John Underkoffler speaking about the way in which ui will change how we interface in the world

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The economist Herbert Simon, once wrote,

What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention… The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

May I have your attention please? – Linda Stone – SIME 09 from Ayman van Bregt on Vimeo.

Someone comments on Linda’s presentation,

Technology sets me free and enslaves me. Look at us. You read this message and I get your partial attention. But don’t blame yourself. I wrote this message with partial attention too. My phone was ringing, the music was playing, my neighbor was commemorating a soccer game his team won. I guess. Another message. Tomorrow we have two meetings and some of my colleagues will be during the meeting answering mobile messages and emails. It is normal, and they don’t think it is disrespectful at all. Do you? I watch this video with my partial attention. A minute, a colleague is calling via MSN. Oh, shit, my mother is writing a blog and I can’t keep up with it. My friends are throwing a movie and food party next weekend. Another message. And my partial attention. That moment, our moment, and your partial attention. What is personal? What is private? What is intimate? When everything matters nothing matters anymore. Do you connect with me? Do I connect with you? Hey, you only add me and I add you back in a list of noise. We live in a really noisy world and we are trying to stay in the top of it, like a bunch of hyper-alert anxious multi-taskers who are constantly over stimulated. What is next? This noise is overwhelming. Can you keep up with it? Am I a better person? Are you?

What would be good she says, is “engaged attention”…

Michael Shermer writes

In his 1776 work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith identified the cause in a single variable: “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” Today we call this free trade or market capitalism, and since the recession it has become de rigueur to dis the system as corrupt, rotten or deeply flawed.

If we pull back and take a long-horizon perspective, however, the free exchange between people of goods, services and especially ideas leads to trust between strangers and prosperity for more people. Think of it as ideas having sex. That is what zoologist and science writer Matt Ridley calls it in his book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. Ridley is optimistic that “the world will pull out of the current crisis because of the way that markets in goods, services and ideas allow human beings to exchange and specialize honestly for the betterment of all.”

Kind of reminds of the Dutch government, in cooperation with the Dutch research institute TNO, recently conducted a survey into the economic effects of file sharing on the music industry. The results are quite surprising as they concluded that illegally downloading music (which is allowed in Holland) has a positive effect on the music industry. If it would no longer be possible to download music, the sales of CD’s would further decrease. Quite the perspective change, or not? (Thou shall not share) (More smlxl on sharing).

And Matt Ridley also argues that trade does something even more important than enrich our lives. It makes people behave more fairly. Reminds also of the book the Evolution of Cooperation. The Zeitgeist today being the creation of a more fluid and flexible legal framework called Open Source and Creative Commons. Shermer finishes up,

the authors conclude, trust and cooperation with strangers lowers transaction costs and generates greater prosperity for all involved, and thus concepts of fair trade emerged as part of a larger process of social evolution to maintain mutually beneficial exchanges even when the participants were not bound by kinship, status or other social ties.

Theo Hobson attends Grace, an alternative Christian service in west London, and finds it arty, irreverent, postmodern — and full of people seeking a new way to worship.

I went to church last weekend. Sort of. It was a Saturday evening service run by a group of laypeople in an Anglican church in Ealing. It’s a monthly event called Grace. What sort of people attend? Quite trendy ones. People who are a bit too trendy for normal church. The sort who know how to link a computer up to sound and visual equipment. No grannies, no kids.

Soft club music pulsed as I entered, and a big screen showed an art installation: furniture made of neon strips. In the middle of the pewless nave were a couple of sofas, a table and chairs, and a fridge; round the edges were some beanbags. I sat on one. This month’s theme was Home.

This is of interest as readers of the blog will know that human identity, is something I am very interested in. If we live in social times, described by many as social media, surely we should be interested in social stuff? And part of that social stuff relates to identity. In the No Straight Lines project – we enquire into the nature of identity, community and its impact on us spiritually. (SMLXL on identity) (more on communal joy) as we have identified that it plays a crucial role in the networked society as driver for social connection and meaning making.

Grace itself admits it’s difficult to define. ‘In some ways who we are and what we are about is best captured in telling our stories. Grace is shaped by the people in it at any given time and as such changes and moves on in response to an interplay between the ideas of the group, the Christian tradition, what we sense God is calling us to at that time, and the shifts in the culture around us.’ OK it’s waffley, but they’re reaching for something interesting, something that makes worship part of normal life. ‘We hope the changes to the life of grace will open up other possibilities for mission — evangelism locally, engaging in justice issues, in art and the media.’

Grace it seems is a response to the hungry spirit. I wonder why, so many people have angel wings tattooed on their backs?

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A lot of people dismiss this scene as marginal trendiness, a very minor sideshow. I don’t. I think their time might be coming. In the same way as people are crying out for a ‘new’ politics, there’s a definite longing for a new church. The Catholics are mired in paedophile scandals, the Anglican communion has lost its way — perhaps it’s time for Grace instead?

What groups like Grace grasp is that though some people are turned off by organised religion, they still feel basically Christian: what they want is a new, disorganised style of religion, a postmodern shook-up version, full of irreverence and irony, and arty events. They want a new style of sacramentalism, that isn’t steeped in authority. Now that the internet’s here to stay, it’s difficult to accept hierarchy any more — religion must become open-source.

The thought sprang to mind when reading about the challenges governments face, not only with slow growth, but also as the Economist points out large deficits and unsustainable debts.

