COMMUNITY UNGROUNDED:
GOVERNANCE, LEARNING AND
SOCIAL CHANGE ONLINE
Garth Graham
garth.graham@telus.net
December 1, 2003
TABLE OF CONTENTS
a.
The structures of
governance in an ÒInformation SocietyÓ are self-organizing.
b.
The purpose of the
Internet is to sustain interaction among open and self-organizing social
systems
c.
The pattern of social
organization that emerges in this new society is driven, not by Òinformation,Ó
but by learning.
d. Acculturation is the content of any
dialogue on development
-
Addressing tasks online
-
Addressing group dynamics online
e. ÒCommunityÓ is the most effective
metaphor we now have for understanding the practices shaping the new
self-organizing forms of governance
COMMUNITY UNGROUNDED:
GOVERNANCE, LEARNING AND
SOCIAL CHANGE ONLINE
Garth Graham
December 1, 2003
In turning to tools, you
renounce the burden of what to do in favor of deciding how best to do it.
Thomas de
Zengotita[1]
ÒEffective UseÓ might be
defined as: The capacity and opportunity to successfully integrate ICTs into
the accomplishment of self or collaboratively identified goals.
Michael Gurstein[2]
We do not see the network of
networks only as a technological platform. Rather, we consider it as a new
space of interaction between human beings, which we have created for our own
benefit.
MISTICA[3]
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
I write this
essay to provoke some thinking among community networking associations about
the lessons we learn from taking the concept of community online. I believe that a deeper understanding
of the consequences of committing to that cause, and attesting to the benefits
it brings, can assist in its defense.
In recent
conversations about the organization of a group in the Canadian province of
British Columbia to be called the Broadband Community Champions Consortium
(BC3), I have stated the need to express social change that moves communities
towards autonomy as an explicit objective. A participant in one online forum categorized that
recommendation as only leading to an Òintellectual pursuit.Ó Since that ÒshoeÓ seemed to fit, I
thought I should see what might happen if I wore it.
Beginning with
the first World Forum on Community Networking in Barcelona, November 2000, I
have been active in several forums,[4]
online and offline, discussing the purpose of community networking. This essay is, in essence, a Òcut and
pasteÓ summarizing my participation in these forums.
I began by
assuming that my summary would merely edit together different facets of the
same gem. If only that were
true. Integrating the products of
ÒdistributingÓ my voice differently in different communities involves a sort of
translation of myself to myself.
While that self-organization may mirror in me the sort of distribution
of functions across networks that I describe here, I suspect the result shows
that the method is just as complicated as it sounds. The method is, of course, parallel participant
observation. I am, however, very
thankful to the many willing people who make it possible to share online
learning in that manner.
Here is what I
think weÕve learned so far:
Stating that
these principles are true does not make them self-evident. After a digression into the risk of
becoming more political, I will unpack those lessons learned and explore what a
political message must reveal about governance, learning and social change
online.
As there is in
any society, there is a political dimension to citizenship in an ÒInformation
Society.Ó This will be a story
about influence and advocacy, in short about where the real practice of
political engagement online is heading. When you talk politics, some people find it a comfort
to know which ÒsideÓ you are on. I
am a humanist, not a technocrat or a technophile. I am preoccupied, not by the technologies themselves, but by
the question of use, by discovering the ways that we interact with and through
the technologies to alter our relations and thus our identities. I believe there are things inherently
human driving this particular transition.
Seeing them clearly makes it possible to understand how the beneficial
side of its unintended consequences can be realized.
COUNTERING THE OFFICIAL STORY
OR,
WHOSE END GAME ARE WE?
For most of my
career, whenever I have heard someone evoke the need for "leadership"
to solve major problems, I have tried to find a way to leave the room as
rapidly as possible. It is my
experience that leadership is always the problem and is never a route to its
solution. Leadership is the key
driver of processes of vertical social stratification. Whereas the processes that structure
human relations into social networks act horizontally.
There are always
rules, to be sure. But the
existence of rules does not automatically imply the assumption of the necessity
of rulers. The rules that
structure community[5] and the
rules imagined to structure a social hierarchy capped by people assigned the
role of "rulers" (as if they were legitimate definers
and imposers of rules that are somehow external to the systems they themselves
inhabit) are not the same.
I am not alone
in questioning this assumption.
Take a look, for example at Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas:
the Fate of the Commons in a Connected World." [6] By defining the "code layer"
of the Internet as a commons requiring absolute defense in the public interest,
Lessig is articulating a structure of internalized rules that configures fluid
socioeconomic relationships in a way that is completely different from sets of
rules that are externally and mechanistically imposed. Or consider Etienne WengerÕs theory of
learning as social practice[7]
in which communities of practice are emergent rather than designed.
Conventional
thinking about governance assumes that somehow leadership plays an essential
role. Examining that assumption
from the viewpoint of governance systems that self-organize shows that, if
there is any role at all, it is not what we might expect. In the daily life of open networks, we
donÕt need to know or plan anything in particular. We can make it up together
as we go along. At the system
level, there is no shadow between the emotion to act and the response. The mythic leader as someone who can
decide to intervene in the process of making it up, as if they were somehow
apart from the system of interaction, is merely one more perturbation in the
flow of the systemÕs response. The
system will absorb their intervention as merely one more element of learning in
the experiencing of its world.
My commitment to
"community," rather than leadership, flows from the experience of
seeing, over and over again, what happens when people can engage directly with
their own problems in their own way.
Such critical thinking is always a challenge to the accepted view of how
things are to be done. But,
ultimately, the essence of both productivity and humanity is creativity. The
presence of leadership always distorts the consequences of allowing that
capacity to blossom.
As an example of
the context in which community networks confront the automatic assumption of
leadership efficacy, and as they consider the risk of advocating change, hereÕs
the words of a senior public official in Industry Canada[8]
speaking to the purposes of the BRAND[9]
program:
ÒThe
end game here is the case made to Cabinet to do all this. ItÕs a pilot to create the line-up to
get into the real money and the real game. ThereÕs a high cost to you for being in it. But you are there because you believe
in your communities and the Government of Canada does too. But the real end game is for Canada
to compete globally in the knowledge-based economy.Ó
That was an
accurate summary of present Canadian federal policy for ÒConnecting Canada.Ó I
sort of agree with part of it.
But, to paraphrase in order to express my unease, that objective is like
a hard-nosed medical prescription.
ÒYou arenÕt that well Ð but trust the doctor. ThereÕs some bad tasting medicine you can take now to make
you feel better later.Ó When
those words were spoken, the speaker definitely intended to be supportive.
Also, the person who spoke them has a known commitment to regional community
development. But, however sympathetic
the intention, what they accurately reveal, rather than tough love or candid
pragmatism, is really paternalistic authority in disguise.[10]
To assume that
national objectives will always trump local objectives ignores the distributed
realities of online systems. For
example, systems of commons-based peer production[11]
provide a window into the structure of the knowledge-based economy. But, in those systems, authority and
community are incompatible. When
we are free to connect anything to anything, what we link together are the
places and ideas that we inhabit.
If you look carefully, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Power is no longer concentrated upwards
or delegated downwards. ItÕs
distributed across networks of interaction.
But then again,
what absence of irony would cause an entire country to trust a Department of
Industry to ÒleadÓ it out of the Industrial Age and into the promised land of
the ÒInformation Society?Ó The
functional classification of governmental structures into vertical sectors has
become a serious impediment to the emergence of a society where functional
capacity is distributed across networks, and the social glue is
community-controlled broadband.
Under the label
of ÒconsultationÓ on CanadaÕs participation in the International
Telecommunication UnionÕs (ITU) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS),
Industry Canada has said:
ÒCreating
and sustaining an information society requires the cooperation and partnership
of business, government and civil society. The private sector, through
innovation, risk taking and investment, has a key role in developing a
country's information and communications infrastructure. Governments, on the other hand, need to
provide the supportive policy and regulatory frameworks that allow for market
flexibility while ensuring a fair marketplace. Civil society, including the
full range of social interests, must be engaged in efforts to facilitate the
development of a truly inclusive information society and maximize its potential
in social, civic and community enrichment.Ó[12]
Specifically to
counter such views, Manuel Castells has said that global alliances of common
interest among corporations and governments have invented the construct called
Òcivil society.Ó ÒThe dramatic
expansion of non-governmental organizations around the world, most of them
subsidized and supported by the state, can be interpreted as the extension of
the state into civil society, in an effort to diffuse conflict and increase
legitimacy by shifting resources and responsibility to the grassroots.Ó[13]
Of course, it is
easier to off-load and out-source government responsibilities, if the agencies
that governments ÒpartnerÓ with, can be made to exhibit management behaviours
no different from that of a government department. Government programs funnel
money to institutionalize civil society as substitute channels for their own
program delivery. But management
is not the route to a just society.
If the price of that money is the bureaucratization of daily life, it is
too high a price to pay.
I agree with
CastellsÕ description of government motives in the embrace of civil
society. But the thing that is
most offensive to me, in Industry CanadaÕs reading of that three part
construct, is the idea that only Òthe private sectorÓ is the fountain of human
creativity (or, as they carefully put it ÒinnovationÓ). What a bleak and limited view of the
essential nature of culture and society.
Because of the
power of their unexamined assumptions, even in something labeled a
Òconsultation process,Ó there is no room for open dialogue. When what really is at stake is
defining the nature of Canadian Society as an "Information Society,"
and when all the "official" channels for doing that are so carefully
circumscribed as to be meaningless, then ...what? And yet, the open sharing of the diversity of Canadian
experience is vital to any process of consultation that has meaning.
A responsible
voice in the advocacy role of community network practitioners is not a
ÒprofessionalÓ voice. The
practices that we advocate are the product of experience, not of
credentials. We work in and
through community-based organizations. As such, we should stand back from the
rampant bureaucratization of Òcivil societyÓ that is currently being pushed by
governments. For example, the
phrase ÒNon-government organization (NGO)Ó is revealing of an odd categorical
assumption. If a community self
organizes to get something done, it is actually outrageous to define that
negatively by the fact that it is not government. Organization to act collectively is governance in its purest
form.
The Òwhy?Ó of
association, the purpose of the new broadband Òinfrastructure,Ó is the churn of
social, economic and political change.
Achieving effective action in that context is slowed down by the
continuing assumption of a need for a strong centralizing authority. That
assumption perpetuates vicious cycles of competition in the context of zero-sum
games[14]
in circumstances where they no longer apply. That assumption sustains the separation of essential
channels of conversation. That
assumption socializes against the essential element of knowledge-based
economies Ð the capacity to think Ð in the interest of controlling behaviour.
Rather than
Òglobal competitiveness,Ó the real end-game has become collaboration and
networking among autonomous communities for social and economic development and
change in governance of communities over all. Yes, the location of the balance of power is shifting. But itÕs becoming almost purely local,
not global. In fact, globalization[15]
increases the local autonomy of communities to re-define who and where they are
and what they can do.
To borrow a
felicitous phrase from Pico Iyer, we have been imagining our rush toward
globalization as Òflying beyond all particulars to some universal abstract
space.Ó[16] It just is not so! The global geo-political reality is
that nation states need effective communities far more than communities need
effective nation states.
Industry Canada
will be unable to move beyond its current position on its own. The evolution of national policies for
the uses of ICTs in socio-economic development will require far less of the
present narrow objective of new products in the context of sectoral ÒapplicationsÓ
as the prime route to their generation.
One consequence of that reliance is to reinforce vertical structures of
interdepartmental competition. Dynamic policy evolution will require far more
horizontal and open collaboration in a framework of issues and ideas.
Lead us not into
competition as if that must become our prime directive. How strong is our faith in the
governing structures of Internet culture?[17] Whose future do we intend to
inhabit? Yes, in an interconnected
world, competition does not disappear.
But competition is always evidence of the failure to sustain
cooperation. As a consequence of
our intention to act together in the name of community and social change, what
we should expect to salvage is our lost humanity.
CHANGE IN THE DETERMINANTS OF IDENTITY
But in a complex world in which we must find a livable identity, ignorance is never simply ignorance, and knowing is not just a matter of information. In practice, understanding is always straddling the known and the unknown in a subtle dance of the self. It is a delicate balance. Whoever we are, understanding in practice is the art of choosing what to know and what to ignore in order to proceed with our lives.
Etienne Wenger[18]
Recently, in the
Government of Canada, someone asked a seemingly simple question, ÒCitizens are
talking with their governments online Ð what does that mean?Ó[19] In a variation on Industry
CanadaÕs theme of global competitiveness, one attempt to begin searching for an
answer was put forward by Don Lenihan, consultant to Heritage Canada and
Executive Director of the Centre for Collaborative Government, as the primary
author of a particular ÒDigital CommonsÓ proposal. [20]
Lenihan finds
that Canadians remain committed to respect for diversity. Their commitment
represents social capital with considerable competitive advantage. ÒA society
that has learned to accommodate Ð and even flourish Ð in the midst of cultural
diversity has already taken a giant step toward developing the kind of learning
environment that leads to innovation.Ó But, as Canadian society is redefined by
globalization, the spread of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs)
and the mobility of populations, the experience of diversity changes over
time. The move to e-government
provides a huge opportunity to lever these reserves of social capital if the
web of electronic connections can be Òstrategically designedÓ to achieve that
end.
ÒThe more
socially, culturally, economically and technologically diverse a country such
as Canada becomes, the more its citizens cease to identify themselves as
members of a single, primary group.
