge him. For many of us in this category of sons, I am one, much of our adult life is a quest to find a father substitute. Sometimes these relationships can be nourishing and good - especially in the early years in boyhood or early adulthood. But others, if you keep on seeking into adult life, can be based on trying the same failed tricks to win the attention of the fake father that failed with the real father. If you are lucky, one day you find an older man who tells you that it is time to grow up and look after yourself. Thank you Fraser!
The "I'll show him father" - good examples are Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner. Both men had successful fathers whose constant discourse to their sons was that they were no good layabouts. For these men this was the lash of ambition that drives then so hard to "show him" that he was wrong. Like much mania, the it appears that the pinnacle can never be reached and that the need to show him never ends. The sadder side of this set up is the son who believes his father's sentence of failure and acts this out his entire life.
Are there fathers whose relationships fit their sons needs? I am sure there are - but good stories are never about comfort
2:29:56 PM
|
|
Creating the Future.
A wonderful argument for and against scenarios ......
"The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths
offered by the present, but a place that is created -- created
first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future
is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The
paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making
them, changes both the maker and the destination."
- John Schaar
[Conversations with Dina]
Yes!!!!
If control is so important to us, why do so many of us put up with not participating in the co creation of our future. We wait for our partners to change, our bosses to make the call or worse, the government to save us. The Greeks talk about the idea of "Destiny", the Romans talk about "Fortuna". Neither is predetermined and neither has much to do with our concept of "luck". Maybe the idea of Destiny and Fortuna fits the quote about co creation of the future.
It is hard to see our own destiny, but we can often see that our friends and our family make their own future. My sister expects to be cheated by everyone - and so she is. My friend Tim tells himself that he is trapped in both his work and marriage. He first told me about this 8 years ago - he is still trapped.
Positively my daughter feels that money and work will always come her way - and they do. My friend James always seems to have fortune smile upon him - work, SOS, Children - is he "lucky"? No he makes his luck happen by the choices, the discipline, and the energy that he puts into his life. Hope and James put a huge effort into their relationships with others. Diana and Tim hold back. I wonder if this is a clue? To co create a positive future seems that to require that you have to pay attention to the others in your life. Put into the other rather only than expect things from the other.
9:39:03 AM
|
|
|
Friday, July 11, 2003 |
In the last 3 years the amount of fish kills on PEI from pesticide runoff has increased alarmingly. If this kills the fish - what does a lifetime accumulation do for us? Is saying I need to do this to save my crop a good enough reason?
In addition, the reliance on Russet Burbank, the variety that is at the core of the McFry, means that many of our fields are uncovered in winter. The RB is a late developing variety that is harvested in October too late to plant a cover crop. If you farm fileds with no cover crop and with a slope this is what they can look like in the spring.
This why our rivers and streams are clogging up and I can walk across the Hillsborough River at medium tide.
6:39:06 PM
|
|
10 mgl is the danger zone for nitrate contamination of groundwater. Getting rid of Nitrate contamination in groundwater is all but impossible. On PEI we rely on groundwater. We can see that already a number of our wells are through or are close to this limit. How is this happening?
The red zone on the map is the high concentration of potato growing on PEI. Look at the trend line. Now compare this with the green dotted line where potato growing is light. The blue line shows a bad trend as well in the other area on PEI where potatoes are gron at scale. No farmer can say, this is my land and I can do anything I want here. His land affects all our water. Why should we be concerned?
"Nitrate in drinking water becomes a significant concern
only when people drink from a water supply that is highly
contaminated with nitrate.
Federal drinking water standards do not allow public water
supplies to contain more than 10 mg/L nitrate nitrogen (NO3-N).
Nitrate poisoning of infants during the first three to four months
of life is the major concern. The pH of an infant's gastric juice
is relatively high, between five and seven, and bacteria that
convert nitrate to more toxic nitrite flourish. Nitrite that forms
in an infant's stomach and reaches the blood, oxidizes the iron of
hemoglobin to form methemoglobin.
Methemoglobin cannot carry oxygen. As more hemoglobin is
converted to methemoglobin, symptoms of oxygen starvation occur.
The scientific name for this is methemoglobinemia, but it is
commonly called blue-baby syndrome. If more than half the
hemoglobin is converted, death is likely.
Other factors put infants at a high risk for
methemoglobinemia. Their hemoglobin, a special form found only in
the fetus and during the first few months following birth, is more
susceptible to reaction with nitrite. In addition, the enzyme
system which converts methemoglobin to hemoglobin is not very
active early in life. General infant health, inherited metabolic
differences, and the degree of breast feeding versus feeding with
formula mixed with well water also are invoked in the potential for
nitrate induced methemoglobinemia.
Almost all reported cases of infant methemoglobinemia have
occurred when infants have consumed formula made with private well
water. Arkansas has never had a documented case of infant death
attributed to nitrogen-contaminated drinking water. Investigations
of many cases in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere have
consistently shown that methemoglobinemia does not occur when
drinking water contains less than 10 mg/L of NO3-N and occurs only
rarely if water has no more than 20 mg/L NO3-N. A National Academy
of Sciences study concluded that the current U.S. drinking water
standard of 10 mg/L NO3-N affords newborns reasonable protection
against methemoglobinemia." (TITLE: NITRATES IN GROUNDWATER: SOURCES AND CONCERNS
COLLECTION: WATER QUALITY/WASTE MANAGEMENT
ORIGIN: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS
DATE INCLUDED: OCTOBER, 1993)
6:13:40 PM
|
|
"The Laws that we are ignoring determine how life sustains itself. Commerce requires living systems for its welfare -- it is emblematic of the times that this even needs to be said. Because of our industrial prowess, we emphasize what people can do but tend to ignore what nature does. Commercial institutions, proud of their achievements, do not see that healthy living systems -- clean air and water, healthy soil, stable climates -- are integral to a functioning economy. As our living systems deteriorate, traditional forecasting and business economics become the equivalent of house rules on a sinking cruise ship."
Being an Island and being dependent on our natural resources for the 3 pillars of our economy, Agriculture, Tourism and the inshore Fishery, PEI is on the knife edge. Our use of the traditional industrial model has stressed all the connected systems to the limit. How to save ourselves is the question. Debates about the environment are usually futile arguments from one group who says that we cannot change because if we do, we will lose all the jobs and while the other says that we should not have an economy at all and merely save the environment. The result is that we remain stuck.
For many years Paul Hawken has being saying something different. His message is that an economy is essential. The issue as he sees it is not to chose between jobs and the planet but to have both. The work is to design a new type of economy that works according to the laws of nature and physics. Hence the term Natural Capitalism.
Paul is coming to PEI to speak formally to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy on August the 14th. But he will speak to the public of PEI at UPEI on the evening of August the 13th.
Over the next few weeks I will post as many good articles that I can about what we face here as issues and also what we now know about a new design that may help us. Please help me by adding your comments and by leading me to other good articles.
