No Straight Lines, argues that we have reached the nadir of the adaptive range of our industrialised world. Now faced with an unsustainable trilemma of social, organisational and economic complexity, we have entered an era in which the rules we have previously organised our lives around no longer apply. Leaving us with both a design problem and a design challenge which we must urgently solve. By describing an entirely new way for true social, economic and organisational innovation to happen, No Straight Lines presents a revolutionary logic and an inspiring plea for a more human-centric world.

In his article about technology and education in last Sunday’s Observer I smiled a wry smile, as Naughton gave his perspective on how out-of-step current education is with the modern world, as we currently know it. Having just taken my dyslexic son out of state education, because the systemic way it wanted to school my child was too painful to watch from the sidelines any longer. I nodded along with his assessment, whilst reaching once again for my credit card, rather than reaching for the phone to the deputy head (the big head wont see me I am not important enough).

Reading the article I also reflected on the work of Henry Jenkins, and report he authored for the MacArthur Foundation in which he argued that to be real contributors to our world. Children needed some real skills and competencies. these are listed below

* Play – the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving

* Performance – the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

* Simulation – the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes

* Appropriation – the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

* Multitasking – the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

* Distributed cognition – the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

* Collective intelligence – the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

* Judgment – the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

* Transmedia navigation – the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

* Networking -the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

* Negotiation – the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

I thought of these because what Naughton is touching on is extremely important especially the idea of what Johan Huizinga described as the felt fingering space of play – this is where we learn to become craftsmen and women. We English like to talk about tinkering,

When utility rules adults lose something essential in the capacity to think, they lose the free curiosity that occurs in the open, felt fingering space of play.

Naughton writes,

What is happening is that the national curriculum’s worthy aspirations to educate pupils about ICT are transmuted at the chalkface into teaching kids to use Microsoft software. Our children are mostly getting ICT training rather than ICT education. And if you can’t see the difference, try this simple thought-experiment: replace “ICT” with “sex” and see which you’d prefer in that context: education or training?

he goes on

The current curriculum undermines the authority of the education system by revealing to tech-savvy children how antediluvian it is. But, more importantly, the curriculum is disabling rather than enabling for most kids, because it is preparing them for a technological world that is vanishing before their eyes. Training children to use Microsoft Office is the contemporary equivalent of the touch-typing courses that secretarial colleges used to run for girls in the 1940s and 1950s – useful for a limited role in the workplace, perhaps, but not much good for life in the modern world.

Right on, just ask my son. And he points to the fact that we are being still, still trained to be passive consumers rather that active engaged learners and citizens. Sadly, less Enlightenment, more factory ready. And so Naughton celebrates the Raspberry Pi (pi blog) project that it is hoped, will once again provide, as Naughton describes it as, a “licence to tinker”. In No Straight Lines, I argue for the principle of Craftsmanship, the ability to learn through trial and error, to perfect acts of creation, Huizinga’s most artful description of the ‘felt fingering space of play.’

Why Craftsmanship? It is Social Philosopher Richard Sennett’s contention that “nearly anyone can become a good craftsman” and that “learning to work well enables people to govern themselves and so become good citizens.” This line of thought depends, among other things, upon the Enlightenment assumption that craft abilities are innate and widely distributed, and that, when rightly stimulated and trained, they allow craftsmen to become knowledgeable public persons.” Tinkering might have more to it thaan meets the eye?

This was synchronous because Intersections was exactly about the same thing – but within a different context, how design thinking can come to the aid of social innovation and also the commercial world, resulting in business transformation by exploring emerging trends in technology and design. The summit also turned its gaze to, sustainable design and the environment, as well as social design and collaborative practices. Because it is when two unlikes come together in close adjacency, creating an edge and an intersection real creativity happens.

I met some great people. I second Michael Thompson in congratulationing Andrea on becoming Associate Director of the Academy for Innovation and Research (AIR) and Head of the Centre for Sustainable Design at the University College Falmouth starting on 11th April, and the great job Andrea Siodmok and her team had done.