Instead, they begin to identify with a variety of cross-cutting
communities.Ó As a result, their
identities are Òmultifaceted and complex Ð a network that links a constellation of
diversities.Ó ÒIn such societies,
individuals now play a comparatively active role in defining who they are and
how they belong to a community.Ó
In turn, communities composed of such individuals become Òmore
interdependent, more networked and more responsive to acts of reflection.Ó
The key to
having such Òcultural networksÓ act as a powerful source of social cohesion is
the degree of individual ÒopennessÓ to intercultural learning. Such openness is characterized by a
respect, achieved through tolerance, understanding, and the capacity for
Òidentification,Ó which allows individuals to transcend their own cultural
experience. ÒThe unpredictability
that results from integration is precisely what makes culturally networked
societies potent sources of creativity and innovationÉnetworked identities do
not function like homogeneous ones.Ó
Lenihan bases
his recommendation for using a ÒDigital CommonsÓ [21]to
explore the implications for governance in such a society on the impact of the
changed identity of the individual.
What he leaves unsaid is that, not only does the behaviour of the
individual as network become unpredictable, so also do the behaviours of the
multifaceted and complex communities made up of such individuals. External identity expressed as a
function of the working of internal networks is a VERY important insight. But it makes behaviour at all levels of
social integration Ð individual, community, organization, and society Ð
fractal.[22] The networked shapes of those
behaviours will repeat themselves at any scale on which they are examined. What ÒgovernsÓ identity formation in
the individual also governs identity formation across major social groups.
Lenihan sees the
individual as the Òcenter of gravityÓ in a networked society. The focus of this paper is community,[23]
but neither the identity of individuals nor communities is ÒcenteredÓ in
networks. It is distributed. This paper explores the structural
implications of distributed functionality for the shape that a networked
society of communities online assumes. One key qualifier revealed by the
community perspective is that it is governments, not citizens, that become the
primary learners in any such experiment. Governments have the greater need to
awaken to a present reality.
Lenihan chose to
use the analogy of the ÒCommonsÓ in a narrow sense. A full definition of
commons would see it as an individual piece of land or as a major resource
subject to communal use rather than ownership. However Lenihan describes it as
a public discourse space within a municipality. In that limited sense, civil behaviors, and not economic
resource management issues, bound the questions of communal use. Thus he is able to ignore the issue
that surfaces in a broader understanding of the word Ð if governments can
privatize the commons it becomes a market where price, not regulation, governs
use. Governments are slowly
abandoning their difficult obligation to regulate the use of commons, thus
turning non-zero sum games into zero sum games.[24]
But every time
Lenihan begins talking about the actual purposes of the Digital Commons, his
own concepts immediately escape the narrow frame heÕs using to try and contain
them. This is because what heÕs
really talking about is the Internet overall. In spite of the local discourse
space analogy, appropriating the name ÒDigital CommonsÓ for a part brings the
whole along with it. In effect, in
his choice of a narrow definition he tries to let Canadian governments continue
to ignore the fact that Canadians already operate in a digital commons, and
that Canada has already been restructured by that operation.
ÒIn a cultural
network, respect for diversity requires more than tolerance or even
understanding of cultural difference.
It requires personal insight into the impact that increasingly high
levels of social and cultural diversity are having on personal identity.Ó That states the key determinant of a
networked identity to be its capacity for self-reference[25]. That too is an essential insight. But I believe that Canada wouldnÕt be
the Òmost connected nation on earthÓ unless Canadians were already highly
self-referential in thinking about themselves.
To be able to
govern the individual from outside, the Industrial Society has an interest in
the stability of identity. But
stability in identity is the death of creative response to the experience of
the real. In a Learning Society,
the objective of socialization turns to enhancing the capacity of identity
formation systems (i.e. networks) to self-organize. Questions of identity are
not real questions unless they are self-governed.
Simple
rules of self-reference shape or organize multiple patterns of identity that
are systemic and open. I express
textures of the moment in qualifying specific experience out of infinite
possibility. My expressions of
identity, my personas, cannot be described as ÒdeterminedÓ by the Other.
Identity is indeterminate, experientially self-organized in relation to the
Other. HereÕs the ÒIÓ in my eye,
both the object and the subject of my affection and of your affection. I am what I am, and I am what you want
me to be. The subjective
experience of understanding my ÒselfÓ as subject allows the network of
associations that is me to self-organize relational responses to experience. This is an experiential realism[26]
in which my ÒselfÓ as network connects with your ÒselfÓ as network in a network
of networks.
A teller
of a story is never an objective historian who stands above the event. They are always an event themselves and
a part of the event they purport to account. This introduces an element of uncertainty into the
description (the story) of the state of being. I, in the sense of my Òbeing,Ó am not informed by an
external sovereign authority. I am
informed experientially through the webs of association that structure my
present moment and are modified by it.
The ÒI-nessÓ of me is a process of continuous information relative to
being here now. The shock wave of
now breaks the flow of time into differences that make a difference.
Lenihan thinks
this means institutionalizing a hands-on role for government. I think it means hands off. He says ÒCanadaÕs democratic
institutions, practices and policies should be adjusted to engage Canadians more
directly in the management of their own diversity.Ó I say, yes, by all means, change the institutions. But change them because Canadians are
already engaged in an encounter with diversity, and their ÒinstitutionsÓ have
failed them by delaying the alignment of themselves with a change that has already
occurred. In effect, the center of
gravity for governance has shifted to community because community has no
center.
If, as Lenihan
says, liberal democracy was Òa political theory about how to manage the
relationship between personal and collective identity,Ó and must now become a
theory that encompasses networked identity, then the ordinary Canadian citizen
is about as post-modern as citizenship can get. But that word ÒmanageÓ is very dangerous. I have not nor will I ever manage my
networked identity. I have learned
it, but not alone. I have learned
it in a community of networked communities. The idea of community stands in opposition to the idea of
management.
SOCIAL CHANGE ON TIP TOES
It seems
reasonable to assume that increasing a community's capacity to act on questions
of ICT use will increase its autonomy and thus alter its relation to decisions
about its own development. This is
because it will be informed more intensely by becoming the teller of its own
story. But making that assumption
explicit is only the first step toward encountering good but unanswered
questions. It doesnÕt get them
answered, nor will I directly attempt that here. What I am attempting is to make the case that they should be
asked.
Specifically,
what is going to be inherent in the structure of community online that insures
it can and will pay attention to some key questions based on that
assumption? In
"community," where and how does decision making occur? How does being online change that? What and where is the hard evidence
that the increased community control of socio-economic decision-making,
provided by acting more effectively in the context of networks, enhances the
well being of community? The real
answers to these questions are not theoretical and will emerge directly through
the experience of becoming ÒungroundedÓ by being online.
I think that
there is a common objective linking the groups of people who associate for the
purpose of sharing the practices of community development online. It is not
true, as others commonly assume, that the primary "need" we address
through our community networking associations is merely access to technology
for those who otherwise wouldnÕt get it.
Our intention is to increase local control of ICT infrastructure as a
means of influencing social and economic development, and political change. Our
real common objective is:
To
share what is being learned about practices that increase community capacity to
use ICTs for greater control of their own socio-economic development.
Embracing that
objective lets us address the causes of disadvantage in a systemic and
experiential way. Many groups working for community development online quietly
agree that such a change objective represents a true statement about the
purpose of community networking.
But some admit it only to them selves. There is a tactical question that gives them pause. How loudly and clearly should they
state an agenda for change that they know can be perceived as radical?
Loudly
declaiming the community control objective will contribute to the recognition
that the purpose of ICT "infrastructure" is "use,"[27]
not technology. This consequence
of stating the objective becomes particularly important when governments start
talking about addressing the digital divide. This is because digital divide strategies, in spite of the
rhetoric of use, remain largely based on a technological determinism that is
mired in industrial economic views of the ways that societies structure
themselves.
So, tiptoeing
toward speaking out for social change makes sense. It is prudent to act quietly, in concert with basic
principles, rather than rush to political confrontation. But we need to keep
that word "political" in mind.
Decision-making is about politics, and politics (as the art of the
possible in balancing the actions of the will to power) is always pragmatic,
although never rational.
Maybe for now,
for those associations whose funding still depends on the vertical
institutional silos of the industrial economy, there is high risk in clearly
stating the intention to work for social change. But, for the groups who self-determine their own mandates in
the distributed contexts of networked economies and societies, the statement is
not radical. It merely describes
the essence of their practices in the world as they know it to be.
UNPACKING THOSE LESSONS LEARNED
a. The structures of governance in an ÒInformation SocietyÓ are self-organizing.
A decision today to create a cooperative rather than
coercive world would not have to be the realization of any single plan drawn up
by any one person or council but could develop, like open software, as the
common creation of any and all comers, acting at every political level, within
as well as outside of government.
Jonathan Schell[28]
Beginning in the
last half of the 19th century in Europe, with an altered view of the
relationship of moral authority[29]
and the individual, a new global conflict has slowly emerged among proponents
of opposite views of the nature of systems, closed or open. Closed systems are
mechanistic and are designed or authored from outside of themselves. Open systems are structured dynamically
from within through self-organization.
They emerge from complexity. There are no external authorities that
govern their structures, although actions in their environment do alter the
context in which they learn.
This new
conflict flows from an epistemological shift that affects worldviews in
general. In fact, the science and
technology that shape our current social context, for better and for worse, is
a product of that shift. The
microchip is a consequence of a mechanics that is quantum and therefore not
mechanical at all. The Internet is
a product of that shift, not a cause of it. But so far governments worldwide, because of their
all-encompassing experience of containing the will to power, have reacted to it
negatively.
Governments
still talk mechanistically in terms of development opposites that are bottom-up
or Ògrassroots,Ó and top-down.
But, because of the open systems worldview, now we all live in a world
where society is governed by the distribution of functions across
networks. A knowledge-based
economy is a networked economy.
The kinds of governance that we have now and the kinds of governance
that structure networks are not the same thing. Conventional governance relies on authority, but the factors
governing the formation of networks rely on self-organization and trust.
I believe that
transformations of the practice of governance from within have advanced so far
that they can no longer be stopped.
That is not to say the nostalgic resistance of senior officials in
public service to the loss of authority is futile. Resistance can make transformation into a total and painful
mess.
There is no
effective discourse among Canadian federal and provincial deputy ministers
about the experience of being online.
Whereas, the middle of the public service is online every day and
doesnÕt think about it. All that
the senior levels of the public service want to hear are pragmatic examples of
being on the Internet that are described in terms they accept. But, if the filters used to select
those examples depend on seeing the Internet in a different way, then thereÕs
problem. What I am outlining here
is the pragmatics of an altered point of view about the nature of governance. I cannot make that view resemble or
represent that which it is not.
And, without that Òcomfort zone,Ó thereÕs no opportunity to change the
terms of discourse.
Only trust can
sustain the level of transparency required for effective public participation
in policy formulation in online systems of consultation that are
interactive. In those systems, the
processes of policy planning[30]
will change from seeking to reduce uncertainty to seeking to increase
adaptation through learning.
What is at issue
in networks is a shift in the balance of power about making decisions to the
demand side of the equation. If
governments insist on defining us as merely consumers of government services
instead of interactive political agents, then responsible citizenship demands
that we become "smart" consumers. When we do, then dynamic systems of production and
consumption of services become self-conscious. They begin to behave as BenklerÕs systems of commons-based
peer production. It turns out that
online infrastructure is designed to assist just such systems. But it is early days in the transition
to whatever it is that our society is becoming.
A better way to
put it is that self-organizing systems never really ÒdecideÓ anything as an
absolute proposition. They merely
ÒlearnÓ in the context of experience.
There are some
public servants, those whose services are fully interactive online, who accept
and adapt to the online context as representing a transformation in
governance. They know that their
interactions with citizens in online communities of common interest are based
on trust and not on delegation of authority. So governments are eroding from
within as public servants who have been socialized to Internet Culture move
steadily upwards in the hierarchy Ð thereby destroying hierarchy through the
horizontal distribution of functions.
But, in the majority, the guardians of the will to power do not and
probably will not accept that change.
We canÕt teach
senior public servants anything about control that they donÕt already
know. But, how do they imagine
that learning occurs? What
ÒmodelÓ do they use to think about the process of learning and how to increase
its quality and capacity?
Their
intransigence creates two divergent views inside governments for predicting the
future of governance online. These
two ÒcampsÓ do not talk to each other.
In the camp of the defenders of existing systems of accommodating the
will to power, open systems lead to anarchy. For them, MurphyÕs Law is always
defined as, ÒAnything that can go wrong will.Ó But there are also proponents of a networked future in which
communications practices are predetermined by the behaviours of networked
communities online. For them,
MurphyÕs Law is always defined as, ÒIn the phase spaces of possibility, while
anything that can happen might, consistent patterns will emerge.Ó
But, of course,
the future wonÕt predict. However,
we definitely can make conscious choices about the qualities of the future weÕd
prefer. While getting there is not
assured, we do have a lot of latitude in picking the route.[31]
There are Òcivil
societyÓ organizations that are struggling to clarify what is at stake. For example, among the groups
preparing for WSIS who are committed to a rights agenda, it has been said that
we need to launch broad, open and inclusive public debates at many levels
Òabout what information society we wish to build.Ó[32] But to debate on those terms is to
accept, without a deep examination of its assumptions, the vocabulary of the
Òinformation societyÓ that ITU, as an apologist for its member nation states,
has appropriated. For example, we
do not ÒbuildÓ our society. ThatÕs
a word from the technology paradigm.
We grow our society and then it grows us.