3:41:00 PM
|
|
|
Thursday, July 10, 2003 |
I was being interviewed today by a PHD Student who is working on the topic of Communities of Practice. We had a bit of an aha that I wanted to share
It appears that the corporate model that most of us work in now squeezes out our humanity. We develop machine relationships - even odd corporate voices - not simply a use of lanaguage that is not human as described in Cluetrain, but a manner of speaking a "dead sound" where our real personality has been excluded as has emotion and feeling.
This machine world is causing us to become ill and depressed. I speculate that as we assume this corporate personality that it takes over our whole life and affects our marriages and our relationships with our children.
No wonder marriage is failing and our children are in such trouble. We act in this impersonal and unreal way in our whole lives. We even act like this to ourselves and no longer have a real relationships with ourselves.
How can we learn and experience being human again? What is the essence of being human? It is surely to hear our real voice. What does blogging do? It allows many of us to develop this voice. Blogging can enable us to become human again.
Not a small issue.
6:43:05 PM
|
|
What is it about Mothers and Daughters? Robin's mother is a much larger and more destructive figure in her life than her breast cancer. Not a day goes by with out some hurtful exchange or some mood, seeping across the property to depress us all. We built a Granny flat for Ann next to her house but the relationhsip is so awful between the two that Ann is having to move out this weekend. Both are miserable. While some distance will be good, only the grave - and I am not even sure of that - will reduce this sense of guilt on Robin's part that she cannot meet her mother's needs and her mother's anger that her needs are not met.
As we have struggled to make this work, I have thought aboiut all my close firends and have come to the conclusion that for the majority, their mothers are either domineering control freaks who treat their middle aged daughter as if she was three or are themselves pathetic 4 year old children who need the constant attention of their daughters. Whatever it is a feel bad situation.
On the surface men and fatrhers often appear to be larger than life and appear to dominate. But this does not last long in many families. The power lines shift especially in middle life. I am finding a "Grendel" like character in many older women. Some powerful set of needs, unfulilled in the active life span, emerge in later life and take over. Many of my women contemporaries show signs of becoming just like their mothers!
It was of course Oscar Wilde who said that "Every woman's greatest fear is that she will turn out like her mother. It is every woman's greatest tragedy that she often does."
7:07:38 AM
|
|
|
Tuesday, July 08, 2003 |
All our research tells us that the reading battle is won or lost in the first 6 years of life - mainly in the first 3 years. This compelling graph that shows the complete lack of progress in the US in spite of massive investments in the formal school system have not moved the bar at all.
Follow the link for the results in the Early Years
We're From The Government. We're Here To Help.. Over the weekend I watched a little bit of a CSPAN program that had Bill O'Reilly, Molly Ivins, and Al Franken on a panel. It was a rerun of some political meeting. I don't remember what. At one point O'Reilly and Ivins were arguing about taxes, government programs, etc. Franken, that font of economic knowledge and all-around supporter of spending other people's money, made the statement, "The idea that government programs don't help anybody is just BS!" Of course, it's true. Government programs generally DO help someone, just usually not who they were designed to help, and not in the way they were supposed to help them. Here's a little graphic from the US Department of Education introduction to the "No Child Left Behind" program.  Here's the roll-over text for the graphic:
"Chart shows that since 1965, when Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), through 2003, the federal government has spent more than $242 billion to help educate disadvantaged children. Yet, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the average reading score for 9-year-olds across the nation in 1975 is not significantly different from the 1999 score. During those years, the annual appropriation for ESEA increased six-fold -- from $2.3 billion in 1975 to $13.8 billion in 1999 -- while the average reading score for 9-year-olds was 210 in 1975 and 212 in 1999. ESEA appropriations for 1966-1974 and for 2000-03 are provided in the chart, but average reading scores for 9-year-olds are not shown because they are not available for all of those years. The president's 2004 budget request of $22.5 billion for ESEA is shown." "No Child Left Behind" may be a terrible program. Testing students to see if they can actually *do* anything at certain points in school may be a terrible idea. But it's also pretty clear that pouring billions into federal education programs is about as helpful as tits on a bull. If I were the Dept. of Education this is not a graphic I would display proudly. It is an indictment of every tax dollar spent on federal education mandates since 1965. [b.cognosco]
2:37:37 PM
|
|
The meta-message: Information sucks.
Matt Richtel in the NY Times: The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive? Several people wrote pointing me to this piece. A sample:
The ubiquity of technology in the lives of executives, other businesspeople and consumers has created a subculture of the Always On — and a brewing tension between productivity and freneticism. For all the efficiency gains that it seemingly provides, the constant stream of data can interrupt not just dinner and family time, but also meetings and creative time, and it can prove very tough to turn off.
This is high-priced Orlowski stuff, lathering about yet another red herring issue, all but calling for a detox center for the overwired. BUT he said technology dependence could have its down side, Richtel snarks.
Here's what's on TV right now: Nothing. Trust me. You can store it for later suckage off your TiVo, but it'll still be Nothing.
Here's what's in your magazines right now: Lots of Something you're not interested in. Same with your newspapers.
As for radio: Forget it, unless you're an amen-corner conservative, a sports junkie, an NPR addict, or in need of a traffic report in the next fifteen minutes.
Yes, there's lots of stuff in all those media you might like or use. But you have to wait for it if it's on a broadcast outlet or root for it in a publication. And you're not in charge. They are. And to Them, you're still just a consumer. A gullet for gobbling "content" and crapping cash. (Thank you for that perfect metaphor, Jerry Michalski.) Even if They are NPR and the New York Times.
On the Web, most of what you want, including informative friends and cyberneighbors, are right here, providing stuff you can learn in a time frame as close to Now as you're gonna get.
Here on the Net, we get to inform ourselves, and each other. No, not all information is here. Is it a perfect system? Far from it. But it's a human one. And human beings are learning creatures, after all, even if they do like to watch television.
Of course there will always be a need for libraries and conventional media of all kinds. Again, AND logic applies. But there's no substitute for learning stuff. Call it an addiction if you like, but consider the alternatives.
[The Doc Searls Weblog]
Doc is right - it is a year now since I have been blogging. I have almost stopped watching TV. I have stopped listening to the radio and hardly read the paper. I do spend a lot more time using my news aggregator but mainly to follow my new friends and less to pick up on News in the classic sense.
I am becoming very fond of my little group of blogging friends and I wonder what our relationhsip wil be like in 10 years. Some of us will no doubt drift away but I am certain that some of us will become very close indeed.
Real versus fake relationships - friendships aimed at mutual growth and learning!
