Reboot asks: what is the highest form of efficiency?

June 29th, 2009

According to Woodrow Wilson it the

spontaneous cooperation of free people.

Lee Bryant in last weeks Independent – asked the question, whether people power can reboot Britain?

Reboot is a event happening next Monday [6th July @ the Savoy Place] exploring what and how Britain in the networked society could be and should be like.

Lee makes the observation that there is a growing list of challenges that are significant to the extend that we must overcome them;

political and economic (fiscal) reform are headlines on his agenda – and I for one am there by his shoulder.

Reboot is about YOU & YOU & YOU & YOU & YOU

Can we go back to business as usual Lee asks? As we no longer in the age of ‘Fordism’ – but a post Fordist age…

Over the past decade, we have learned a lot about how network thinking and specifically the social web can dramatically reduce the costs of co-ordination and collective action, allowing new ways of involving people in organisational, democratic or social processes. Many people have argued that government and industry should take advantage of these innovations to create more people-powered organisations. Now, in the face of serious crises in both the economy and the political system, and in the middle of a recession that calls into question whether we can even afford ‘business as usual’, it is time to take a serious look at how we can leverage human talent, energy and creativity to begin rebooting the system to create sustainable, affordable, long-term mechanisms for public engagement.

Lee has some suggestions:

[1] To make better use of government spending to make it go further. Government procurement should be treated as a stimulus fund, and used to deliver social and economic benefits as well as products and services.

[2] The second thing we can do is harness people power to improve existing democratic and public services. [Don't just create a service and leave it to languish – enable the constant flows of feedback to constantly and incrementally improve the effectiveness of that service – remember, nobody is as clever as everybody]

Henry Jenkins – De Florz Professor of the Comparitive Media Studies Program @ MIT wrote

In a networked society, people are increasingly forming knowledge communities to pool information and work together to solve problems they could not confront individually. We call that collective intelligence.

We are witness to a new form of participatory culture – one that I might add a growing band of “WE” are demanding. In contrast, the current cost of fixed, siloed organisations is like a lead balloon for society – but its more than that; its about flexibility and speed, combined with an adaptive capability built into the very DNA of the organisation. More feminine one might say. Demokratia [2] – is a feminine noun, with strong feminine connotations. John Keane in his book: The Life and Death of Democracy remarks that it takes some imagination to comprehend a world that was itself surrounded by a family of corresponding nouns that are grammatically feminine. Think about it Keane says, “imagine how our perceptions and feelings for such democratic institutions as press freedom, and periodic elections might be altered if, we presupposed that they embody life-giving ‘feminine qualities’”. Equally we need some collective, participatory imagination to realise our possible future.

Lee sums up

The big question, though, is how to achieve any of this. In the United States, federal CIO Vivek Kundra recently outlined plans for pursuing these ideas, which is unsurprising since the internet was crucial to Obama’s spectacular refactoring of the US body politic. But here in the UK, we have a late 20th century government in its final phase, so we should not expect too much. Perhaps it is better for all of us to simply get on with it and create our own structures and services, as mySociety and others have pioneered.

It is somebody else’s turn now, somebody who has a vision for the future.

Lee says the 20th Century is over – indeed it is the end of the Belle epoque. If you are curious, concerned, motivated, about what the future could hold for Britain – I suggest you come along and become the change you want to see in the world. As Obama said “Yes We Can” – now I am not waiting for anyone in our political parties to say the same – so that is what we all are saying at Reboot – that is what Lee is saying, and I am saying too. This is our time to re-engage with society to fill its sails with some wind, and give it some direction.

If you want to build a ship, don’t divide the work and give orders; teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

ANTOINE de SAINT-EXUPÉRY

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