There are
critical assumptions ÒbuiltÓ into the Òcommon vision of the information
societyÓ expressed in the WSISÕs draft document on principles:[33]
It is my
position that all three assumptions are false. They are not going to go away. And I am unclear as to what means might serve to get past
them. But, in the world that ITU
seeks to understand by its reference to the ÒInformation Society,Ó I would
submit that the vision of open systems, not the pursuit of social justice within
a framework defined as civil society, is the key source of radical practice.
Having provoked
a debate about how information society visions shape its own role and purpose
within the Global Community Networks Partnership,[34]
I would respectfully suggest that conscious practice within the framework of a
coherent open systems vision is evolving rapidly. The actions of the proponents of open systems are anything
but anchored in past history. These are the people who, instinctively, will
intensify reciprocal relationships while, at the same time, resist all attempts
to ÒorganizeÕ them in any conventional sense. If you look carefully inside
large organizations, institutions and governments, you can find pockets of
people engaged in growing communities of practice[35]
online. Those communities are
pushing the organizational contexts they inhabit toward a tipping point where
open systems become the predominant force structuring their organizationsÕ
interactions with the world around them.
But, however
different the politics of trust and the politics of mistrust, both are still
governed by human nature. The iron
law of non-zero sum games remains.
Cooperate, until the other player defects, then defect. But the trick is
to defect while still remaining true to the principles of distribution that
structure networks. And, if the end game is innovation, whatÕs the means? You
cannot institutionalize or ÒmobilizeÓ (that very mechanistic word!) the
innovators. They are the people
who say, ÒI cannot stand this any longer and IÕm going to fix it.Ó While what they will do is going to be
Òunthinkable,Ó you really need to get out of their way.
b. The purpose of the Internet is to sustain interaction among open and self-organizing social systems
The early
history of the Internet [36]
reveals the intentions of its designers.
Both implicitly and explicitly, they were conscious of dealing with
issues of social relations that can only be called Ògovernance.Ó The imagined
idea that the technology could and should sustain a particular and more human
mode of governance came first.
People with a different point of view came to be in a historical set of
circumstances that allowed them to act in realizing it.
The history of
the InternetÕs design and growth show it as the product of a particular
world-view (or ÒcultureÓ) Ð that of collegiality in a research community. The values of that community of
practice were built into the design of the ÒtechnologyÓ that was to support it. There was agreement about the way that
the rules about making rules (called protocols, standards)[37]
get made. In other words the
governance of the net was understood in the NetÕs design and incorporated into
its software code and implementation.
The Net as a
communications tool therefore exists to further those values. It is intended to express and
anticipate certain forms of relationship. It sustains certain types of social
networks better than others. It
works best for other communities that ascribe to the cultural values that were
built into the design. Those
values represent a set of assumptions about what ought to frame or ÒgovernÓ the
structure of human relations.
In the
development of Internet2 in United States and CA*Net 3/4 in Canada, it is very
apparent that the same research elite, with the same espousal of collaboration
and community, is in charge of the InternetÕs extensions. While they are only endogenously
democratic, there is no doubt of the Learning SocietyÕs capacity to rapidly
appropriate, apply and extend what they are doing. For example, the Canadian
Smart Communities Projects [38]
are discovering that their main problems are those of governance in the
relationships among participating organizations, not technology.
Of course
anyone, even governments, can and will imagine other ways of doing things. And, if those ideas are also powerful
enough to gain mind share, then technologies that express them will
emerge. But, if we chose to modify
something that has powerful mind share already, we should take into account
what it is that we are up against.
The ÒLearning SocietyÓ is largely in the process of defining itself.
Along with
Castells, I hold that the categories of civil society, governments and the
private sector are constructed social patterns that serve traditional
mechanistic views. Whereas
community online is a new type of relationship, one more typical of
ÒInformation SocietyÓ structures.
Because the
Internet creates and sustains spaces of social interaction that are
distributed, self-organizing, and local (in the sense of coherent group
learning in a community of practice), action at the ÒglobalÓ level is neither
relevant nor desirable. It should
be seen as just one more iteration on a fractal scale. Action at the global level seen as
hierarchy - action that generalizes and centralizes, rather than particularizes
- can only be destructive of the InternetÕs value as a messenger and instrument
of social change. Any technical or
regulatory ÒimprovementÓ that interrupts the process of pushing the ÒsmartsÓ to
the edge is wrong. On the
Internet, first thereÕs community, and then thereÕs nothing else.
Digital divide
strategies assume that the Internet is Òjust a toolÓ that can be adapted to
existing socio-economic and political institutions without major consequences
for change. But the Internet is
not value free. And the assumption
that it is ignores the dynamic relationship between technology and
culture. In any particular
cultural context, the relationship is chicken and egg. So, while communications infrastructure
defines, or even pre-determines, communications practices, so to do
communications practices predetermine the ideas of infrastructure in the design
phase of its realization. The Internet is itself a message,[39]
but that message is recursive:
ÒNow we make our networks, and our networks make
us.Ó[40]
In the
Industrial society, the communications practices of governments, businesses and
communities were separated and distinct. Industrial society and Internet
culture have two different worldviews, with no common vocabulary or will for
dialogue. In Internet culture, as
the practices of governments and businesses continue to converge (some say
collude), the practices of communities rapidly diverge. In general, governments base public
policy decisions on what they know Ð which is the market economics of
industrial society. They tend to state public policy about Internet access as
merely a question of price.
A critical
battleground for this conflict is the question of Internet ÒregulationÓ in the
sense of both its content and operation.
In the sense that I have defined it here, that makes the conflict a
clash of cultures. The Internet is
a set of technologies that express the cultural values and interests of the
proponents of open systems. That is to say it is the product of the worldview
on the other side of the epistemological shift, not the cause of it.
The InternetÕs
primary purpose of sustaining open systems should be understood as serving
needs for learning, not for control.
As of now, the outcome of the growing battle over regulating its use in
defense of the past or affirming its purpose in embrace of the future is
uncertain. People who apply a theory of learning as social practice are more
comfortable with the human condition mediated by daily life online than those who
do not. For example, interesting
community networks are magnets for libertarian sysops. But there are only a handful of sysops
who understand that their role implies a responsibility for social change. The second group writes better
code. And the second group insists
that the code be open source.
As an example of
content regulation, current copyright thinking does center on the abstract
notion that ideas can be considered as private property. But, historically, that notion was only
half of the concept of copyright.
The other half had nothing to do with the current emphasis on private
gain. The laws were enacted for
the public good of rewarding people for sharing knowledge about their way of
doing things, rather than keeping it secret. In the Industrial Age, that was understood to be
philosophically sloppy but pragmatically useful. In a Learning Society, where social cohesion and economic
interdependence demand equal access to the lingua franca of the InternetÕs code
layer, copyright needs to be carefully re-interpreted and applied in very
narrow circumstances.
At the moment,
the opposite is happening. The
application of copyright in support of the commodification of ideas is
broadening. If we support
transition to a Learning Society, we need to view this trend as reactive and
negative.
If you seek to
defend the Internet as an instrument of open systems for learning and you hear
these phrases; intellectual property rights, information security,
international policy framework for the Information Society, you are probably
encountering proponents of the power of nation states as closed systems of
governance, regardless of whether they are in the technology or social justice
camps. On the other hand, if you
hear these phrases; open source, communication as public good, Internet code
layer as commons, you are probably encountering proponents of the autonomy and
responsibility of individuals to connect with each other, to self-organize and
therefore learn, in open systems of interaction.
Defending the
consensus on standards for open source codes and values for open systems that
led to the InternetÕs existence in the first place is far more important than
regulating the communications that it carries. The Internet is not Òmerely a toolÓ that can be adapted to
serve the conventional purposes of governance or of social justice. Because it represents a worldview
expressed through technology, those purposes are already being altered by its
use.
More than the
ÒsystemÓ of international institutions, the Internet is the only effective
means we have discovered, so far, to support the self-organization of response
to large-scale complex problems.
By surfacing multiple points of view about intentions and consequences
in our local and global interactions, the Internet saves us from those arrogant
voices that claim omniscient authority.
Those voices imagine themselves to be outside of the systems they seek
to govern when now we know that they are not. Those voices attempt to channel thinking to the limits of
what unitary points of view will accept, but in a world where multiple points
of view already predominate.
The goal of
social movements online should not be to establish and defend some bounded open
space within the Internet. Within
a social vision, all of it has to be considered open space already. The goal is to keep common that which,
as a cultural expression of conviviality, networking and trust embodied in a
technology, is already common. Not
Òmake our own,Ó it is our own. The
danger is that, as ÒtheyÓ comprehend its radical otherness, its radical
challenge to the existing will to power, they will attempt conscious opposition
that destroys or perverts its primary purpose (to sustain self-organizing
networks as social networks that can interact). The main tactic they will use to oppose trust is fear.
But IÕve been
sneaking up on you quietly with that phrase Òcommunications practices.Ó ItÕs really just a euphemism for human
relations. So the Internet arrives
in our midst with its own messages about cultural values intact. Rather than ÒThe Internet can boost
human development processes that already exist,Ó[41]
I say that it ÒwillÓ do that as an expression of a cultural worldview. So, enabling Òa space to speak with
their own voicesÓ is really a process of getting out of the way, of setting
free the creative processes of dynamic self-organization in the context of
non-zero sum games (i.e. in the context of community). Defending the Internet as the
expression of an open systems worldview can thus be expected to lead to greater
fairness as the ultimate beneficial outcome of connectivity.
c. The pattern of social organization that emerges in this new society is driven, not by Òinformation,Ó but by learning.
ÒIt has been argued that knowledge exists only in a social
context, and that this social context is created by social practices. According
to this view, knowledge is created and reproduced in communities, and knowledge
makes sense only in relation to such communities. Furthermore, this view
rejects the idea that knowledge can be decontextualized, or something that can
in any trivial way be grounded on an "external reality." Instead,
this view sees knowledge as a product of a social process. Knowledge organizes
socially by institutionalizing ways of interpreting the world. Knowledge is
embedded in social practices, conceptual systems, and material artifacts that
are used in social practices. Technology, social practice, and knowledge
complement each other and their evolution is part of the same process.Ó
Ikka Tuomi[42]
A community of
practice called Òdeputy ministersÓ has just as much but no more capacity to
learn and know about public administration in the context of the government
they serve than does a group of rural farmers about crop production methods on
the land where they grow rice.
Rather than apply the spatial term ÒvolumeÓ of knowledge, IÕd note that
the channel capacities that inform the behaviours of each group are the same.
All knowing is indigenous to the group that knows it. At every Òlevel,Ó what the Internet interconnects is
indigenous knowledge. Any voice on
it is merely authentic relative to its context, never authoritative. Authority
acts to close. Authenticity
interacts to open.
It simply will
not do to announce a society based on ÒinformationÓ without seeking a consensus
on what that phrase means. My own
best guess is that the noun ÒinformationÓ will resist clear definition and thus
the achievement of consensus. But
we may be able to describe processes that inform in terms of verbs, so that the
ÒformÓ that results through a process of being in- formation is seen as the
result of the process of becoming.
I prefer the
word ÒlearningÓ to the phrase Ògeneration of new knowledge.Ó[43] If you think of access to knowledge as
if knowledge were an object, then the epistemology gets out of whack. The danger for effective social
action is then that you thereby help governments and the private sector to
succeed in their attempts at enclosure and commodification of the imagination
as property (i.e. intellectual property).
If you are truly ÒinÓ the ÒInformation Society,Ó then you prefer the
fluidity of the verbs informing and knowing to the tangibility of the nouns
information[44] and
knowledge.
If we imagine
social structure as composed of learning societies rather than information
societies, we apply social constructs that change our ideas about systems of
governance affecting the fairness of the human condition. The primary goal of
closed systems of governance is control or stability in the social order. But
self-organizing systems are also a form, but a very different form, of
governance. They sustain a dynamic
equilibrium through interactions based on trust, reciprocity and cooperation. Therefore they are inherently fairer in
the consequences of their actions.
The primary goal of open systems of governance is learning. Since world level problems are complex,
we all need learning far more than we need control.
But itÕs
important to remember that the theory of learning as social process is about
group learning, not about the ÒeducationÓ of individuals. Individuals learn and
change all the time Ð but what is effective in causing the community to
change? The open source idea of
Òrough consensus and running codeÓ is a better approach to group learning than
is the idea of Òprevious cooperative reflectionÓ[45]
as a step before action. This is
because it describes a social process that is iterative, recursive,
self-referential and, above all, linguistic.
We can modify
the social contexts of human-machine interaction[46]
(social networks as systems where both humans and machines are agents) that
emerge online by writing or editing the languages that encode the software that
form them. Editing code using open
source development practices increases the capacity of online social networks
to learn.
To learn our way
forward collectively, we begin action first in the context of present
experience. That is to say we must
consciously remain open to the interaction of present knowledge with new
experience. ThereÕs no ÒpauseÓ button on experience. You cannot turn off how being in the world occurs. ThatÕs why the Òjust do itÓ of running
code is an effective strategy.
The Internet is
a tool that lets us have conversations, in a way we never could before, with
many different people about how they see things. The Internet speeds up the way in which we can think of new
ideas, the way we can change our minds about how things work. Very rapidly, it helps us comprehend
different ways of seeing things that cause us to understand different ways of
doing things.
The ÒknowledgeÓ
inherent in the Learning Society is a product of equilibrium at the edge of
chaos. It comes more from the
interaction of dynamic systems that learn their way forward in non-zero sum
games, than it does through mechanistic systems that achieve stable states
through control. Both the
individual and the community are networks of dynamic systems.