2:17:43 PM
|
|
|
Monday, July 07, 2003 |
 Some news: John Robb is leaving UserLand. This is part of a bigger transition, one that we're not ready to talk about yet. It should be, net-net, good news for Manila and Radio users, and for the weblog community. We weren't ready to announce, John surprised us by writing about his departure on his weblog. He's a surprising guy. Anyway, part of my reason for being in Calif next week is business. I think UserLand will do fine, although things are still uncertain, but that's life in the big leagues. Thanks John for all your help, and best wishes to you and your family for much continued success. Onward! [Scripting News]
Userland is a great product. But all organizations depend on great people. Best wishes John. Dave I hope that you find the right person. It would be such a tragedy to let all this go
10:12:16 PM
|
|
Jay, our Heinz 57, loves children and is truly my best friend. As a boy, on every birthday I wished for a dog that looked just like him. It took 50 years of waiting but here he is. He is not only a friend but an alter ego like Augustine is for Natalaie. He talks ofr me at times and has his own voice and view of the world. Later this week he will join my site as a regular contributor providing I hope a ground level, and more grounded, view of reality.
There will be a prize for the one of you that gives me the best idea of what breeds make up the total Jay - please help.
9:45:48 PM
|
|
My daughter Hope is teaching a small class of kids how to cook this week in our cottage. Don't they look great!
9:35:48 PM
|
|
 The Lake in fall
The International Children's Memorial Place opened this weekend on Prince Edward Island.
As a parent I cannot imagine how I would cope with the loss of Hope or James. I think that when a child dies, part of us dies as well. For me, as with many others, formal religion offers little support. But Nature can and does.heal this wound.
It is not just family who are hurt by the loss of a child. It is hard to reconcile the loss of a school friend and this happens often. Many of us are confronted by the early deaths of school friends in car accidents. My roommate at school Jamie Borwick died in a car with his brother Freddie on Freddie's 21st birthday. I was working in Botswana in the desert as a diamond prospector when I heard the news - I was 18. Living in the open and being able to look up at the star filled night sky helped me see that Jamie had made the shift into eternity.
Bill MacLean is a remarkable man who lost his son a few years ago. His dream was to create a place where family and friends could connect with the power of nature and , if they wanted, to each other, in surroundings that were "healingl". Bill has done this. Located at Scales Pond on PEI, the International Children's' Memorial Place (ICMP) is I think the most beautiful place on a beautiful Island. The lake is like the lake where Arthur found his sword.Excalibur. Early on a summer morning, the mists hover on its surface. The Dunk River travels majestically in a cathedral of trees. There is a pathway along its length. The water from the lake rushes through a dam and a fish ladder boiling with life and energy. You can plant a tree where we hope to create a new hardwood forest. There is plenty of space to be alone and there is a the choice of meeting other people. You can bring your dogs, swim and picnic. You can just visit a special place. You enter the "Kingdom of Nature".
The site is about 30 minutes from Charlottetown and from the Bridge - in the centre of PEI. See the maps on the site.
The Dunk
7:51:10 AM
|
|
|
Sunday, July 06, 2003 |
I wonder - have we become trapped in a type of culture that has turned us into Neanderthals? What do I mean by this weird statement?
I wrote yesterday
"Remember that we think that complex language was an adaptation to hunting on the savannah and hence was our start as homo sapiens - the tool maker. Our new ability to learn across tribes and across time, rather than only directly face to face in present time, gave us the ability to adapt to changes in the environment by using culture not biology.
Neanderthal did not innovate. In 200,000 years his tools' set did not change much. He could not cope with the invasion of Homo sapiens and was extinct within 1,000 years of first contact. With no complex language he could not communicate ideas in the abstract. He therefore could not cross tribal barriers. With no complex language he could not recall the past nor imagine the future. He could only work in the context of the present.
We are like that today.
In the modern organization there is no allowance for cross tribal discussion. Instead of looking across, we look up and down. This is also true of our learning organizations such as Universities. University departments are trapped inside their disciplines and find cross disciplinary work very challenging. Yet we know that the breakout in human potential came as a result of using complex language to look across boundaries. Innovation seems to demand a diverse perspective. As one human tribe found a new way to make a tool - the horizontal links drove not only adoption but improvement. Recursive loops between tribes accelerated the improvements.
In the modern organization, and in political life, we live in a fixed present - the life cycle of a CEO or an administration. There is a denigration of the past. We puff up our selves by dismissing the work of the predecessors. Because we do not look to enough to the past, we fail to see the patterns available there that tell us why and how we are in the present. Consequently, we cannot see the systemic causes of current problems. So, instead, we look for simple cause and effect - a view of causality that does not exist in the natural world. We not only do not look at the context of the past, but we seem incapable of imagining the future. Our days and minds are filled with the crises of the present. So we, like Neanderthal, are trapped in the present unable to move .
We have been trapped by a cultural meme that has turned us into Neanderthals.
So what is the way out? I think that social software will be like complex language. It offers us the chance to cope with our challenges by once again opening up the context of the past so that we can see the patterns. It re-attaches us to the power of the future to pull us forward. How does it do this? By opening up the horizontal channels and by opening up time again.
Is blogging an evolutionary tool?
1:12:24 PM
|
|
|
Saturday, July 05, 2003 |
Many of us ask how best to change our industrial society. Many have an idea of what we need as a species to survive - a more networked world where we work with nature rather than against her. But we don't know how to get there. Maybe we don't need a plan but only to wait for what will happen.
My thesis is that we have endured a number of food/technology crises. Each time we this has happened, we have had to make a fundamental shift in how power is used and society is therefore structured. I think that we are on the brink of such a crisis today. Let's have a quick blog-like look at our history in this context and then look at what is coming in our lifetime.
Let's revisit the breakout in 60-40,000 bc that I have talked about earlier today. Remember that we think that complex language was an adaptation to hunting on the savannah and hence was our start as homo sapiens - the tool maker. Our new ability to learn across tribes and across time, rather than only directly face to face in present time, gave us the ability to adapt to changes in the environment by using culture not biology.
This ability to adapt via culture has given modern man a huge adaptation accelerator that we have been relying on ever since. Think about this for a moment, all other species have to make biological adaptations to environmental change. This is very slow. Humans can use culture or collective learning. Example - Modern man migrated north into the ice because he had clothing, fire and the culture to use weapons and boats in the hunt and tools in the preparation of food. A small ape could compete with a Polar Bear! This ability has given us a unique advantage in the acquisition of food. But this is also a poisoned chalice. Our ability to get food at a rate higher than a natural fit with the resource tends to lead us to over-exploit the resource. As with all systemic processes, the food system tends to collapse suddenly leaving man in a crisis that not only affects his stomach but his society.
Until the breakout, the world was full of large and slow animals. Giant sloths, giant tusked mammoths etc. They had evolved to be very large to make it to hard for the predators of the time. Large size was also an adaptation to cold weather. A large animal has a smaller surface to size area and can therefore hold heat better. Clovis man had the hunting tools, the social structures and the food processing capability, butchery, drying, cooking etc to devastate animals that had been immune from predation before. This lead to a population explosion. By 10,000 bc man had reached every corner of the earth.