There was for me, a palpable sense that people genuinely wanted to make and create a better world, and I also think that the two days expamded peoples idea of what design is and could be – whilst still retaining the origins of what motivates design and craft – to create new forms and give them to the world as a civilizing force.

My presentation ended up becoming highly emotive as in the Q&A I discussed the extreme frustration I felt trying to educate my intelligent but dyslexic son in the state education system, with a very engaged audience. Here is my presentation for those that asked for it. #intersect

This was never a tech revolution in the same way Gutenberg’s printing press was a tech rev – it was like in Tunisia, Egypt, Libiya, and throughout the western world; a revolt against power, corporate power, political power who has it and who wields it – its interesting to note that Umar Haque although working for Havas struggles with the ethics of living in a world which is unfair. He is I believe representative of many. But the powerful are now beginning the pinch of the powerless, where people sick and tired of the same shit, are learning to get what they need from each other – institutionally American Government has failed, business are failing and we need a new literacy in which people know how to create new and better things. The fact was nobody was really prepared to listen not until it was too late.

Communities Dominate Brands is six years old and yet people still tell me from RIM, to Disney, to startups that it is still mandatory reading. I don’t do it very often but hurrah for us.

You can buy it HERE

Did the Church see Gutenberg coming? I asked this question recently at an event on innovation and disruption. Those of you that are fans of Blackadder, let me use the comedic twinning of Rowan Atkinson as Bishop Blackadder and his side-kick Tony Robinson as Baldrick.

So Baldrick comes running into Bishop Blackadders bedroom as he is preparing for his day

Blackadder: ahhhh there you are Baldrick, I wondered when you might turn up

Baldrick: sorry sir, I was out last night in the Tavern

Blackadder: the Tavern Baldrick, have you taken leave of your senses

Baldrick: well no sir, but I ended up over-hearing a conversation between two men, a Johannes Gutenberg and some other geezer, that, that, that, that,

(Baldrick pauses)

Blackadder: c’mon man out with it

Baldrick: that could change the whole power base of the church sir – Gutenberg has taken a wine press and he’s going to print bibles on it sir

Blackadder just stares at Baldrick, and slaps him around the head, knocking him over and then kicks him

Blackadder: POPPYCOCK Bladrick (turning to face the window looking out onto the town of Mainz and its surrounding countryside) As Bishop Baldrick, I rule everything I see, and even that which I don’t. How on earth do you think that some fool up in a garret in Mainz with a convertible wine press is going to reform the church, and remove our strangle hold over the whole of Europe, hmmmmm?

This particular question has a certain relevancy if not urgency today, as it was through Gutenberg’s invention we as a society moved from the Dark Ages into the Reformation. The Church controlled all, its omnipotence felt by every single European man woman and child. Yet within a brief decade of the printing of the 42-Line bible and the facsimile re-creation of Gutenberg’s printing press, between 8 – 20 million books had been printed, whereas before, none had existed outside of a monastery. Martin Luther unleashed of the power of the printing press to decouple the Church from its divine power base, whilst simultaneously challenging political stability.

The lesson is – when new communication tools are not only invented but ubiquitously adopted, they can become a tool wielded for profound societal and political change, if society wills it.

So lets ask another question; which business, which industry, which NGO or political organization, democratic or otherwise has not been touched by the impact of our most recent communications revolution? In a breath it seems, businesses defined by their socialness, community, and peer to peer interactivity have erupted in complete violation of the orthodoxy of traditional business, and how that business is made: controlled access to stuff, to information. This is the Gestalt Switch – once we were atomized but connected up to each other by big media but not across each other, today that power has eroded, people are using communication technology to get what they want and need from each other rather than through existing organisations and institutions.