In the same Economist article John Kao founder of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, argues that Innovation “holds out the tantalising prospect of sustaining economic growth on the cheap”.

The article continues,

The OECD encourages governments to rethink their policies in the light of globalisation and the information economy. It notes that ‘intangibles’ such as knowledge networks and open business models now make up much of the value of firms in rich countries and that many companies produce profitable innovations with little or no research in-house.

Over the last couple of years, whereas before I was interested in networked thinking, co-creation, the nature of human beings, the role of communication networks etc., from a purely marketing perspective – what has become apparent is that there is something more profound that is happening and is on offer as alternative solutions to how organisations are created and how they operate in the world. Something that John Seely Brown touches on in this lecture, and something I explore in my post about publishing and media in the 21st Century. Here David Rosenberg talks about sustainable construction innovation tools and technologies. There are a number of examples that are emergent which now demonstrate the possibility of this reconfiguration – which on the one hand come from such different industries, regions, countries but on the other shows a pattern, a language, which forms a wireframe, that could be useful to companies seeking to make sense of the networked world. Something I explained at this years sxsw conference and also at the Do Lectures, MIT and INSEAD. Working what comes next, what is Next Generation Enterprise is something that cannot be overlooked.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Umar Haque is not a shy retiring wall flower and his recent post confirms that observation – but I don’t disagree with his perspective either.

And this is because in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital Perez writes, about technologies cluster and ultimately create a surge of change, this is what Haque is alluding to,

A technological revolution can be defined as a powerful and highly visible cluster of new and dynamic technologies, products and industries, capable of bringing about an upheaval in the whole fabric of the economy and propelling a longer-term upsurge of development. It is a strongly interrelated constellation of technical innovations, generally including an important all-pervasive low cost input.

A great surge of development is defined here as the process by which a technological revolution and paradigm propagate across the economy, leading to structural changes in production, distribution, communication and consumption as well as to profound and qualitative changes in society.

And that is exactly whatt is happening. I think Haque’s findings are sound – and make sense. I agree that a No Straight Line approach to what we make, how we make it and who we make it with is; different, better, faster, more human, more sustainable, less costly than the heavy process silo approach to business that has dominate our world for the last 150 years of so. I explored these ideas at MIT (podcast) a few years back and with Nokia (video) and more recently at The Do Lectures.

But I also think this point of view is important, as expressed by William Powers and Perez,

New technologies do not come out of nowhere, they are human inventions in the first place and they succeed or not to the extent that they met fundamental human needs. So it is no accident that all of what we define as 2.0 is centered around, as Howard Rheningold says, human talents for cooperation. Not something that legacy industrial and media companies want to hear. The nature in this context is different, its multifaceted and blended. Where reputation, identity, “I” Needs “We”, craftsmanship, commerce etc., becomes the fuzzy logic so hated by bean counters and straight line thinkers.

Local Motors, TxtEagle and Grow VC (examples here)  are also examples of the re-engineering of business that a No Straight Line approach can deliver. So what happens when push economics becomes pull and networked economics, a report by the Aspen Institute, put together by David Bollier got my neurons humming in 2006.

Indeed as Jay Burton Rogers, founder of Local Motors says,

You cant be nimble if you tool big!!

Time to Reboot. We are today, as social philosopher Richard Sennett argues; seeking too recover something of the spirit of the Enlightenment on terms appropriate to our time.  Indeed, Stephen Heppell considers the 21st century to herald the ‘learning age’. In the 20th century, he argues, we built big things (railways, universities) but the focus for the 21st century is ‘helping people to help each other’. In his view, “The old stuff won’t do any more”. And the sooner management wakes up to that fact, the better.

Her book Monkeys with Typewriters: myths and realities of social media at work published by Triarchy Press, is a great success.

Its a great success, because, and I am not the first to say so, Jemima’s approach to her writing is very elegant. And also, Jemima is not in your face in an evangelical sort of way. That said there is more substance here, than a flourish of the digital quill. Jemima points us to the challenge of doing business, the nature of organisations, and a different way of marketing in a networked society.

So if you want an easy to read, enjoyable guide to understanding the world described as social media – then Jemima’s book is the one for you. Dave Cushman has also written a review of Monkeys with Typewriters. Going back and flicking through the copy Jemima gave to me its, as quite often with books I read that interest me, underlined, and comments written all over it. This book gently states, though it is the most powerful meme in our world today, that social media is not about technology it is about people. As Carl Jung wrote,

I needs we to truly be I

As Jamais Cascio told me, communications technology can be wielded as a powerful agent of change. The authenticity of the book is also that Jemima has spoken to a great many people in business and academia, and those interviews bring as closer to the interface of understanding the significance of doing business in a world where as Doc Searls wrote, markets are conversations, and where we argued in 2004 that Communities Dominate Brands, and that we saw the rise of the networked community generation, always on and always connected. We also saw that at the epicentre of what made business thrive whether that was online or off, was the ability to engage people within a social context – the complete 180 to an industrial approach to not just business, but also, how we work, how we want to lead out lives and how we educate our children. That insight is now unfolding before us, as it touches our daily lives. We are mid-wives to a new way of doing things.

This of course is something that Tomi Ahonen has discussed for many years @ Communities Dominate Brands.

For me also there is a connection in Nathans work and that of Local Motors and also Company Command where the business, organisational and marketing process is designed from a participatory networked context vs an linear industrial context.

Read The Glittering Allure of the Mobile Society (download here)