Here is the beginning of the pattern that we need to understand. We find a technology for food production that is so successful that it leads to the collapse of the underlying resource. We then have to reinvent our society to take on a new technology. Which in turn leads to a population explosion and the destruction of the underlying resource and so on. Question - will we ever learn?
By 10,000 bc we had effectively wiped out the large animals. It was not just us. The coincidental & dramatic end of the ice age must have been a large factor, but we probably tipped the system. Hunter Gatherer man woke up one morning with nothing left to hunt and had to hand over power to the Gatherers. I bet the end might have happened in the life of a generation. A boy would have been born into plenty and died of starvation. The big game harried by man and failing to adapt itself to the change in climate must have gone like the bison or the carrier pigeon as if overnight.
What must this have meant socially? In short, the men became unemployed as they are a bit today. These were not Gatherer Hunter societies. They were Hunter Gatherer societies. There must have been a revolution in power as women became the prime food source. In many parts of the world, man stopped being a nomad and had to settle. What had been gathering quickly turned into gardening and animal domestication. We see this shift in power in the rise of the Goddess and the sacrifice of the son king every year to ensure the harvest. The idea of property emerged. In the era of the Goddess, property went through the female line. So power was held in a gynarchy - a hierarchy of women. In this time there are no walls and no evidence of much inter tribal warfare. It must have been a golden age unless you were the Son King - but even then you had a good year.
The shift to patriarchy and to the power system that we inherited, comes from the technology used in food preparation and from a different response in the east to the collapse of the large game source. .
Pottery is a key technology platform. Most of our transforming processes today are based on the idea of applying heat and pressure. Nature on the other hand uses water and enzymes. A new breakout for man came from learning how to use high temperatures to make pottery for food storage and cooking. This technology lead directly to the technology of metal working which in turn lead to advanced tillage tools, such as the plow and then to weapons. It also lead to the wheel. The first wheel was a pottery wheel. Some consultant of the time, an outsider, must have one day made the click and suggested that the wheel could be attached on a different plane to a sled and we would have a cart. With a cart and a plow you can have farming. With farming you can have a surplus. Until this time nearly everyone had had to work in food production. With a surplus, new occupations open up not directly related to food. With a cart and a surplus you can have a city. With a surplus you can feed priests, soldiers and civil servants. With the new tools and the domestication of oxen to pull the plow, we had a population explosion that is only today levelling out at maybe 8 billion in 2050.
In the east another process unfolded. Here the men did not give up power to women and settle. Instead, they selected a small number of animals that could be domesticated, sheep, goats and horses and became herders. They developed a very extreme form of patriarchy. Gods were men and were cruel. This group migrated west.
The tipping point was when the Herders and their Gods met the Farmers and their Goddess. The herders, saw that stealing food and calling it taxation was a "good thing". They saw that they could use the huge surplus populations as armies and priests and our modern world was begun. At first the Goddess married the God, Hera and Zeus. But then Yahweh, and later Allah, killed the Goddess off. Her ghost is Mary
There are many subplots along the way. Enclosures, the agricultural revolution and the advent of industrial farming and distribution. But we have been on an arc of the same system of exploiting the bounty of nature and using force and power to dominate those that grow food since Babylon. This at one level has been very successful. We have enjoyed a huge population explosion.
But we are near the end. We will see the end of wild fish in the sea in our lifetime. We, like Clovis hunters, will only have memories of fishing the ocean. Like Clovis men our ability to use technology and organization will have deprived the world and ourselves of a great bounty. We too will have overexploited the soil itself. But most importantly we will have overexploited fresh water.
In 50 years time it will not be possible to grow food in California. In 50 years time the Orgalla aquifer will have run dry and we will not be able to grow food in the mid west. In 20 years time China and India will have outstripped their water supplies. Maybe our world will be warmer as well and we will have droughts thanks to nature as Clovis man endured the great melt. In 50 years time our population will be about 8 billion just as our food system comes to a halt.
If we are smart we will use some hiccups along the way to start making some changes.
In 10 years borders will be shut to the transshipping of food as food safety scares such as mad cow, foot and mouth, wart etc are used politically to protect local food systems. The whole idea of mono cropping aimed at exports will die off. The farmers in the west will crack before the water runs out.
In 5 years, the outcry against processed food and its role in our obesity epidemic will start to change food habits in the mainstream. This month we have seen Kraft and Nestle begin to make changes. Pop and trans-fats will be seen like tobacco. A demand will rise for food grown in a new way.
Our children will have to reinvent how we get and process food. Vast cities with only 3 days supply of food will no longer be able to rely of an industrial complex to send them cheap food. I have seen this in Ukraine where every family in Kiev has a Dacha plot and ensures its food supply by gardening. In Havana, every family has an urban plot.
As with the end of the large animals or the takeover of the Gardeners by the Herders, all our power lines will shift. Vast agro-industrial enterprises will have no place in a such a a world. The process of cityfication, started in Mesopotamia 6,000 years ago will have to unwind.
It will not be the internet per se that will change how and where we live and who has power or not. It will be the end of our current food system. It may be the internet that will enable us to adapt more quickly to whatever we find as the alternative but be assured when power shifts it is not a fun time.
It may be likely that the balance of power will once again shift between the sexes. I suspect that the new food system will be local and will be closer to gardening than farming. Women are already in the vanguard in this field.
So what do we do? We can wait for the collapse. You say that it will not happen. It's a matter of simple math, when you take more water over time than is recharged, it runs out. When you pollute your water systems as we are on PEI over time with nitrates, you tip at a point in the future and you have no usable ground water. If we do nothing, all this is only a matter of time. Or we can wake up and see that water and food are the key. We will not be able to save the western water shed, not the Orgalla nor India or China but we can save ourselves. All we have to do is to wake up and look at the trends. Then we do as man has always done we get together and find a new way!
5:25:26 PM
|
|
CLAY SHIRKY ON THE DESIGN OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE.
 I wrote a high-level spec recently for Social Networking Enablement (my term for the successor to Knowledge Management) and Social Software. The guru of Social Software, Clay Shirky, spoke to the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in April and has just posted his speech. If you're interested in the subject, go read it .
