I'm working with Dominic Campbell at FutureGov to devise a series of events to engage public sector policy people in using social media and open source approaches to solve problems. Only then will people start being able to have a real say in how their environment is designed, and how they move through it.
But this creates a big, scary problem right away. For doing workshops that encourage policy wonks to get excited about social media is perhaps the most terrifying prospect of my life. Where will it lead? Blogging politicians. Erk. It will be like bloggers talking about blogging. Except less interesting, more embarrassing, and invoking far more suspicion.
So right now I'm reflecting on how to get it straight past that point and out to the networks of individuals themselves, who will be affected and, without meaning to sound like a policy wonk, 'empowered'.
Here's what I suggested to Dom the other day, much of it based on thinking from people like MIT's Tom Malone and also Steve Weber at UC Berkeley:
Much better could be to argue that we face a war between hierarchies and networks. And the networks will cause chaos because they will be vastly better equipped in terms of communication technology but will refuse to adapt to the processes the hierarchies force them into taking.
What's happening now is an amplification of an age-old divide. Institutions - particularly the civil service and political institutions - are organised in hierarchies, based on command and control. Wider society is not organised like this - it is a fluid web of networks. As you know, the key skills required to manage these webs are coordination and cultivation. The reason that corporations have such influence in government is as much because they are structured as hierarchies too, as it is about money and influence. They are simply organised in compatible ways. Community organisations have tended to succeed when they have managed to get sufficiently 'organised' as command and control.
But what is 'organised' today? It isn't necessarily a hierarchy with a command structure. In fact, it could soon be quite the opposite.
The issue we now face is that the networks are expanding rapidly - much faster than the hierarchies. And the problem is how to manage the interface between the hierarchies and these expanding networks. Historically, the networks have been forced to adapt to the hierarchies, and anything else gets ignored or dismissed by civil servants and politicians, until a hierarchy (say a pressure group) gets it on the agenda. It's why people who like filling in forms always get further in life. And it's why the British Government and British business will always partner with an 'institution' when it announces it is going to work to tackle any given problem. But the power of these new, alternative networks to generate ideas, respond to things and generally cause trouble is, as you and I and some others know, now absolutely astonishing.
So much so that in future, it looks like the hierarchies will need to learn to adapt to the networks.
Words of the day?
MENAGERIE = collection of wild or unusual animals, or an unusual and varied group of people
MELANGE = mixture or group of different things or people
COTERIE = small group of people with shared interests who often do not want other people to join them
MELEE = large noisy uncontrolled crowd, people moving in different directions and sometimes fighting with each other
Perhaps we start here.
Mark Charmer is director of The Movement Design Bureau.
*input courtesy again of Jules at Sign (clearly acting as lead MDB researcher while Joe finishes his MPhil)
Image: Mark Charmer, thanks to Tom Watson, MP, who sent me Clay Shirky's book on its way to Thomas Bjelkeman, apparently as a competition prize.
Update: Julian has also since suggested another group description: cabal = small group of people who plan secretly to take action, especially political action
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