Networks, as
dynamic systems, are inherently self-referential. By being systems they express, not only what is
conventionally understood as their Òcontent,Ó but also the structure that
conveys it. Thus the totality of
their content and structure (what they are saying and how they are saying it)
is accessible to all participants in the network. The system both experiences the world and expresses the
operating model of that system in the world at the same time. That is to say,
every participant can know what the system knows. Ultimately, as the network of networks, the InternetÕs
ÒpurposeÓ is, if they want, to let all connected systems know what any system
knows. The key ÒruleÓ that leads
to a wealth of new ideas is that the choice of forming links is fully
open. Then any link that can occur
will.[47] Obviously it is not possible to predict
the form of knowing that will emerge at those higher systemic levels of
integration.[48]
In an industrial
economy, the relationships among organizations and markets are of paramount
concern. In a networked economy,
there is a third layer of concern Ð the growth of networks of relationships
between organizations and markets. Open and healthy webs of networked
relationships in any given sector yield better market opportunities for all
participants.
When you are on
the Internet, there are as many markets as there are ways of seeing, but only
one economy, the global networked economy. In that economy, the rapid re-alignment of distribution
channels, the changes in patterns of how and what people buy caused by
e-commerce, cannot be planned or guided.
They grow through direct experience of the consequences of decisions to
create links.
To do what they
do in that global market, networked knowledge workers have to be able to change
their minds rapidly. They have to
find ways around all obstacles that stop them from doing that. The value they provide for the money
they are paid depends on how fast they can learn their way forward into new
ideas. The knowledge worker, as an
inhabitant and analyst of networked systems begins to work by asking, Òwhat is
the problem?Ó
Good questions
are the first step toward innovation.
Churn, diversity, multiplicity, and sufficient complexity are the
sources out of which the new, the innovative, emerges. Good questions enlarge the views of
both the askers and the asked.
Even in a Learning Society, good questions are always a challenge to
authority, to social stability. In
effect, since a way of seeing is always also a way of not seeing,
destabilization is the precise source for generating deeper ways of knowing.
All we are doing
is talking Ð but now our way of talking has changed, and therefore our social
context has changed. But we take
our identity Ð who we are Ð from our society. Suddenly our social relations are no longer fixed. They are fluid. They flow like water and, like water,
they flow around any obstacle in their way. So, the ÒknowledgeÓ in the Learning Society is not a fixed
thing. It is not a commodity or
and object. It cannot be bought or
sold. In the Learning Society we
have access, not to knowledge, but to different ways of knowing.
But in what
collective or ÒgroupÓ sense can a social network be said to learn? In the culture defined by systems of
human-machine interaction, it learns far more than we are anticipating. I will call this, reluctantly,
collective consciousness. But,
moving ÒupÓ the fractal scale of social network structure, if a group can be
seen to behave coherently in the community of groups, then the structure of
that group can certainly be considered as exhibiting a function beyond the sum
of its parts that is analogous to memory.[49]
The medium of
participation in that memory is speech patterns in language. The members of a community are not
themselves the real cells of the networkÕs array. ItÕs the emergent language patterns that structure a
community and inform a Òstanding waveÓ of behaviours. These persist over time within the associative spaces caused
by the communityÕs existence. ItÕs
when the language fades to silence that the community is gone, not when a
particular set of members depart.
FirstVoices[50]
provides a web-based example of the application of a social theory of
learning. It creates a global
community of practice among linguists and language teachers about methods for
saving languages from extinction.
Through sharing the practices that save languages in an open fashion,
something purely local is being sustained Ð because language encodes practical
knowledge, indigenous knowledge, about how to live in a particular place. The ÒcapacityÓ that is web-based is
that of a particular language group (i.e. the encoded indigenous knowledge of
effective relationship of culture and environment in a particular ecology) to
self organize a local defense of the open systems principle of rough consensus
and running code. But, in this
example, the code is on the human side of the systems of human-machine
interaction.
The essence of
the interdependencies that structure community online is not the logic of the
physical network connections. ItÕs
the relational logic of the linguistic network connections. What the online context adds is
reciprocal responsibility for the expression and maintenance of several levels
of common codes, protocols and languages.
The agreement to abide by common codes of human-machine interaction is
what allows any agent to communicate with and/or through any other agent.
The MISTICA
document on "Working the Internet with a Social Vision." says, Òthe
process through which knowledge is generated does take place outside the
Internet.Ó But you canÕt have it
both ways. Either the ÒspacesÓ of
social interaction exist or they donÕt.
The fact that the spaces are ÒintellectualÓ - pure thinking spaces - not
ÒspatialÓ or physical, does not mean that they are unreal. Spatial metaphors
like, Ónew space of interactionÉbuilding knowledge,Ó get in the way of our
understanding of new and fluid patterns of social interaction. Those patterns are what IÕd call
ÒmindfulÓ rather than spatial.
That is to say their ÒdesignÓ is characterized by individual
consciousness of how networked collective consciousness can be intensified.
A new generation
is emerging whose whole socialization has occurred within the experience of
being online. Their worldviews,
their ways of doing things are beyond the struggles of transition. ItÕs going to be exciting to see how
the language they evolve to describe their experience transcends the
limitations of spatial metaphors.
I suspect that, rather than retreating into what we now categorize as
virtual reality, their capacity to understand how encoded experience and place
interact to cause consciousness will be far stronger than mine.[51] I suspect their capacity to model the
question of who benefits and who pays, and to ÒimmerseÓ the decision-making
processes in the answer that results, will tip the balance of power in entirely
new directions.
To be Òaction
oriented,Ó meaning to apply the technologies in isolation of the consequences
of their use is kind of moral blindness.
But, when I say this, I do not mean to imply that all development should
stop until its consequences are understood. The recursiveness of dynamic systems puts development impact
into the class of questions that are impossible to answer in advance. They must be answered after the fact
through historical analysis. That is to say, they have to be learned. The iterative process of rough
consensus and running code (meaning to embody what has been learned so far by
expressing it in systems of human-machine interaction) is good enough to move
forward in both social and technological systems.
In a learning
centered society, the quality of life that matters is not the consumerÕs value
of choice but, rather, the mature individualÕs value of confidence. ThatÕs because, in the full
implementation of the Òopen sourceÓ approach, itÕs the social systems that are open. We, the community in being, are here,
and we are going to risk being there, and in the process will change our
identity through learning our way forward. But, regardless of imposed constraints or interventions it
is only ÒweÓ who learn our way forward.
No one, ever, ÒenablesÓ us to that task.
d.
Acculturation is the content of any dialogue on development
This expanded notion of information makes it necessary to
reconfigure the relationship between nature and culture in such a way that
neither is reduced to the other but that both emerge and coevolve in intricate
interrelations. As these feedback
and feed-forward loops become more complex and as change accelerates,
development approaches the moment of complexity, which is Òthe tipping pointÓ
where more is different. What is emerging at this
point is a new network culture that we are only beginning to fathom.
Mark C. Taylor[52]
Breaking
out of a cycle of poverty requires new ways of people becoming informed about
the choices they can make. Access to communications, to the means of
becoming informed through dialogue, is essential to development. It is also a basic human need, because
it is the key to the efficiency and effectiveness of all the other systems that
supply basic needs Ð food, health, shelter, education, etc. As dynamic systems, those other systems learn their way
forward via communications processes.
Lack of access to the conversations that affect you, to the means of
telling your story in your own way, is therefore a fundamental indicator of
underdevelopment.
Recently,
Richard Labelle, a development consultant with extensive hands-on experience of
national strategies for ICT use, alerted me to the Vietnam UNDP web site
supporting Ònational consultations on ICT for development.Ó[53] Based on my work as Director of the
Vietnam-Canada Information Technology project (VCIT), 1998 to 2001, he asked me
to comment on its approach to increasing capacity to integrate ICT use
strategies into VietnamÕs current socio-economic development plans. In summary, hereÕs what I first said in
reply:
Those first
thoughts seemed an adequate response to RichardÕs request. But, on second thought, I turned to
reviewing my personal recommendations to the Government of Vietnam following
VCIT[56]. I was reminded that I based those
recommendations on some assumptions about acculturation and that, perhaps, my
reasons for doing so could benefit from further explanation. I then found myself revisiting a career-long
accumulation of development rules of thumb and, more particularly, the
importance of cultural identity to an understanding of how development works.
In the mid 80Õs,
working with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) as Regional
Program Officer for Information Science in East and Southern Africa, I was a
key participant in initiating dialogues about measuring the socio-economic
impact of information systems. I,
and several of my colleagues, began to ask, ÒHow did we know that our actions
for IDRC in the name of information science are serving the cause of
development?Ó
The question
was, of course, a subset of IDRCÕs science and technology mandate. It was iconoclastic to ask it from
inside the organization since it implied that, however effective IDRCÕs
methods, the lack of a way to measure their effectiveness meant that the
methods themselves certainly werenÕt science. To the best of my knowledge, they still arenÕt. But that
impact question has turned out to be impenetrable enough for me to happily
consume half a lifetime seeking ways into it. I have found, if not complete answers, at least an
unconventional understanding of consistent processes underlying fundamental
change and a more social view of information theory.
I still recall
the shock of recognition that the question mattered to me. I also recall that I found the approach
to answering it that IDRCÕs Information Sciences Division then attempted to be
of dubious utility. I remain
uncomfortable with any approach to socio-economic impact assessment of ICTs
that assumes the assessment is somehow centered on the technologies (or on the
Òinformation systemsÓ as was the case with IDRC). For example, partly because they assume the technologies and
their benefits a priori, the Harvard E-readiness assessment tools,[57]
now being used in Vietnam and many other countries, have always struck me as
merely euphemisms to disguise market penetration analysis.
The important
word that is always evoked but never fully examined is Òuse.Ó To me, the place to look for ÒanswersÓ
to use questions is never in the systems or technologies themselves. It is always in the social networks,
communities or institutional structures within which people and their
technologies interact. In other
words, the answer was never going to be found through mechanistic or technical
concepts. It was always going to
be found by understanding dynamic cultural processes. In the impact assessment phrase - Òwho benefits and who
pays?Ó - the determination of benefit and cost is ever and always a question of
assessing values from the perspectives of all involved actors. Applying that
premise will reveal that the methods of anthropology are the most useful
approach to probing the structure of human values that sustains the system in
being, not those of economics or the information and computer sciences.
The first step
in impact assessment begins with understanding the society in being or, better
yet, the role of the individual in that society. Then you have to understand how the technologies are
affecting the way that individual sees the worlds that he or she
experiences. Trying first to
understand the technologies as technology, and then attempted somehow to
extrapolate to the society, is always a dead end. Thus my continuing joy with
Ursula FranklinÕs definition of technology as Òthe way things are done around
here.Ó[58]
Since the way
things are done is really a consequence of a way of seeing how things are done,
it is also a way of not seeing.
Any analytical framework that assumes a particular technological base
has inherent rigidities and consequences. For example, the DOT Force Initiative
has conventional ÒperceptionsÓ of the Internet as Òmerely a tool.Ó The
consequence of this is to ignore the synergies that emerge from systems that
are based on distributed and self-organizing functions and to reinforce comfort
with vertical organizational structures and institutions. But either you are on the Net, or you
are not.
Rather than
dwelling on the negative, let me illustrate the consequences by proposing a
completely different analytical framework, one based in ÒseeingÓ the InternetÕs
technologies as an expression of a specific culture.
In 1998, David
Reid of the Department of Canadian Heritage and I collaborated on an attempt to
develop a scale[59] that would
measure adherence to practices (or world views) useful for living in a society
of online networks. It occurred to us that the social unit ÒcommunityÓ was a
more useful scale at which to describe change processes that the social unit
Ònation state.Ó We sought to
identify factors for measuring continuums of behavioural response to life in a
world where social networks are modulated by ICT use. We suspected that these
factors would be so much a part of our sense of self that we would rarely think
about them. We also suspected they
could be used as a lens to better focus on the concept of Ògovernance online.Ó
A community is
a self-organizing social network of small groups. How are the choices that individuals make to live daily life
in community affected by the condition of being online? The sociology of small groups
identifies an ongoing struggle to address needs to accomplish tasks and needs
to address emotional factors of belonging. To remain coherent over time, any small group continuously
balances the interaction of these two needs.
We assumed
that online zones of socialization would reward small group maintenance
behaviours that are consistent with the rules of open systems and non-zero sum
games. Could we, therefore, find
any common threads in the diverse literature on self-organizing systems to shed
some light on how daily life in community is modified by the condition of being
online? Although we never found
the resources to fully test and modify them to create an ÒinstrumentÓ that
could easily be applied, the factors we found for our ÒmapÓ of behavioural
responses to living daily life in communities online included the following:
ADDRESSING
TASKS ONLINE: One axis of the
scale measured the ÒeconomicÓ dimension, assessing how the significance what
speakers express in and through a communications system (i.e. the content of
what they speak and the context in which they speak it) is valued. The continuum runs from the old
economics of market competition for scarce resources to the new economics of
community-based production systems and curves of increasing return in non-zero
sum games. The five factors asked as questions for assessing where a personÕs
beliefs fit on that axis include:
1 DISTRIBUTED FUNCTIONS: Dynamic networked systems have no clear
centre and no clear boundaries. It
is the distribution of functions across a dynamic system, and not task
specialization, that causes the system to spontaneously organize itself into
patterns that work. Those patterns
are in effect emergent behaviours, where the sum of the whole system's effects
adds up to far more than the sum of the parts.