Most important point, for those readers whose attention span is limited to five paragraphs, is Shirky's four critical design elements for Social Software:
- Recognize Identity and Reputation -- the group needs to know who its members are
- Acknowledge Standing and Provide Recognition -- knowing who knows what is a critical requirement for the group to be able to function, and recognition is essential to their willingness to do so
- Provide Barriers to Participation -- manageable, efficient conversation requires different levels of increasingly elite membership, otherwise it's like giving everyone in the audience equal time during a presidential debate; the barriers also convey privilege and demand for others to 'get in', which is healthy for the group's sense of self-value
- Spare the Group from Scale -- just as you may have 1000 acquaintences, 150 friends, 30 close friends and 3 intimate friends, social software needs to accommodate great facility for intimates to converse, and more modest facility for conversations with those less close, to be optimal, and to avoid size destroying the elements that make the community what it is
Some other concepts he describes which I find important and appealing:
- The need to provide for soft overlap (Gladwell's connectors ?) between groups to allow ideas to cross boundaries
- The importance of clustering mechanisms, the 'pattern recognition' of social software
- The need for 'conversational artifacts', the critical synopsis of ideas, actions, consensus, decisions and issues that is so often missing from meetings and other social interactions today
- The delightful advice to business owners and managers that users are there for one another, not for the sponsor/owner/facilitator/manager of the group; in other words, as I've always advised other managers, articulate the goals, roles and processes of the group and its members, and then get out of the way
Clay's thinking is way ahead of the curve, but look to the incorporation of his ideas as an excellent predictor of new social software's success or failure, both in the business and citizen peer-to-peer social realms. |
[How to Save the World]
Dave is such a wonderful thinker and amalyst - I love the way he can summarize and draw conculusions
1:26:43 PM
|
|
The great leap: "60,000 years ago humans were on the brink of extinction. An evolutionary eyeblink later, there are over 6 billion of us. How did we do it?" [Guardian Unlimited > [ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]] [Universal Rule]
More and more evidence is emerging that something unusual happened with humans about 60,000 years ago. I'm waiting for the movie. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]
The breakout 60-40,000 bc is the tipping point where man left the world of animals. More and more the thesis behind this shift has been that complex language appeared at this time. A blind alley for research has been the search for a mechanical adjustment in the body - the throat/larynx area. Soft tissue does not last - hence "proof" of language as a product of mechanical adaptation cannot be found.
More progressive researchers think instead about mindset and culture as evidenced in rates of innovation in tools and art which can be observed. There is no doubt that the rate of innovation becomes exponential for homo sapiens at this time. Poor old Neanderthal has almost no innovation. Art appears to explode fully realized at this time "Lascaux"
The theory that appeals to me is that early man could speak even Neanderthal. But early language as with say highly evolved apes and monkeys was not merely vocal but used a wide range of visuals. Alarm calls, food calls, are all part of the language of many primates. This language is by definition trapped in the present. "Hungry" "Back off" "I want you" I'm sad" etc My mother in law still lives in this world of the emotional present. It is a language of self - we see the world only through our eyes and only in the now. There is no future. The driving force is emotion. This mindset does not allow us to imagine a future and hence there can be no speculative innovation. You can only learn by observing the work of another directly. It is very hard to to exchange ideas outside of a tribe. I bet the vocal apparatus evolved in this prolonged era of mother in law world view. So the tools were ready for a different application.
So how did we speak in anew way that enabled us to think of a future and to learn indirectly?
Robin Dunbar suggests that complex speech evolved for man from the primate habit of grooming. All Primates groom. The reason is to keep up emotional health in a hierarchy. Grooming enables you to form and sustain your protective political alliances and community within the tribe that keeps you safe from internal aggression. You get the protection of some alphas and you support each other when you have been put upon by a higher person. We do this at the office but today we use words and we call it gossip. Human society like all primate society is highly political and hierarchical. Think of high school! The cool set - cliques etc.
This is Dunbar's aha! As we moved onto the Savannah where we had to hunt in an organized manner - unit size had to grow so that there were at least 8 adult males. This drove a tribal size of about 40 with perhaps 8 adult females and 15 youths and children. As the unit size grew there was a conflict between the grooming time needed to hold the structure together and the time needed for other activities such as hunting and food preparation. You can only groom one person at a time but you can gossip with many - especially is you are a woman and you are sitting by the fire working on skins with the other women while looking out for the kids. So we started to chat! Getting my drift?
Might social software act as a chat/gossip amplifier? Might it be a driver for an extension of mindset and consciousness that gossip drove 60,000 years ago?
8:26:11 AM
|
|
Tim O'Reilly on generating value with commodity software.
Tim O'Reilly: "somebody gets a critical mass of customers and data and that becomes their source of value.
On that basis, I will predict that -- this is an outrageous prediction -- but eBay will buy Oracle someday. The value will have moved so much to people who are not now seen as software suppliers."
.... "Amazon is the furthest along this path, in a lot of ways. Amazon really understands that they are becoming a platform."
[Micah's Weblog]
Great article! I am convinced that we can now 'see" the new business model and it is made up of two components - build to order - the primary Dell focus and build community - the primary eBay focus. Amazon has both of these aspects in its model.
New entrants that pull this new model off well will destroy the traditional competition. Two areas that I think are most open to this attack are post secondary eductaion and chronic health care.
Why do I think this? More later
7:39:02 AM
|
|
|
Friday, July 04, 2003 |
|
Thursday, July 03, 2003 |
I am a visual thinker. I need to draw to work out ideas. I also use voice - my dogs have philosophic conversations with me. If you passed me on a walk with the dogs you might think I am nuts as these odd voices in conversation emerge as if I was channelling with the dogs.
Then I found Natalie whose weblog has both visuals and conversation with an alter ego. WOOOOW! Maybe I am not so nuts after all.
5:11:53 PM
|
|
Hey, Halley, Here I Am.
Halley of Halley's Comment, author of "How to Become an Alpha Male" is going to be in DC for Supernova and we're finally going to get to meet. We have some mutual friends like Dave and Gnome-Girl. I read Halley's blog, but I rarely link to it because she writes about all of the things I tend to avoid writing about these days. She write about emotions. She writes about men. She writes about dating. Yesterday she wrote about me, and now I'm going to try to write back. ;-)
First of all, anyone who hasn't read "How to Become an Alpha Male", must. When I read it, I started reading it with "academic curiosity" but ended up learning a lot and reflecting on my past, present and future.
So Halley, I don't know many alpha males, but I know a lot of alpha females. In some ways my childhood was the reverse of Halley's. She grew up with an alpha male dad. I grew up with an alpha female mom. My name, Ito is my mother's name that I took when my parents divorced so that my mother could pursue her career. My mother's side of my family has had a female head of the family for just about as long as anyone can remember. There is a jinx that every other generation, there is no male head and the male is brought in from the outside. My great grandmother was a well known feminist and built the first trade school for girls in Iwate during the war. My grandmother was also a tough women. She stood up to the US soldiers who used our home as the local HQ and told us a story of how she had her men saw off half of a building that protruded into our property because the building owner thought he could take advantage of us because our grandfather had died. My mother was also tough. She had tuberculosis as a child which she caught from my sick grandfather and spent most of her childhood in a wheelchair. When we were very young, she got cancer and I remember being told several times as a child that she was going to pass away soon. She was always in and out of hospitals, but she managed to survive until we were grown up and passed away after asking us if it was OK if she could go now. She was a housewife until she was 35 or so, then joined the company my father was working at. She became head of personnel, VP of International, president of the Japan subsidiary, left to become the US rep of NHK (Japan's public broadcasting company) and grew to become a fairly influential "player" until the cancer finally took over.
