Musings on the common spirit of distrust

March 12th, 2010

Taken from a post written in 2008,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/85593720@N00/2827812861

Today we challenge the authority of our world, media, organisations and even governments via a whole set of activities that can be networked and grassroots. It is done via co-creation, the forming of a networked communications world, that affects all aspects of society right down to how we teach our kids in school. Defined as, the common spirit of rebellion,

a distrust of all forms of established authority including parents, police, college administrations and government

However, I am fearful of where we go in this wonderland of networks, engagement and a new sense of self, community and possibility, without the correct framework, insight and understanding (here).

Will it be so as the old media infrastructure breaks down more curbs and regulations by vested interests are put in place to coerce and control these self organising networks? In Britain we see actually the reverse of a new an open society perhaps? One more akin to state control than liberty and the rights of the individual. For a 1000 year old democracy this has deep implications.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peopea/2831300762/in/set-72157602027437863/

In Digital Britain loses the plot, co-written with David Bollier, we expanded a view,

that Great Britain needs a larger, more robust vision for the future delivered by a different set of technological tools. The dynamics of our culture that are now unfolding need to be better explained to the public, legislators, industry and the press. The boundless energies and imagination of British citizens do not need to be directed and organized, but rather, unleashed. If you want to build a ship, it has been said, don’t divide the work and give orders; teach people to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

The question is, will Britain help co-create and develop the new paradigms of business, learning, creativity, culture and citizenship? Or will it recommit itself to backward-looking models while other nations capitalize on the novel, emergent dynamics of digital networks, tools and technologies?

It is important for British leaders to come to terms with some inexorable realities: New gatekeepers will arise in the information distribution wars. Grassroots collaborations will compete with conventional hierarchies. For example, socially based innovation is already challenging corporate R&D models.

The new tools and technologies of cooperation are empowering individuals as never before. They are challenging the centralized institutions of the 20th Century to be more responsive and transparent. They are enabling value to be generated more efficiently, with broader participation and new types of collaboration, than in the past. They are empowering individuals and self-organized communities in ways that many institutions prefer to ignore.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61871847@N00/2329551886

Which then begs the question – who is in the best position to decide policy, centralised government or a network of organised and motivated communities, who understand the needs of its communities better than any government could? The end game is far from clear however. Yochai Benkler argues in his book The Wealth of Networks that individuals in a interconnected and network society can and do play a more significant role in culture, society and the economy. And I believe him. But, at what point does that movement end when the incumbent authority realises all this openess, sharing etc., mitigates and dilutes its own purpose and power? Or because of the huge financial pickle we are in, not created by the vast majority but in fact a minority (for example), any government is going cut, and hack at anything and everything using community empowerment, without having the faintest idea of how to deliver that. Recent excursions into that space have left me feeling a little, shall we say, underwhelmed. But here’s the rub, as Barbara Ehrenrich explains

Nor can the growing size of human societies explain the long hostiity of elites to their peoples festivals and estatic rituals a hostility that goes back at least to the city states of ancient Greece, which contained only a few tens of thousands of people.

It was not a concern about crowd size that lead to Pentheus’s crackdown on the maenads or Romes massacre of its Dionysian cult. The repression of Festivities and estatic rituals over the centuries was the conscious work of mean and occasionally women too, who saw in the a real and urgent threat. The aspect of “civilization” that is more hostile to festivity is not capitalism or industrialism? both of which are fairly recent innovations ? But social hierarchy, which is far more ancient.

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