2 EPISODIC OR WORKING MEMORY: Social
networks aggregate experience as they evolve through interaction. The group
itself (i.e. the sum of its experiences) not just HAS an episodic memory. The "groupness" (the
community of like minds) IS the sum total of its episodic memory. What a group
does is always a status report that summarizes its current knowledge. In any idea space, recursively
following what is "interesting" and reflexively following one's path
turns experience into practice.
3 ESTHETICS: What we learn most from taking
practice onto new ground is artfulness.
And it is artfulness that defines quality in the expression of the self. The capacity to express an integration
of functions in a networked identity depends on the degree of art that comes to
bear on the process. The
Industrial Society took art for granted and socialized its citizens for
productivity. The Learning Society
cannot afford to do that.
Acting in
the context of beauty, quality and simplicity is so central to the realization
of community through self-organization that we need a model of the creative
process clearly in mind. I
found one in an essay[60]
by Canadian novelist, Kim Echlin.
She says that clarity of expression comes from past tradition and
present practice, then adding something.
The patterns to be found through practice are elusive, nerve wracking at
first, measured, patient, the anonymous dailiness of life - repetitive tasks, repetitive
possibilities, a world of tiny precision but one that accommodates to the
contingencies of the present moment.
But within practice you are moving toward an ideal, duplicating the
traditional while experimenting with the different to make it a little better,
on a determined quest for technical and expressive excellence, for ecstasy, the
intense energy that leads to serenity, clarity, transparencyÉ.Óin a space where
nobody really knows how things are done.Ó
4 INCREASING RETURNS CURVES: Networked economies thrive on massless
abundance, not on competition for scarce physical resources. Life on earth
alters earth to begat more life (we make our networks and our networks make us). Anything that alters its environment to
increase production of itself is playing the game of increasing returns. What you try to close will be
by-passed. Networked increasing returns are created and shared by the entire
network. The value of the gain
resides in the greater web of distributed relationships.
5 DISINTERMEDIATION: The disappearance of the middle of
things occurs in direct relation to the connectedness of the components of a
dynamic networked system. Both specialized expertise and the material components
of products can be displaced by the distribution of functional knowledge
throughout a network to an enormous degree. When all of the components of such a system can
"converse" (for example, via bit transfer) about the relation of
tasks to the system's problem space, then modular recursion, not
specialization, characterizes an organic relation of parts to the whole.
ADDRESSING
GROUP DYNAMICS ONLINE: The group
dynamics axis measured social or personal relations along a continuum of that
runs from relational behaviours motivated by intentions for control by
authority in closed or "managed" systems to those based on trust in
open systems The five factors asked as questions for assessing where a personÕs
beliefs fit on that axis include:
1 PRINCIPLED RELATIONS: When boundaries are permeable,
principled relations is the key element in defining what the group is and does,
not boundary definition.
Therefore membership criteria[61]
are not a central issue. The real question is the degree of a group's
"openness" to the other.
Openness does not require a "leadership" gate keeping
function. Principles are at the
heart of nurturing a group that maximizes human ingenuity in the face of
complex problems. In order for the
group overall to remain open to experience, everyone in the group continuously
negotiates a contract among equals about equality, equity and tolerance.
2 INTERDEPENDENCE: Does the group negotiate external
alliances freely and cooperatively or does it have to ask permission? Is the "social contract"
imposed, or is it a contract among equals? The continuum of this factor runs from control to
reciprocity, where trust- based reciprocal relations are the key to success.
The imposition of an external mandate is an act of separation, not connection. It stops essential interdependencies from
occurring. A ÒnetworkÓ remains
open or it is nothing. As a
dynamic system, a network treats attempts to regulate it as noise and it
re-routes around them.
3 CONVERSATION IS STRUCTURE: This factor measures the degree of
awareness of being within a system and being open to hearing the messages that
flow through that system. Conversation is an interpretative process about the
possibilities of committing to some future joint action. But conversation is, by itself, also a
medium. It defines a space of possibilities,
a shared domain of interpretation (i.e. a "structure," although
that's too fixed a word) that relates the speakers-listeners (the signifiers)
to what the speakers-listeners say (the thing signified). Ultimately the domain
of interpretation always remains open-ended. Communicative competence involves a capacity to express
one's intentions and take responsibility in the network of commitments created
by utterances and their interpretation.
That is to say that utterances evolve a dynamic social network or
"system" of commitments (reciprocity). The technical communications network is a tool that serves
to make the evolving structure of commitments more explicit, more consciously
accessible. But the commitments
are about the relationship of the conversers to what they are experiencing and
to what they may want to do about it.
4 ASKING GOOD QUESTIONS: Administrative management seeks comfort
by minimizing risk. But, to
survive and adapt, community online must eagerly seize the unknown. We should be leaving the door open for
the unanticipated, NOT perfecting the known, NOT solving problems, and most
certainly NOT managing knowledge as a resource. We should be staying on the edge because "a healthy
fringe speeds adaptation, increases resilience, and is almost always the source
of innovation."[62] Self- organization acts to supply a
"view" (not a law) of how the experience of encountering the unknown
is being turned into practice.
5 COMPLEX FEEDBACK LOOPS: In Internet culture, the group dynamics
goal is to achieve comfort in fluidity, not in mechanistic predictability. The real goal of group dynamics is not
balance as stability or predictability. It is dis-equilibrium at the edge of
chaos. Electronic networks, both
intentionally and unintentionally, support complex feedback loops that
structure social networks in a dynamic fashion. Social networks will therefore
seek a persistent dis-equilibrium because equilibrium is death to dynamic
interaction.
The greater the
awareness of the operation and interaction of those factors, the greater the
capacity to achieve community online and, therefore, the greater the capacity
to enhance the quality of daily life in the Learning Society. Reference to such factors can be used
to tell the story of socio-economic and political impact in a different way -
as revealing how a process of acculturation is unfolding. The key question for effective ICT use
strategy as public policy then becomes Ð how are the cultures of the Internet
and, for example, of Vietnam[63]
altering each other through their interaction? Addressing that question will always bring you back,
as it should, to identity and values, not technology.
In the mass
markets of the industrial economy, socialization to social norms is thought of
as a process that is external to the individual. But integration into online communities is a matter both of
individual choice and of responsibility.
The individuals make their networks and, in turn, their networks make
them. But they do have much more
choice because their choice has become de-institutionalized.
In an economy
where the food production system remains based on subsistence agriculture, the
methods of making choices about technological change are inherently
conservative. Most of the system
in being, and the indigenous knowledge that sustains it, has evolved over
centuries of interaction within a particular local environment. We who live there know that the way we
do things around here produces food.
If it ainÕt broke, we wonÕt fix it, because the risk of crop failure is
too great.
In an economy
based on advanced information and communications systems, the methods of making
choices about technological change are now driven by consciousness that the
technologies have a half-life of eighteen months. That shape a major mis-alignment in the way things are done
about making decisions between those two economies. My preference in moving toward re-alignment is to give
greater weight to the indigenous knowledge that is local.
For the Poor,
becoming better informed about the choices they can make increases the
possibilities they have for improving their daily living on their own. Taking that view in the design of
development projects that use ICT turns the focus away from the technology
itself and toward information use and the processes that inform. The real goal for the use of
information technology in development should be, not creating information
systems, but informing choices.
The appearance
of exponential growth in domestic Internet use in any country can be taken as a
symptom of a fundamental restructuring of economic and social institutions. It
signals that the country is on the threshold of integration into the global
economy. But the technology should
not be thought of as causing the change to a global knowledge-based
economy. Technology is a symptom
of that change Ð of a different way of doing things. Becoming digital is, therefore, NOT a sectoral process
focused on growth in the high tech industry. It is a horizontal acculturation process. It would be much better to become high
tech in the means of production and consumption overall than merely a producer
of high tech.
The emerging
social structure of a political economy of ideas is not the same as that of an
industrial economy. The experience
of community online has been in advance of what businesses and governments
understood to be occurring.
Initially, businesses and governments believed that the present society
would go online as is. The
majority of them still see the citizens of what are now networked economies as
passive ÒconsumersÓ of services, not as active extensions of the self into a
dynamic and alterable set of communications systems. But seeing daily life online clearly is not just a question
of understanding a problem of Òaccess to services.Ó It is a question of understanding alterations to daily life
as it is lived.
In some
countries, governments now understand and reject that conclusion. In only the most thoughtful of
applications is realization and acceptance occurring that citizens just might
be acquiring effective skills in the use of the Internet to influence
governments, and that doing so just might be a good thing for both sides of the
equation.
Because it is a
medium of communication, the Internet itself is the message. It is a message about a culture, about a
particular way of seeing things and of doing things. While that message will always be viewed through the filter
of a receiving culture, a culture is a dynamic relational process, not a static
object. Message and viewpoint
interact so that the filterers learn towards different ways of seeing. That is to say the message filterers
support processes of acculturation.
However, the degree to which culture is a dynamic experiential process
is often forgotten. In any cross-cultural
interaction, both the supposed senders of a message, as well as the receivers
acculturate. There is no one point
of view that knows best. No one
who ÒbringsÓ the Internet to Vietnam will remain unaltered by what they have
done.
To make sense of
VietnamÕs acculturation to the worlds of experience connected by the Internet,
external investigators should not be blinded by their personal experience of
the technology. Being connected by
ICT-based extensions of social networks in Vietnam is always going to be unique
to Vietnam. After the Vietnamese are done applying ICTs to their development,
will they still be Vietnamese? Yes, of course. But, will the nature of being Vietnamese have altered? Yes,
of course. But so too will the
culture of the Internet. And that
is good, because the value of the Net to the Globe increases in direct relation
to the diversity of its cultural nodes.
In the
economies of digital networks, markets are conversations.[64] Networks are inherently social, not
technical. They connect people.
They cause an expansion of the social zones in which participation
becomes possible. As the
complexity of interdependence increases, new forms of productive organization
emerge. Let the capacity for wider
participation happen. Let networked
markets as conversations or communities emerge. The urge to control supply blocks the spontaneous
self-organization of demand.
Networks are the one organizational form that learns its shape. An effective transition to governance
online must anticipate the growth in capacity for learning that occurs in the
spontaneous formation of networks.
Considering
social networks as systems that inform and learn, anyone anticipating
intervening in the systems of others for purposes of development must begin by
understanding what makes those systems work. What is significant is, not just the development problem as
such, but the socio-cultural and political context in which the problem sits. People in networks donÕt ÒuseÓ
information systems. They are information systems. What those systems know is not a product or commodity.
The real goal
for the use of ICTs in development should be, not creating information systems,
but informing the choices that people in networks, acting as information
systems, are able to make.
Development theory has encompassed the notion that the lack of capacity
of the poor to inform themselves of alternative choices is one of the key
determinants sustaining cycles of poverty. However it is a new idea that the capacity to ÒvoiceÓ local
needs more effectively can be increased and is, in fact, increased in the
cultural context that the Internet provides.
What we bring to
international development from our own Canadian experience of being a connected
nation is not ÒtechnologyÓ as such.
There are no plug-ins. We
have absolutely nothing that can come Òoff the shelfÓ as is - because the uses
of all our tools are completely embedded in our own cultural context. To assume that we do is, in fact, worse
than folly. It is blind arrogance. We can only respond effectively from
the basis of our own experience by immersing ourselves completely in the
particulars of the development problem, the context in which it sits and the
social networks that inform its resolution.
In other words,
we have no development capacity at all until we have learned through experience
how what we knew in one world might be translatable or not to the new world
where we now find ourselves providing Òassistance.Ó Being Òin the knowÓ requires communicative interaction in
specific cultural contexts. In the
Learning Society, there are no teachers.
There are only cooperating learners. What they are learning is the capacity to acculturate to
rapidly varying cultural contexts. As their experience of acculturation intensifies,
they increase their ability to create new cultural contexts in which learning
can occur.
Politically and
in development, I have always found cultural malleability to be a hard sell,
even though identity, and therefore choice, is both the beginning and the
ending of the development process.
I do not have an answer for why this is so Ð perhaps because weÕve been
socialized to believe that identity is a thing, not a network of working
hypotheses about social relations?
Refusing to abandon the question has caused me to crash and burn over
and over again. I guess some things you never learn.
e.
ÒCommunityÓ is the most effective metaphor[65]
we now have for understanding the practices shaping the new self-organizing
forms of governance
What makes me optimistic are the grass-roots workers and
activists and other technical experts in many of these countries who ignore
some of the very barriers I have described and are able to cultivate small
oases of innovation and inclusiveness in problematic environments. They need support from each other and
from outsiders, and of course the communication networks have helped make this
easier. Because the problems and solutions are glocalÑa mix of local and
global, the need to convene and network both locally, regionally, and
internationally puts a big burden on organizations with little money for travel
or time spent away from their local efforts. We have to make better use of
face-to-face time together and learn how it can be effectively augmented with
common online tools such as chat, content management systems, web logs, mailing
lists, databases, and wikis. The
fabled gap may not lessen, but the threads will increase and loose network
connections will grow stronger.
Steve Cisler[66]
In the socio-economic structures of distributed networks, even within highly organized systems of production, daily life is not lived in institutions or organizations. It is lived in communities.
It doesnÕt
really matter whether techies or social activists bring the Internet into
community from outside of it. What
matters is - how many new communities of practice does being online allow us to
experience? Experience forms
dynamically. Environment
interconnects dynamically.