During high school we lived in a big house in Tokyo. I was the only male. My mother, my aunt, my sister, our secretary, her sister, our dog were all female. When our dog had 8 puppies, they of course were also all female. They were all also "tougher" than me. ;-) Most of my friends in high school were girls.
But let me talk about my ego. I was born in Japan, but I moved to the US when I was 2 or 3 years old. (I don't remember.) When my father got a job at ECD in Troy, Michigan, where we lived until I was 13, I was the first Japanese kid in a school full of catholics. We lived in a school district that overlapped with an area of Michigan that had a bunch of trailer parks. Nothing against trailer parks, but back in the 70's, people were losing jobs because of Japanese cars and most of these bitter people ended up in trailer parks and their kids ended up in my school. My mother's love and our family friends were the only thing that kept my fragile ego alive. I was regularly beaten up by guys, tripped in the hall by girls, taunted, called "colored" and generally made to feel miserable.
When I moved to Tokyo with my mother my third year in Jr. high school, I was in heaven. I finally realized that being Japanese wasn't that bad. I found that I could melt in with the Japanese, but could hang out with the American's too. Being bilingual and looking Japanese I could get the best of both worlds. I kissed my first girl, had my first date and started going to night clubs. High school was even better. It made up for a lot of lost time in ego building, but I was still very insecure.
University in the US was tough. I dropped out twice and ended up as a DJ at Limelight in Chicago. The streets of Chicago rebuilt an important part of my ego. I became part of a great community of extremely diverse people who loved each other and supported each other through really tough times. It was when AIDS was hitting the scene and helping and being helped built my faith in people.
After that, I watched my mother slowly and painfully die. Then I watched my mentors, Dr. Fukui, Tim Leary, John Lilly, Chairman Shima of NHK, and others all die. For awhile, I had at least one death close to me every year. I realized that a lot of my confidence was still propped up by my mother and later my mentors who assured me that I was fine and that didn't have to worry about it. Now I was on my own. I realize now that it wasn't until the death of my mother that I really started to develop my sense of responsibility that would eventually get me over my self-pity that had haunted me since my childhood in Michigan.
I'm still a bit insecure, but secure enough to not let it show too often. My ego is a bit slapped together, but it's stable enough so I don't have to actively work on it anymore. My sense of responsibility showed up late, but probably overshot a bit and now I feel responsible for everything and everyone. I just lost 14 kgs, I probably have a drinking problem, I am in a happy and stable relationship, just bought a house in the countryside where I will move in the fall and will see you in DC on Monday!
PS Thanks for triggering this gush of memories Halley. It was fun to write. Apologies to anyone who finds this [insert negative word here]. Now back to regularly scheduled programming...
By Joichi Ito jito@neoteny.com. [Joi Ito's Web]
In the last 2 months there have been a number of very personal stories emerging on the web. I think that this is a wonderful trend. How not Corporate! How human! Every person's life is an epic drama and fascinating
7:56:24 AM
|
|
Lean Project Management - it's about what you notice. Over at Reforming Project Management Hal Macomber is seeking to transfer the learning from Lean Production into the project management world. In Lean Production there exists the concept of the "visual workplace", commonly expressed through the 5S model. Hal points... [Synesthesia]
Why can't we "see" or understand really new ideas? It is all about the Filters that we have that control our perspective. Nice model that shows this. Real Change managment is about changing these filters
7:10:19 AM
|
|
|
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 |
I was reading Dave Pollard's great post this morning and was compelled to comment . His post caused me to ask myself, why are blogs so powerful when they on the surface deal only with text which we know is such a poor tool when used for email? My aha was connected to what I now know about a formal science called Communication Theory which was developed by scientists in WWII for radar and range finding. The issue was how to make sure your signal did what it was mean to do. Today it is used in managing networks. Few have taken its principles and applied them to human communication. I have put my toe in the water and have been surprised at how helpful it is. If you are interested in how Communication Theory works in a human context follow the link and you will find a paper on it.
Communication theory tells us that bandwidth is very important for a signal to be received correctly. Full bandwidth for humans would be face to face where we get not only the body language, but other channels that we are hardly aware of such as touch, smell and pupil dilation. Sex may be the ultimate wide bandwidth where all aspects of the human can be brought to connection. Email would be the narrowest channel with practically all but the message stripped away.
Your great tables get at this gradient of bandwidth intuitively. The more complex the message the more bandwidth we need to ensure that the correct message is received. Defined as the same intention as the sender had. I think that email is good for when we have a request - can you make lunch etc but is rotten for dealing with say a performance problem.
Adding a great visual plus voice gets us close to wide bandwidth and should be great for even complex situations. Mr G's comment about getting a lock on the eye is a very important point. We unconsciously obtain huge messages about intention and truth from the eye movements. Hence your search for such a tool. But here is how I think blogging fits and I am surprised at how powerful it is.
Blogging shares with email a text and hence narrow bandwidth issue. So it is very hard to express any subtlety. Emoticons and :) can help. But until you know the other person really well we have to be careful. Now comes my point.
Why does blogging work as a communication device when email is so poor- while on the surface the technology presents itself the same way in text that has poor bandwidth?
The issue is related to 3 other parts of the theory Context,Surprise and Power of Signal or POS.
Context leverages understanding and enables code to be compressed and for the power of the signal to be increased. As I write this in English, you can read it - you have the context for the code. With a lot of context you can compress the code. "Gd day DP how R U?". Can be understood. But if I was writing to you in Hindi you would not get a word - wrong code. If I spoke to you in Hindi face to face you would be surprised at how much you would understand provided we were talking about day to day things and not philosophy.
So context is very important for effective communication- it allows for good connection with very small code and bandwidth. My aha this morning is that Blogging adds huge context. It adds most importantly emotional and personal bandwidth in a new way. This is what Dina and I are starting to get excited about. As I visit your blog daily Dave, I build a picture of who you are and my context for you also builds - I can therefore accept a limited amount of code and bandwidth in a message because I have a huge personal context established.
The other issue is surprise. Our meme immune system does 2 things. It screens out what does not fit into our established world view. It hates new ideas and it hates to be lectured too. It also screens out routine noise. I lived for years under the flight path of Heathrow and after 3 months did not hear the jets.
Breaking through this immune system, in CT this is called "noise", is a critically important design issue. Email is like a hammer. It is so direct it can create resistance. IF YOU SHOUT ON EMAIL IT PUTS PEOPLE OFF. Robin got 50 spams this morning - and she screened them out immediately. I have a filter and got only about 12. We all are screening out more and more email even the good stuff. We are being overwhelmed by the noise driven by the volume of email.
But blogging is subtle. Dave's ideas seep into the network of friends and lurkers and break through the noise by the subtlety of their mode of presentation which is take it or leave it.
Lastly we come to POS, power of signal. We get so much email because it is so cheap to send - not really because it is financially cheap but it is cheap in terms of emotional and intellectual effort.