In 2005, Facebook, and YouTube were born – we were aware of the emergence of digital communications but that was seen from afar, there but not here. Today Facebook has a congregation of 500 million people connecting and getting stuff done though its platform, Youtube uploads 20 hours of audio visual content every minute of every day of every year, Flickr holds the largest repository of still images anywhere in the world – but why all this sharing? Because, as USC Professor Henry Jenkins states, an expert on participatory cultures, we were ready for it. Linux is a co-created operating system, (which companies like IBM use) generating huge sums of money for those that build businesses around its services even though the operating code is free and the people that write the code do so for free. From a traditional standpoint it is illogical, yet it works.

At the same time we are using the words social media and social networking, which drip off our lips like an adman would say 60 second TV spot 15 years ago, it seems people are all atwitter about twitter and the CBI produces a report about how employees using “social media” during their working hours are losing the UK millions. The truth is the connection of participatory cultures, socialness and a communications revolution in the true context of our age has been misunderstood by many.

In The Enterprise of the Future a report published by IBM in 2006 – their survey of CEO’s revealed that 8/10 CEO’s saw significant change ahead and yet the gap between expected levels of change plus the ability to manage it had tripled. This is natural because as a new economy takes hold, as a consequence of the old one faltering, it unleashes a powerful set of forces that cleave the fabric of the economy along fault lines, consequently there is a catastrophic resistance to change. For example, social media from a business context is easy to dismiss, it is looked at with idling curiosity, or downright mistrust in the C-suite as it is not a core part of daily grown up business, sadly this is the same mistake which the church made in misunderstanding Gutenberg in his garret in Mainz.

The reality is people are a highly participatory social species, we are designed to work in aggregates, this is different to the logic that created firms perfected for industrial production. We are in the process of renegotiating that power relationship. What companies face today is a design problem and part of that problem is understanding that embedding socialness into the core of what makes a company work successfully is very different to thinking about social media as an addendum to what it does. It requires a new philosophy, language, media and communications literacy, tools and processes. There are companies which whether it be automotive; Local Motors, venture funding; GrowVC, scientific innovation; innocentive, YourEncore, or Topcoder which has NASA as a client, books; Amazon or book mooch, mobile marketing; Qustodian, trading; ebay, that have all embedded socialness into the DNA of the company to improve commercial success. So is it social media or social business – as answering that question might be more important than you think.

Related articles

• Trend for 2011: Collaborative story-telling on social media (reportr.net)
• Facebook Nation, Facebook World (lewrockwell.com)
• Gutenberg In The Middle East (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• The Gutenberg Bible. (jwitness.wordpress.com)

Here is the presentation that I gave.

Today I am delighted to officially announce my new company, The Futures Agency (TFA). TFA is based in Basel, Switzerland and is currently comprised of 15 amazing people i.e. Associates that are working with me on an independent basis; additional team members will be announced shortly. Think of us as a ‘band’ of futurists and foresight-experts, visionaries, advsiors and idea-curators …and you’ll get the idea.

I will serve as CEO and plan to grow this company into one of the most amazing agencies on the planet, employing these 5 key principles:

1. Knowledge grows when shared (therefore we share everything)
2. Proudly find elsewhere (PFE)
3. Do what you do best and link to the rest (Jeff Jarvis)
4. Spend less time being important and more time being relevant
5. The leaders of the future are connectors – not just directors

The purpose of TFA is to provide our clients with a lot more firepower and emotional intelligence when answering this key question: What does the future bring, and how do we prepare for it…?

Or, to put it more proactively (for those inclined to that sort of thing;): Which future do we really want to create?

TFA offers seminars, workshops, think-tanks and advisory sessions ranging from 3-5 hours to 3 days, with anywhere from 2 to 10 people, worldwide. Some of our thinktanks may use a format called the Disruption Experience which I have been finetuning together with my good friend and world-renowned leadership expert Didier Marlier, who lives in Switzerland as well. Other thinktanks may use our “FuturesExperience” format, and additional formats will be announced soon.  As an example, a few weeks ago TFA undertook a really amazing mission for a one of the largest mobile operators and telcos in Africa; 3 days of serious future-thinking and plotting with the executive team. Hopefully I can share some of those stories with you in the future.