Experience interacts with environment dynamically. If the mix of that interaction is new,
then rapid change (i.e. learning) occurs in the worldview that experience
encodes. On its own, combination produces effect. There is no doubt that many communities of practice about community
networking online exist and are rapidly learning their way forward.
In Canadian law,
the authority of a "municipality" to act is delegated downward from a
province. Whereas ÒcommunityÓ is
not a legal concept. And therein lie
a number of thorny and ultimately unavoidable constitutional and federal-provincial
problems for the future of a "connected" Canada as a ÒnationalÓ
policy. The presence of community,
on the other hand, makes manifest a field of relationships (links) in which
certain types of social networks (in fact, a majority of the types of social
networks) interact. People, not infrastructure, are always the basis of
networks. As social networks,
communities are primarily concerned with reciprocity (or cooperation, or
mutuality) in addressing common objectives and needs.
In networked
economies and societies, the relations across the boundaries of a community
(its interactions with the wider world that supplies its context) radically
change. That is to say, the
politics of what is inside and outside change. The encounters with those who
are ÒotherÓ than community will intensify in the context of networks. And a
collective consciousness that ÒunderstandsÓ the nature of that change becomes
operational.
But to think of
the ÒotherÓ is really always primarily a question of identity. When we have gone online, will we still
be us? Yes, and no. The capacity to sustain an autonomous
and coherent ÒothernessÓ over time will depend on the degree that thinking
about otherness is inside the social network that asks the question and yet is
open to change.
Identity, or the
expressed form of systemic network organization in being, is never fixed. It emerges continuously through a fine
balancing between that which separates self from other (competition) and that which
integrates or connects self with other (cooperation). To be alive is to
interact. Neither the expression
of the self in society nor the society through which it is expressed is an
absolute.
Competition and
cooperation are complimentary aspects of a dynamic systemÕs evolution or, to
put it another way, its learning
Pure competition destroys form.
Pure cooperation freezes form into stasis. The dominance of either phase state is the death of
being. I, Garth, am the medium in
being that continuously evolves the message of self that emerges in society
from the experience of separating and integrating at the same time.
When boundaries
become membranes, not barriers, you need a heightened sense of self (and the
ability to control the elements that define self) in order to usefully adapt to
encounters with the Òother.Ó To be
ÒmeÓ in that context, what do I need to own? I need a self-aware sense of the
role of associative relationships.
I need to be conscious of multiple identities, of self as a network of
networks that interacts with other networks. If I know who I am, and you know who you are, then we will
have a pretty good idea of who we are when acting together on common
interests. When we do, then
community emerges.
ThatÕs why many
key actors in the community networking movement are telling us that our
processes of association should result in distributed federations (consortiums)
grounded dynamically in member needs Ð because thatÕs the kind of governance
that seeds the ground for networks to emerge and to breathe freely.
Community
networks are not in transition to the information society. They are a positive response to its
realities, and therefore an unobtrusive measure of its constituent elements. But, in daily life online, achieving
community is a primary goal of social interaction, and that makes community
networking merely a means to that end.
It is the concept of community itself that expresses a form of
organization or association that is Òopen,Ó inclusive, and participative, a
form that, through trust, can practically respond to different common needs as
they arise. What communities of
community networkers are seeking to understand is, not community networking as
such, but rather what happens to community when it goes online.
IN DEFENSE OF THE UNDEMOCRATIC
Social processes
undergo shifts at particular thresholds of perception. Increasingly, citizens are talking with
their governments online. The
volume of such interaction is growing enormously. It is now apparent that governance as a social process is
about cross the threshold of just such a shift. Beyond the phase change, the principles of governance that
structure political relationships among individuals will be predominantly the
same as those that structure online interaction on the Internet. Understanding how and why the Internet
expresses a changed social context (a different way of seeing the world) can
give us a direct view of emerging new forms of governance.
Well before
North America, European politicians began asking, ÒWhy is everybody ignoring us
and what has that Internet got to do with it?Ó One simple answer is that they have become irrelevant to
assumptions about the essence of governance that direct the behaviours and
interactions of significant numbers of citizens online in society at large. In
what is generally felt to be the spaces of political possibility, as the
relevance of democratic representation diminishes, other forms of participation
in the negotiation of the social contract increase. Absence of participation in the forms of democratic
representation is not evidence of apathy.
It is evidence of abandonment.
What it really signals is the disappearance of consent to be governed in
a manner that is not inclusive.
In
circumscribing a new phase space of social interaction, the Internet has begun
supplying answers to questions raised by the failures in the
institutionalization of representative democracy. It should not come as a surprise that those answers are
expressed by words that are different from those used to express the democratic
process.
As a new social
phenomenon, community networking online is a precursor of forms of governance
based on self-organizing systems.
It supplements democratic processes (which are not going to go away) by
adhering to the values of cooperation that govern social interactions in
non-zero sum games. The practice of representative democracy is about
containing the exercise of the will to power in the context of competition for
scarce resources, the context of zero sum games. When it works, democracy approximates fairer solutions to
the problem of knowing who benefits and who pays and what ÒweÓ should do about
it
To the degree
that distributed systems assume cooperation as the basis of relationship before
the fact, those systems accommodate fairness up front as a function of
self-organization. In effect, if
you can resolve some of the problems of daily life (of acting in the polis)
through the practices and experience of community online first, what need do
you have to abrogate responsibility for action to the more remote Òdemocratic
process?Ó In other words,
community networking is about radical shifts in social structure that achieve
other processes than reinvigorating democracy.
In that sense,
community networking is neither for nor against democracy. Practitioners of community networking
can certainly be involved in either defending or denying democracy, but their
actions as such have little to do with the core of their practices. They are, however, pointing to the
significance of something other than democracy that is shaping assumptions
about the nature of governance and its role in the structuring the human
condition. If you can, in the
majority of your actions, deal directly and inclusively, your need to be
represented diminishes.
To take this
position is not to abrogate democracy.
Competition for scarce resources is not disappearing! But it places democracy in a historical
context and questions how a new and emerging context, the context of social
networks online, alters the necessary assumptions about its nature and
supplements its role. Here is what does not happen, politically, in community
online:
The key unit of
organization, political or otherwise, is the individual acting in
community. The theory of
self-organizing community as a theatre of politics is to trust that ordinary
people acting in community are good politicians by virtue of human nature. In open and distributed systems,
everyone assumes the functions of politics.
The rules of the
game promote certain interests. In
non-zero sum games, the rules promote cooperation. Governments do not set the rules of non-zero sum games. They can, however, influence the
climate that sustains them, both negatively and positively. Where the quality of daily life overall
depends on the successful application of the rules of non-zero sum games,
governments have a responsibility to recognize those applications and to act
accordingly in their support. Let
no regulator rend asunder that which self-organization has brought together in
cooperation.
CHANGING THE POLICY FORMULATION SYSTEM TO
INTERNET MODE
Since
the beginnings of the rule of kings, it has been assumed that authority is
delegated downward. Constitutional
law in Canada is based on that assumption. The idea of the rule of law is more fundamental to the way
in which our culture views governance than is the idea of democracy. As we practice it now, democracy
assumes the rule of law, and the rule of law assumes sovereign authority. The primary emotion governing
relationship to authority is fear.[67]
In a Learning
Society, the concept of delegated authority is superseded by the emergent
structures of community that well upward from lower states of increasing
complexity. The design principles
underlying the Internet assume autonomy and assume that the relationship of
autonomous individuals self-organizes.
The primary emotion governing integrative relationships among autonomous
individuals is ecstatic love.
There is no reference to authority. It would, however, help if those assuming the mantle of
ÒauthorityÓ recognized the utility of principles structuring community in
advance.
The problem is
that a rule of law based on authority and a rule of law based on autonomy are
incompatible. In contemplating the
uses of ICTs for changes in governance, it is essential to understand that you
cannot make the Internet do what it is not. Its essence opposes the objective of strengthening
governance that is grounded in sovereign authority by advancing a ÒruleÓ of law
that is utterly different. But the
Internet has become the primary engine of global economic growth. In attempting to gain access to and
sustain that grown, the governments of all nation states are currently
underestimating the challenge to the will to power that the Internet
represents.
The present
discourse in governments on the transformation of governance assumes that
relationships among individuals and society are commonly understood. It accepts particular forms of
governance as givens, applies technology to them, and asks what difference to
practice that will make. In so
doing, it avoids issues of transformation rather than accepting the challenge
of addressing them. But, if you
apply the Internet for purposes of control, you will fail. If you set out to control the Internet,
you will turn it into that which it is not and destroy it. The state of being ÒonlineÓ must be
defined and understood only in relation to itself.
For example, in
contemplating how to deal with documents that have somehow become electronic,
the records management profession has returned to first principles via the
concepts of Òevidence-based governance,Ó[68]
and the management of information as a resource. In so doing, they are not seeing the implications of the
Internet as new media on its own terms.
They are especially not seeing how the form of the media mediates the
information of individual identity, and how it does so without reference to
primary cause. The Internet opens
up a space of communications in which I imagine myself to have access to an
Òopening of identity to an understanding of identification itself as a
process.Ó[69] This
requires me to participate directly in the construction of the spaces of
communication I experience. It is
a governance statement to say, ÒOnly connect.Ó
The maintenance
of the Òpublic recordÓ is required to provide ÒevidenceÓ that I have acted
within the framework of the rule of law.
But, in online communities of practice, the framework of rules that
governs my interaction has nothing to do with the rule of law. It has to do with the ÒrulesÓ of
self-organization. An online
community of practice in being is evidence that the participants of that
community are operating within the framework of self-organization. The responsibility of an individual to
ÒanswerÓ to a higher authority just isnÕt in the equation. However, acting on their responsibility
to speak to each other with an authentic voice, rather than to Òanswer,Ó
creates the harmony that causes the community to cohere over time. Nor, across
boundaries, is one community answerable to another. The community of communities also self-organizes.
In evidence-based
governance, the record (documentation) is evidence that a delegation of
specific authority for action has occurred and of the results that flowed from
that action. The need for evidence
is predicted on the assumed need to answer to a higher authority. In identity terms, the
expression of my ÒselfÓ exists only by the authority of someone else. The right to tell my story has been
delegated to me. But all dynamic
systems self-organize by self-reference to internally consistent rules. Those systems must not mean but
be. The system in being is the
only evidence required that its actions are true. I alone am the teller of my story.
The faith of the
records manager in evidence-based governance applies only to circumstances
(worldviews) where governance is assumed to depend on delegation of authority
to act (i.e. for top-down and closed ÒsystemsÓ of administrative control). But a Learning Society can only be
based on the capacities of open systems that learn. Such systems require only trust and self-referential
internal consistency to operate.
The concept of answering to authority is inimical to their action. I alone am the author of my fate. My actions in social networks are
trusted and reciprocated, not because of any authority I possess, but because I
embody and express situational authenticity
In effect,
we are not going to be able to use the Internet as an instrument of democratic
governance. I do not mean that
public servants cannot use the Internet in transactions with Canadians. Obviously, they can and do. What I do mean is that the Internet
cannot be used as an instrument of management. The Internet substantiates the theory of organizational
learning inherent in communities of practice. It will continue to do that, regardless of whatever other
objectives you think that you can bend it to. All attempts to ÒadaptÓ it to other purposes will go
strangely awry.
In connecting
online, I can exert an effective form of power only by trusting that you will
listen if I tell an authentic story of my self. Such a story does not have facts as such. It has fictions as allegorical
performances about identity (i.e. the fictions are self-referential). The person expressed as persona
transcends universal politics by means of local poetics.[70]
But remember that Lenihan
has correctly defined individual identity as a network. The ÒauthorÓ that tells my story has no
center. And I have defined
community as a network that has no center.
Policy,
including ICT use policy, is politics, not poetics. There are both explicit and implicit rules that constrain
the political practices of policy formulation and implementation. Those rules shape an institutional structure
through which collective decisions are made.
It is a truism
of public policy formulation that, ÒOnly by changes in rules [can] changes in
patterns of outcomes be predicted to emerge.Ó[71] Of course, the transition to a Learning
Society will bring into operation a different system of governance and an
altered model of ICT policy formulation that is appropriate to its
circumstances. The trick is that, not only does the content of the rules
change, so too does the place where they become operational. In finding useful analogies for
understanding the implications of this truism for transition to a Learning
Society, think of structure in an Industrial Society as solid and structure in
the digital networks of a Learning Society as liquid.
In Industrial
Society planning, ICT policy formulation begins by unpacking a solid concept to
separate policy into constituent parts, essentially ICT strategies by economic
sectors. Then it works on the
parts or ÒoutputsÓ level, hoping that the sum of developmental results at that
level will add up to results at the level of desired outcomes. This is a
mechanistic approach to strategic planning. Strategies are done in parallel at many levels. Then they are re-drafted in several
steps, as the content of higher level drafts becomes visible to policy
planners. Horizontal and vertical
consistency begins to emerge near the end of the drafting process, when the
rules from above grow congruent with the rules from below. The goal of such a process is to reduce
uncertainty.
The liquid
approach to dynamic policy interaction in a Learning Society[72]
will take into account that:
The goal of such
a process is to increase fluid adaptation to changing circumstances through
learning. Management seeks to resolve exchange problems in whole-part
relationships by reducing complexity.
Community seeks to mediate integration problems by increasing complexity
so that new ways of seeing the problem in context emerge. Complexity informs learning and the
communityÕs existence depends on its capacity to learn. Systems
that learn are dynamic and open.