Blogging is in this context expensive. I should be working on a project but here I am thinking and writing hard on your site instead. Why? Because you put so much effort into your post that it demands a considered effort in response.
I think the best bloggers put effort into what they select and to what they say. This is the emotional effort behind the signal. It is POS. Blogging has lots of amps, email lots of volts. You need amps to break through the noise.
Have a good one Dave - I have got to do some work work now
Cheers Rob
8:53:17 AM
|
|
Home found!
7:13:33 AM
|
|
|
Tuesday, July 01, 2003 |
Your approach up the Brackley Point Road
The restaurant - great fusion food
The Shop - great Indonesian stuff well priced
The Garden - breathtaking!
1:31:36 PM
|
|
Why is it that I am 53 and have ignored well-intentioned and factual advice for 30 years to take regular exercise? I know that it will be good for me. I know that this is not baloney like many diets are. Taking more exercise is unquestionably good for me. For a while, I buckle under the social pressure and try it. I go to the gym, buy a rowing machine. If the barrier was only awareness, I should have taken it up years ago.
Why is this important? Because our health system will buckle soon if we don't find a way of living better. On PEI 59% of Islanders are overweight and the trend for children in particular is frightening. This is a health epidemic for the developing world. We are trying lots of things and making lots of excuses for why we are making no progress - the trend is getting worse at a non linear rate.
There are lots of theories for why we participate so poorly in taking exercise. The influence of TV as a passivity driver. The lack of organized sport at school. Busing at school. The lack of time in adult life because the demands at work are so great. The lack of coaching and facilities - if only we had a community pool, gym track etc. The diversion of sport money for the masses by a focus on elite sport etc. I wonder if the answer is both simpler and more complex than this?
I have been talking to my friend Brian Chambers and our bottom line as to why we have become the most slothful group in history is rooted in two questions. - Is taking regular exercise a habit? Is not taking regular exercise a habit?
Think a bit now. Is your day not right without exercise or is taking exercise an interruption to your day? Do you have withdrawal symptoms if you do not take exercise or do you feel worse if you do? These feelings are symptoms of habits. Habits are hard to change. You are a smoker and you know you should quit but cannot. You drink more than you should but you cannot stop. Merely having a lot of information is not enough to stop an ingrained habit. Acquiring a new habit is equally a challenge.
If taking/not taking regular exercise is a habit then much of how we have approached the issue of participation in regular exercise is probably not going to work. This is quite a statement - so let's do a bit more digging.
Why is it that we see only a few of us - we used to call them Fitness Freaks or Nuts - come rain or shine pounding the roads? Why do some some middle-aged men still get out every week in the season and play hockey while most of us only watch it?. Why do some women have to go to the gym every day and others not? Brian and I believe that those who take regular exercise have a habit. They have a need to take exercise every day. It is part of their whole life - they cannot imagine not taking exercise. Regular exercise defines them - it is part of their identity - it is who they are.
I bet that the opposite is true. Some people cannot "see" themselves taking exercise. Let's look at me and see how hard it is for me to take up this new habit and to break my lifetime habit of not taking exercise.
I have never taken to the habit of regular exercise. I think I have to go back to my early days to find out why. My parents did not take it seriously. They in fact sneered at it. Any prowess in this regard was ignored at home. In my home the habit was to use the mind. This is where the family reward system kicked in. "Sport" at home was winning the argument, breaking into the conversation or being seen as amusing. Secondly I had low conventional physical skills. In particular I have very poor hand ball foot coordination. I had to play "sport sport" at school but for me with no natural aptitude, "sport sport" was for me an exercise in humiliation. In primary school the team would groan when I was picked usually - last. At Harrow, I was the star of the 5th 11 in cricket. I dreaded Sports Day at my prep school where the only event I could be in was the 200 metres where they put all the slobs. Sport was defined in my youth as a team sport that usually involved skill with a ball of some sort. I can't do this. Now if I had been introduced to yoga, tai chi or rowing I might have found a mind/body sport that fitted me - but that was not the culture of sport then nor is it now at schools.
I never developed the habit of exercise as a boy. In fact I developed another habit - a lifelong dislike of using an awkward body and a lifelong love of the world of the mind. I have instead the habit of reading - in a poor week only one book. In a good week maybe 7 books. (This has been a good week) Many of my athletic friends tell me that they do not have the time to read. I sense that we are at two ends of a polarity.
There are the habits of the mind and the habits of the body. There appear to be extreme positions for each habit. If you are extreme at one end it may preclude you having time to indulge in the other. Some manage both but I sense that there is only so much time. Then there seems to be a huge group in the middle of people who neither read nor take exercise.
Habits can be formed and broken. At the right time habits are easy to form. All established habits are very difficult to break or change. It is important to consider this if we want to find a way of increasing the overall participation of people in regular exercise.
When are many of our habits formed? I suggest to you that regular reading and regular exercise are both habits that are mainly set when we are very young? Homes with no books rarely produce compulsive readers. Homes with no trophies rarely produce folks who define themselves through the use of their bodies. I am sure there are exceptions but this is my observed experience. I point out the home because we currently look to school and to the workplace as the frontier for improving participation. I am not saying don't try there. I am suggesting that we look earlier as well.
Breaking habits is so difficult. If not taking exercise is a habit then exhortation and more information will not get us to change. How easy is it to acquire the habit of literacy as an adult? How easy to give up drink or to give up smoking? Breaking bad habits is very hard. It took my father's death to give us as a family the motive to pull back on our drinking.
Some questions for you:
- Do you take regular exercise? If the answer is yes or no - Did you have a role model/support at home? Did you have a natural aptitude for ball and team sports?
- Do you have a habit such as smoking or weight or drink. - Can you give this up? Has it been easy to give this up? Could you do this without a support group? What type of support group might you need - of peers or experts?
- Are you a team sport person? If you are when did this begin and why
- Do you like individual activities? If yes when did this begin and what influenced you?
- Are you a big fan of professional sports? If so, did elite sport get you involved in taking exercise yourself ? If yes - what age were you when you gave it up and what do you do now?
- Did you play pavement hockey or some kid organized sport when you were young (skateboarding?) If yes, what do you think of adult organized sport?
Please help Brian and I with these questions and with our main thesis that regular exercise is a habit. Brian is the Chairman of Sport PEI and is tasked with the challenge of finding a way to take Canada's most inactive and fattest province and making it the opposite - no small thing. We are convinced that doing what we have been doing but harder will not work. So we are going outside of the box and asking ourselves the odd question - why if we know that exercise is good for us are we not taking this advice.
If we are right and the core issue is habit, then we will have to develop strategies to encourage the formation of the habit. This implies working with the families of very young children before they get to school. It implies finding out how to motivate parents to behave differently. What would be a motivation that would work?
We know that many kids will self organize. Ball hockey and skateboarding are being surppressed in the guise of safety and order. Should we not look at the effectiveness of kid organized sport?.