They are the product of balancing uncertainty at the edge of chaos. Actions that seek to control their
unending search for balance kill them.
A changed
approach needs to focus first on identifying the higher level rules within
which decision making about ICT policy (the rules on the next level down) are
set. Then it needs to assist
the users of the work of the ICT policy community to change the rules under
which it operates. It has to
change how making the rules about changing the rules are made, not within ICT,
but in the environment in which ICT policy decision-making occurs. This means that the first step, the
focal point for intervention in the ICT policy planning process as it exists
now, is not in the ICT policy community.
ItÕs in the decision-making environment of the level above it.
The tricky part
of a changed approach to policy formulation online will be to anticipate a
transition to where stating Òopen systems of governance,Ó while speaking from
within the tradition authoritative worldview, will be seen clearly as an
oxymoron. The participants will
need to notice the point at which a phase change occurs and the existing
hierarchies transform into networked structures of interaction. At the point where governments operate
in societies that are fully online, the mechanistic concept of ÒlevelsÓ starts to become
irrelevant. In effect, you need to
change the rules in the old system (where rules are externally imposed to
solidify structure) in a way that accelerates the emergence of the new system (where
the rules about changing the rules are internalized to create dynamic
structures that flow). You need to
set free the ICT policy planning community to become a self-organizing system.
As a person becomes fluent in a language of symbols and myth, he or she enters into the community of experience that speakers of the language share. There is no community without communication and no communication without community.
Mark C. Taylor[73]
The rules that
pattern the behaviors of a community relate directly to the immediate
circumstances of its relationships to the ecology it inhabits. Community is nothing more than an
agreed set of rules for behaving consistently in solving problems of daily life[74]
in a particular locality or common set of circumstances.
When
corporations and governments focus on electronic commerce as the driving force
in adapting to social transformation, they turn a blind eye to the need to
understand how and why community is realized online. This
creates a dilemma in their understanding of the consequences of the transition
to a Learning Society for the transformation of governance. Where are the public policy agendas
that identify the need to create that presence of community?
To be
consciousness of the role of self-organization in community networking
practices gives enormous power to individuals who engage in realizing the
benefits of community-based action through electronic means. That experience of engagement provides
for balance in the relationship between technological change and social
change. Community development
online tempers the heat of using new ICT tools by plunging them into the
fluidity of social process.
The presence of
community online implies a different way of doing things (that is to say, a
different set of ÒtechnologiesÓ with a different set of cultural practices in
the understanding of their use).
Community fosters diversity because it integrates autonomy and
interdependence. It reinforces
qualities of relationship that are the antithesis of the control that the
players of zero sum games seek to achieve. Therefore alliances in the name of management, where the
needs of the private sector and governments take first precedence, will, by reflex,
seek to inhibit the emergence of community. They will talk about achieving the Learning Society but
block the primary means of making it real.
Because we know
we can, we use tools to shape and alter the worlds around us. Then we, in turn, are altered by our
changed relationships among those altered worlds. Those changes in context then suggest other possibilities
for the way things might be done.
That altered perspective creates possibilities for the emergence of new
tools. Because what ICTs do is
mediate communications patterns and model or anticipate the consequences of
behaviors, their relationship to us has become predominantly social, rather
than mechanical. Not every one has
internalized the consequences of this shift.
The active
practitioners of community development online are following a path of
re-defining the application of values and first principles onto
"ground" that is new.
Some might call that cyberspace[75]
and imagine it to be a frontier.
But it is not. There are no
conquerors or colonizers. In fact,
there is no "spaceÓ in cyberspace.
In thinking of it that way, they apply familiar spatial metaphors to get
themselves [into?] zones of possibility where the ecologies of relationship
then appear completely unfamiliar. In such ecologies, good practice evolves, is
only learned experientially through specific interaction, and dynamically
alters in its application.
It is apparent
to me that a political economy of ideas is completely dependent on individual
autonomy. Only a fully
autonomous individual can commit to interdependence. What has changed in the culture is precisely the autonomy of
the individual to self-organize their identity Ð to tell their own story. But that has consequences for social
relationship that we haven't even begun to address:
In the cultures
of networked societies, my intention becomes a far bigger issue in defining my
authenticity than my authority.
Management literature is preoccupied by the role of leadership. But then, of course, it would be. The authors and their audiences remain
convinced that ÒHe who pays the piper calls the tune.Ó When we have open access to
participation in systems that learn, we diminish our need for systems that seek
to organize us. In the context of
non-zero sum games (not the
context of the will to power), if you ask the question, ÒWho benefits and who
pays?Ó it becomes clear that the piperÕs costs are distributed among all
participants and can be paid in different currencies. The tune that community sings is a function of its
aggregated reactions to its experiences.
When everyone involved is paying the piper, donÕt sing off key.
The structural
problem of supplying mechanisms for accountability really only emerges where
actions in human systems are fully constrained by factors, such as delegation
of authority, that are believed to be external to those systems. In reality, the attempt to constrain
action by reference to authority ignores the fact that dynamic human systems as
communities donÕt organize that way. Self-organization is already the product
of a climate of fairness. If we
are not acting fairly and authentically in the exercise of our responsibility
then nothing self organizes.
In community,
since responsibility is everything, we never get to the point where
accountability becomes an issue.
Even constraints applied by authorityÕs reference to the common good or
the need for representation are arbitrary, because the communities of practice
that are affected by such demands may decide to accommodate or ignore any and
all externally defined constraints that donÕt fit with their experiences
overall. Whether or not authority
clearly states its intentions, communities of practice online will know them
quite fully and will act accordingly.
The presence of
community is the critical component of the structure of social networks and
political economy in a Learning Society.
It is the essential quality causing dynamic self-organizing social
networks to coalesce. And it
is the existence of dynamic self-organizing social networks that cause perpetual
innovation in systems of production and consumption. A Learning Society, by definition, seeks and needs far more
community[79] and far
less management and governance than we have now.
á Community is not caused. It emerges out of a wider context of social networks, and it sustains itself in interaction with that wider context. Community is a collective expression of how realities in specific contexts are being experienced and shared.
á Community is not a static state of being. ItÕs a dynamic state of becoming that operates through language. A community is a network of conversations. ItÕs when the language fades to silence that the community is gone, not when a particular set of members depart.
á The experience of community is not objective. ItÕs relational. Because the networks of conversation become more visible, the relation among individuals and their communities change when community is realized online. An online community is aware of itself as a medium that expresses community.
á Effective participation in community is a function of authenticity, not authority.
To
avoid technological determinism in thinking about achieving community, it is
essential to remember that the networks, and especially the networks where
machines have agency, are inherently social. ItÕs the community thatÕs the
network, not the technology. In
making the machines convivial, we are still connecting or linking people to
people not machines to machines. The online context specifically enhances
self-organizing processes in social networks. But, at the same time, because it is a system of
human-machine interaction it gives hugely enhanced access for all its agents
and participants to the rules that structure it.
Every
agent and every participant ÒonÓ a system now knows what that system
knows. Because of this inherent
characteristic of dynamic self-organizing systems, people own the communities
they inhabit in a powerful new way.
This has one interesting economic impact. In a networked economy, the
interactive and informed association of suppliers and consumers that informs a
market works best if it becomes a community. When all participants in a market approach perfect
information about price, that market approaches behaving as a community of
practice. What would formerly have
been seen by the business that supplied it as merely its ÒmarketÓ is now being
revealed as a community of practice that is owned by all the participants
involved in knowing its operations including the consumers that demand its
products.
To
put it another way, while price regulates competition, the market as community
regulates cooperation. In
self-organizing dynamic systems, that which separates and that which integrates
are not binary opposites.
If the
foundations of reciprocity are solid in thousands of functioning communities,
any wider society that coheres from their socio-political and economic
relationships is also functional.
At the ÒworldÓ level in global networks, this surfaces a political
economy of ideas, not of ideologies.
But the composition of this new world is not unitary. It is pluralistic[80]. In peer-to-peer networks, where any can
connect to any and often will, nation states and international agencies have limited
capacity to modulate the signals that inform the behavioural responses of
communities to the many worlds they now freely inhabit. Also the capacity for them to create
new worlds at will is growing rapidly.
This is not chaos. This is
certainly not nationalism. It is
just different. Chaos only occurs
as a consequence of reaction to that difference.
Many
online communities come alive fast, and die young,[81]
but in their brief span those communities of interest and of practice behave
more coherently in relation to their social ecologies than traditional
communities of place. Each
member's actions are transparently linked to the pattern of collective behavior
so the accountability for responsibility is explicit and revealed. The community as self-organizing
dynamic system can shift its actions and membership in relation to its internal
rules and remain coherent. The
equilibrium of open and dynamic systems is not an absolute or a stable state. Every community is always continuously
emerging out of a wider context of social networks, and it sustains itself in
interaction with that wider context.
Community is a collective expression of how realities in specific
contexts are being experienced.
Of
course, the situating of experience in a ÒrealityÓ that is augmented or
virtualized may qualify the way in which practices evolve through
learning. But it is,
none-the-less, experience. Reality
is as reality does. Or, to put it another way, the reality of an experience has
no particular default setting. The
epistemological fact[82]
that reality always was optional has become accessible to considerable
manipulation by any one.
Ultimately, it will not be the getting there, in the design of
collaborative software for the creation of spaces for shared experiences that
makes the big difference. It will
be the being there. This will give
enormous power to those individuals who, as participants, can effectively
augment the spaces of shared experience to reciprocal advantage.
BECOMING CANADIAN ONLINE: SELF-ORGANIZING
GOVERNANCE
IN SOCIAL NETWORKS CONNECTED BY ICT USE
ÒAnd above all: be more Canadian
than ever. The answer to the
globalization of practically everything isnÕt to join it. ItÕs to declare ownership of your own
corner.Ó
Peter Gzowski[83]
I have now defined
or ÒunpackedÓ those lessons learned in some detail, and then I have applied
them in contrast with conventional senses of governance. I can now summarize the case for
advocating community networking as radical practice that supports beneficial
socio-economic and political change by gaining greater community autonomy over
actions that open up the processes of community development online:
á As the structures of governance become self-organizing, political power shifts away from vertical control and toward the horizontal distribution of the functions of governance across networks of interaction. Dialogue about any political issue can and does cause combinations of communities of practice and of interest to form autonomously inside the framework of possibilities that any issue affects.
IÕve said
that the idea of community stands in opposition to the idea of administrative
management, and that self-organization is a form of governance. The Net sustains certain types of
social networks over others. The
qualities that describe the zone in which self-organizing online community as a
new form of governance will operate include; fluid, experiential, open,
contingent, unstable, uncertain, and living[84].
The
worldview that created the Internet does not stand in opposition to
democracy. It merely ignores
it. Democracy as practice does not
allow for self-determination in the public sphere, only in the private
sphere. The InternetÕs
functionality depends on the distinction between a public and private self
being meaningless. On the Internet, it is not that ÒThe PeopleÓ constitute the
source of political authority. The
person is sovereign unto his or her self.
What is essential is the selfÕs capacity to openly relate, to connect
one-to-one, one-to-many, or any-to-any.
Identity,
at all levels, is a network of networks.
The Internet does not enclose the formation of identity into spheres of
influence with externally determined rules. Nothing external to experience
mediates the relationship of self and other, between the individual and
participation in social networks.
The rule is Ð love it or leave it.
What we have linked together let no sovereign authority put asunder.
To attempt
control is to seek to close the systemÕs autonomy to act, and to limit the
individualÕs capacity within it.
Whereas, in the Learning Society, the capacity of communities to learn
depends on the degree of openness (i.e. unboundedness) they can achieve. Either they self-organize, or there is
no community, and therefore no capacity to learn. To what goal does the ÒcultureÓ ascribe? It depends on what is paramount. If you
want control, you will be operating in the competitive context of zero-sum
games. If you want learning, you
will be operating in the cooperative context of non-zero sum games. In that
zone, there is one absolute.
Membership is agreement to participate within the framework of the
internal rules that structure relationship. Either you are ON the net, or you are not. Your choice!
All nations,
including Canada, are in transition to becoming Learning Societies. But, there
is not a single good example of national capacity to anticipate the
consequences of the use of ICTs for development from inside the perspective of
ICTs as used.[85] In fact, it is fair to say that Canada
is currently attempting to export experience of transition to developing
countries that ÒCanadaÓ collectively does not have. That would require collective insight into the impact that
increasingly high levels of social and cultural diversity are having on
national identity. That would mean
that the same consensus of self-reference shaping individual identity would
have occurred in the shaping of national identity. ItÕs possible thatÕs where we are headed. But we are not there yet.
At the level of
participation in the world development communityÕs debate on the uses of ICTs
for development, Canadian communities themselves, not governments, must speak
to their experience. The people who are learning how
to use community networking to defend the electronic commons and to support
radical practice in social change at the grassroots level know as much about
the consequences of living with the impact of transition to networked economies
and learning societies as anyone.
The people who are facilitating online interaction in communities of
practice know as much about how organizations learn in a Learning Society as
anyone. But what those groups know
has rarely been contributed effectively to either national or supranational
strategic planning.
Understanding
the uses of ICTs for development involves having a national capacity to
anticipate the feeling or texture of what life will be like in a learning
society. The significant lessons for national ICT strategies emerge
from local experiments in using connectivity to alter the patterns of daily
living in specific communities. Grassroots
Canadian experience is directly relevant to addressing the task of bridging the
digital divide by leaping off the bridge.