It implies developing strategies to do the really hard stuff of helping people like me to change a habit of no exercise. How could we do this? What are the lessons of smoking and drinking that may help? What is it about schools and the workplace that are barriers and what can we do there to help?
What are the convenience issues? Where are all the places and where is the time? Why do so many schools close their doors and hence gyms and pools after 3pm? Whose school is it anyway? What is the reality of our climate for taking regular exercise where we have 6 months of winter? Can we take back the time between 2.30 when school finishes and say 5.30 when 80 % of parents return home and fill this with a fun time for exercise? Can we fill the 6 weeks of summer vacation when parents are working with a fun time when kids take exercise. Can we make it convenient to nip out for lunch at work and take exercise?
12:45:48 PM
|
|
Dina often provokes me to think more deeply. In her recent series on corporate blogging I started to think about the friendships that arise from Blogging.
I wonder - are we seeing a new basis for friendship? In the past, we have made our friends through a combination of place, interest and values.
EG - Until maybe 30 years ago on PEI, you married a girl who was no more than a day's buggy ride. Your friends came from the small community you lived in and were cultivated in the pressure cooker of the local school. If you were Catholic, you could only associate with other Catholics. Good Catholic girls until 30 years ago did not even ride in cars with Prots. Then religion was the dividing line for one key set of values. Everyone farmed or earned their living connected to agriculture so all shared an interest in farming and all shared the same set of pioneer values that come with being yeoman farmers.
You can laugh at this narrow world but stop for a minute - where did your friends come from? Place interest and values. I bet place wa important.
My close friends still come from my time at university. I have given up all my school friends but for 2. I see now that they were a product of place. At school we all had such a narrow choice. So we all made do with the small pool of possible friends that a house of 65 and a school of 700 could provide. Once I entered a large enough world, Oxford, where there were many more choices, I focused on those where I had a closer match in interests & values. At the time we all shared a common set of values about ourselves and the world - we were all enamoured by the corporate world and all joined it willingly and did well financially from it. These friendships have endured. One reason is that we have all given the corporate world up. It is weird coincidence that this group are all now self employed and could never work back in the system again. We must have sensed intuitively all those years ago that we would make the shift in values from group to self. In addition we had another link. An interest that we all shared was our children. I am godfather to 7 and this precious human link to the future of my friends has kept our friendship alive.
This tells me that, today that for me shared values and a shared interest seem more important and enduring than a shared space in connecting friends.
But for many people place is I think still the main driver for friendship. Especially if you do not move around much and where your old friends who were cultivated in early life live close to you. I have moved more times than I can recall. All these moves have I seen in retrospect broken any place-related links except the ones where the interests and values are in still in synch. All my corporate friends who are still very corporate have largely fallen off. The exception are those that I feel are trembling themselves at the edge of the line.
What is true for friendship is true for love. The troubadours tell us that love enters through the eye. But even in love the requirement for place is eroding. I think that the key is that in cyberspace you can be heard. To hear someone is a gift, To hear them is to know them. Paradoxically being heard is a challenge in the early days of a face to face relationship when each person's need to speak can stop their ability to listen. Being yourself can be hard in face to face where "projection" plays such a large role and where we seek to please. We so often "see" who we want to see rather than the real person who is there. With blogging, it seems to be hard to hide the real you. The real you may take time to emerge but emerge it does. The irony is that in not seeking to please, we are more attractive to others.
The issue seems voice. After a while of blogging our real voice comes to us. For the first time maybe, we say to the world - "here I am warts and all" Where Robert Scoble has to admit that it is hard to reconcile how work and his marriage. My reaction - Scoble is a real person and not just a techno scribe. Where Dave Winer cannot help but feel like a parent to RSS and sounds off he becomes a man and not just a commentator and developer. Paradoxically, the more real we are- the more frail - the more attractive we are. Conversely, corporate voices do not lose their temper or have doubts. Corporate voices are like Dolores Umbridge's from the Ministry for Magic: they use soft language for terrible things such as final solution or "right sizing". As Cluetrain tells us - the corporate voice is becoming the great lie that we cannot hear anymore. But I get ahead of myself. Back to friendship.
My question. Is blogging changing the rules for friendship and maybe for love? With blogging, you can get to "know" someone in a deeper way than after many candlelight dinners, many years at school and many barbeque's with neighbours. We hear how the other person thinks. We hear what really interests them. We experience their values. In return, we can gently link up so that over time they too can know us too. Projection is more confined as we do not rely on the visual cues for our norms of what is attractive on the surface before we know what is attractive below the skin. Everyone is at choice - you can make the connection or not. I don't know the sound of your voice and in many cases don't know what you look like. In most cases we are separated not only by distance but by culture and by different Gods but if we speak the same values and we are interested in the same things, then the link is made.
The values that I am talking about are the great divide between those that are externally motivated and those that are on the path to a self motivated world.
There is a huge gulf between these two sets of values. Those that have crossed this line know that there is no going back and that it is dangerous to speak out too clearly to those that remain in the "group" mind. They too have acute sensitivity to heresy and there is no heresy quite like not having to belong to the group anymore. This shift in values is what is really going on today. In the centre is the progress/corporate hegemony. In revolt on the right are the fundamentalists who long for a mythic past where women know their place and God speaks for us. This group is firmly in the group set of values and are outstanding in forming groups - hence their power. On the left is a new group that is not really a group. We are the Cultural Creatives, the Free Agents. We don't like groups and have not until now found a mechanism for getting together that fits our self driven mindset. Until now. Until blogging. We have no power as isolated individuals. Until now. Until blogging.
For the irony is that for those of us that have crossed the line, it is lonely. While our motivation is based on self, we are still primates and human and we crave brotherhood and sisterhood. Blogging appears to be a tool that enables non joiners to find a mechanism to join safely with others like them. A club for non clubbers!
For me the potential in blogging is less corporate than social. It will create a new business model rather than support the old. What do I mean by this?
I have hopes for corporate blogging but they are dim. Why am I so depressed about this? Because of the values clash. The essence of the corporate state is that it is a collective where the group identity is paramount. Such a values set is like anti matter for those who are self motivated. Corporations claim that they want initiative and creativity but they need obedience more. Obedience is the core piece of DNA in the Ford model.
Where blogging will help most is in creating social and economic networks of individuals who share common goals and values - look at Matt and Paolo. Or look at how the community of bloggers is coalescing on PEI around Peter Rukavina. Look at how a whole group of doctors is forming around Marc Pierson Look at the influence that Ross Mayfield is having on all of us that think about social software or that Critt Jarvis is having on the election. This is the world I think that I, Dave Pollard and Dina are looking for.
Look at what happens when those who have developed relationships via blogging meet in person!
This is surely a revolution? Place and Face are no longer the initiating drivers for human relationships. The blogosphere is becoming the safe place for creative people to connect in. Just as eBay made it possible to trade safely outside your local area, so blogging makes it possible to access a global network of friends and lovers safely.
7:21:18 AM
|
|
|