The real ÒcapacityÓ that Canada has for export is the experience of
applying connectivity to improve quality of life in community under conditions
of local cooperation and trust. In
other words, there is a particular fit between the explosion of use of ICTs for
development and the culture of Canada.
But it is high touch, not high tech, that is making Canada one of the
most connected nations on earth.
Even now, there
is no cooperating set of agencies in Canadian society, and few transparent
processes, that allow for gaining a comprehensive view of the socio-economic
impact of our own transition. In
spite of that lack, Canadians for their own reasons are close to achieving the
stated political goal of being Òthe most connected nation on earth.Ó They have
jumped off the bridge and have found the water to be just fine once you get in
it. The learned capacity at the
local level across Canada is enormous.
Significant lessons for national strategies can emerge from examining
local experiments in using connectivity to alter the patterns of daily living
in specific communities. Through
the practice of self-reference, CanadaÕs cultures have learned how to float in
the networked economy.
There is an
informal and fluid global community of community networking associations that
synergizes our collective energies, sometimes described as the Òcommunity
networking movement.Ó This
movement, as is true for its constituent members, is purely a consequence of
the InternetÕs existence and therefore governed by the rules of self-organizing
systems. It occupies the leading
edge of the tens of thousands of organizations that constitute the powerful and
new phenomenon of Òsocial movements on the Net.Ó[86]
Currently, I am
a happy participant observer[87]
in some of British ColumbiaÕs examples of the community networking movement;
the Victoria Freenet Association, the Pacific Community Networks Association
and BC3. Since, in Canada, even
marginalized social groups are often very well connected or rapidly headed that
way, participating in the activities of BCÕs community networking associations
is and will continue to be an eye-opening experience. There are things going on here related to community control
of broadband that seem to me to be as good as it gets anywhere on earth.
Community
networkers are motivated by a powerful sense of urgency and isolation. Our experience is that the prime
corporate carriers of telecommunications and all levels of government are not
going to accept the degree to which broadband Internet access has become a
public good. We know what their
agendas are Ð in a period of rapid transition, they are concerned, first of
all, to survive, just like us.
When push comes to shove, they will use what they know, which is
authority, not the distribution of functions in networks, to try and hold back
the flood of change.
But to engage
with them directly takes us onto their Òturf,Ó and turf is a hierarchical
concept. Whereas community networks
live in a networked world of distributed functions. There are labels we have to wear to get by in the present -
while working for the emergence of a more positive future. National and regional community
networking organizations only use "association" status as camouflage
for their real roles as connectors of activists working for autonomous
community networks. They survive
as communities of community networkers (as online communities of practice) only
so long as they have utility for the people that choose to link with and
through them.
But itÕs just
not Canadian to appear overtly political.
While deeply committed to social action, these groups, apparently unlike
Daniel PimientaÕs report from MISTICA on concerns in Latin America, are
suspicious of the utility of clearly stating social action as a goal. They do
not want to Òexplicitly claim that we mean to use the technology as a tool
aiming at the transformation of societies.Ó[88] They have ÒreflectedÓ on social
change. But they are reluctant to
express those reflections because, and this is a guess, they might appear
inflammatory in the pragmatic reality of their relations with existing
institutions. To stand their
ground in defense of a social change agenda might divert their attention and
very scarce resources from the real battle - gaining hands-on control of local
and regional communications infrastructure in a fluid situation where monopoly
is still amorphously present but rapidly weakening.
While I do agree
with them that confrontation is the very last resort of radical struggle, IÕm
not sure I fully understand or agree with their reluctance. I believe it is socially irresponsible
to leave a social change goal unstated in a situation where individual
participation and group action has social consequences. In Canada, radical change agents, if
they cannot be co-opted or bankrupted, are merely further marginalized. There are countries in which the
consequences are more drastic. To
be fair to new participants in community networking associations, it should be
clear up front that participation in action to increase capacity for applying
ICTS in the service of local development is radical practice for social change
and not just access to Òtools.Ó
Recently, Gary
Shearman and I formed the Vancouver Island Open Network Society (VION)[89]. Its objectives are a useful example of
what I'm trying to say here. We
wanted objectives that covered both community based socio-economic and
technological (or "infrastructure") development, but also stated an
intention to work with individuals to change ICT use behaviour. Here's what we
said:
Recognizing
that informed uses of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) are
important to Vancouver Island's development, and that community based action to
evolve their use in relation to local needs is essential, the Vancouver Island
Open Network (VION) will:
á Promote the use of advanced network
technologies and online services for socio-economic development of communities
on Vancouver Island,
á Promote cooperation in the growth of open
access network infrastructures and community based networks that will provide
reliable, high bandwidth last mile connectivity at fair prices for all
communities on Vancouver Island,
á Work to transform the way in which
citizens of communities on Vancouver Island interact with one another, with
public and private institutions, and with the world through their use of ICTs.
In stating those
objectives, we are seeking to uncover cooperative models of community
development online that increase the capacity of communities to design their
own futures. The common need that
brings us together, the Òwhy,Ó the end to be achieved, is social and economic
development and change in governance in specific communities. But what is it that we are learning by
acting more effectively in the context of online networks about increasing
community control of socio-economic decision-making? How and why does greater local control increase the well
being of communities and therefore of society overall?
If we start
collaborating by stating our conscious intention to act within the context of
that assumption, then the questions we ask ourselves about what we are learning
become different from those of the politics of mistrust. But community decisions on use are always
going to be a governance issue, as well as a technology issue. We cannot untangle the two threads.
The problem is
not to appropriate the Internet for social purpose. The problem is to struggle to retain the social purposes
that already exist within it.
Those who are committed to human development already hold the high
ground. Just assume that we own it
socially already, that the very moment its spaces are considered to be enclosed
the ÒtoolÓ ceases to exist, because its very purpose is new open networks of
social interaction. But, the danger inherent in struggle is that, inevitably
you become that which you oppose.
For example,
some might challenge me that my establishment of Industry Canada as the
boogeyman in this essay offends my espousal of all that is open, transparent
and self-organizing. That would be
fair. In my defense I would note
two things. I have stated I would
be more than happy to be proved wrong by changes in behaviour in that gray zone
where ministers and deputy ministers collide. And I have stated that such a change will, in fact, occur,
but as a phase change and not through any managed process. On the other hand, if a learned change
were actually to occur, then I would be more confident than I am in the
eventual success of the GovernmentÕs existing Òe-governanceÓ agendas.
So too, my own
reluctant choice for an anticipated future is to wait patiently for the
inevitable departure of the voices of authority. But, in the passive resistance of waiting patiently, nothing
should stop us from confidently expressing that the goal is change. Nothing
should stop us from challenging those who see us as merely one more marketing
opportunity to identify how their approach to service furthers that goal.
In fact,
responsible citizenship in an information society and a knowledge-based economy
requires that we clearly state our intention to work for change up front, in
order to eventually assess and share what we have learned by acting on that
intention. We can and must say what it is that we do. We share what is being learned about practices that increase
community capacity to use ICTs for greater control of their own socio-economic
development.
Do nothing to
imperil the capacity of communities (especially communities of practice related
to community networking!) to self organize. Networks create synergies, not fragmentation. If you feel a need to connect, then
connect. Act on that instinct. We
need as many communities of community networkers as we can get.
---------------------- end -----------------------
[1] Thomas de
Zengotita. The romance of
empire and the politics of self-love. HarperÕs Magazine, July 2003.
[2] Michael Gurstein, Effective
Use: A Community Informatics Strategy Beyond the Digital Divide, School of Management,
New Jersey Institute of Technology, in draft, 7/30/2003.
[3] Daniel PimientaÕs
circulation, 22 Aug 2003, of the MISTICA document on "Working the
Internet with a Social Vision."
http://funredes.org/mistica/english/cyberlibrary/thematic/eng_doc_olist2.html
I
am not alone in advocating the centrality of social change. But, writing as a Canadian, in a
society with very high levels of connectivity, IÕd guess weÕre a bit further
into the application of social action online than the MISTICA document, based
on the Latin American context, correctly anticipates. WeÕre at the point where real communities are answering for
themselves the questions MISTICA asks. We have operating community networks
that can be analyzed to reveal some of the essential practices of daily life
online, and therefore to express an ÒInformation SocietyÓ in being rather
defining a future in Canadian public policy based on already superceded
assumptions.
[4] http://vancouvercommunity.net/lists/info/dotforce-wsis
http://globalcn.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/gcn-wsisinfo
http://globalcn.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/gcnp
The ÒdirectorsÓ list of Telecommunities
Canada (closed)
The Broadband Community Champions list
(closed)
Garth
Graham, A manifesto for daily life online
http://globalcn.tc.ca/bucharest/Manifestod2.doc
Garth Graham. Community: the link across
digital divides. Background
paper for the panel on Community Networks and Globalization: Strategic Options,
GCN2001,
Buenos Aires, Plenary Session Panel, December 5, 2001. October 24, 2001.
http://www.globalcn2001.org/completos/panel03.doc
Garth
Graham. Societ(e) connects the dots: the role of community
networks in making the G8 dot.force relevant to the majority of the world. Global CN2000: first global
congress on community networking, Thematic Sessions Track1, global community
issues, Barcelona, November 3, 2000. www.bellanet.org/dotforce/docs/PGGraham.doc?ois=y;template=blank.htm
[5] ÒOne of the most heartening examples weÕve
encountered is a junior high school that operates as a robust community of
students, faculty and staff by agreeing to that all behaviors and decisions are
based on three rules, and just three rules: ÔTake care of yourself. Take care of each other. Take care of this place.Õ These rules are sufficient to keep them
connected and focused and open enough to allow for diverse and individual
response to any situation.Ó
Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers. The paradox and promise of community. In, ÒThe community of the
future,Ó New York, The Drucker Foundation, 1998, 15.
[6] Lawrence Lessig. The future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a
connected world. New York, Random House, 2001.
[7] Etienne Wenger. Communities of practice: learning,
meaning, and identity. Cambridge
University Press, 1998. 45.
ÒBeing
alive as human beings means that we are constantly engaged in the pursuit of
enterprises of all kinds, from ensuring our physical survival to seeking the
most lofty pleasures. As we define
these enterprises and engage in their pursuit together, we interact with each
other and with the world and we tune our relationships with each other and the
world accordingly. In other words,
we learn.Ó
ÒOver
time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the
pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relationships. These practices are thus the property
of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared
enterprise. It makes sense,
therefore, to call these kinds of communities communities of practice.Ó
[8] Prince George, BC,
meeting of August 7, 2003.
[10] At some point, gentle reader, you may be moved
the exclaim, ÒBut what heÕs proposing instead is just self Ðinterested
individualism in disguise. For two
reasons, I have no need to go there.
First, while it is true that vigilance is one half of the price of
liberty, the other half is responsibility. That word ÒresponsibilityÓ will show up many times in this
essay. The balancing of competition and cooperation inherent in self-organizing
systems forces responsible choice in the act of connecting. The systems
themselves act to reinforce responsible behaviour. Second, we are now living in networks of networks. The units or entities that connect and interact,
cells, nodes, individuals, communities, all face the same balancing equation,
the same set of internalized rules.
Our idea of what an ÒindividualÓ is or does is shifting dramatically.
[11] Yochai Benkler, CoaseÕs
penguin, or Linux and the nature of the firm:
http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF
[12]
http://www.wsis-smsi.gc.ca/act/en/consultation/summitConsultation.htm
[14] ÒThe basic trend is
this: new information technologies open up new vistas of non-zero sumness. But typically the transmutation of
non-zero sumness into positive sums depends on granting broad access to those
technologies, along with the freedom to use them well. And, over the long run,
polities that fail to respect this liberating logic tend to get punished with
relative poverty. Far from being new,
this is to some extent the story of history. One thing that is new is how vividly and swiftly the
polities get punished.Ó Robert
Wright. Non-zero: the logic of
human destiny.
New York, Pantheon Books, 2000, 198.
[15] Because globalization
has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of
people, and because it has simultaneously wired the world into networks, it
gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states
than at any time in history.
Individuals can increasingly act on the world stage directly Ð
unmediated by a state. (Thomas L.
Friedman. The Lexus and the
olive tree. Anchor Books, 2000, 14)
[16] Pico Iyer. Global
soul: jet lag, shopping malls, and the search for home. New York, Alfred A.
Knopf, 2000, p164.
[17] The idea Internet or
ÒnetworkÓ culture is developed in far greater depth than this essay allows in:
Mark
C. Taylor. The moment of
complexity: emerging network culture. University of Chicago Press, 2001.
[18] Etienne Wenger. Communities
of practice. 41
.
[19] Variously attributed to
Alex Himmelfarb, now Clerk of the Privy Council, when he was Deputy Minister of
Canadian Heritage, although I have no print reference to verify that
attribution. The question hints at
the possibility that the Government of Canada may have realized that the transformative
issues of governance online run deeper than can be addressed by Industry
CanadaÕs domination of related public policy. <
http://www.connect.gc.ca/en/100-e.asp>
[20] The quotes in this
section are taken from 2 papers by Lenihan found at:
http://www.crossingboundaries.ca/?section=reports_main
Leveraging
our diversity.
Post-industrial
governance: designing a Canadian cultural institution for the global village.
[21] ÒPublic goods are like
common lands in preindustrial society: they are abundant and available. Yet the old commons is different in
several important ways from the Internet.
Common lands are natural resources designated by a community as public. The Internet by contrast is a
collective creation. Its value
lies not in its natural qualities (good location, the right combination of
grasses, trees, and so forth) but in the cultural objects placed in it by
countless users. On the Net, each
user uploads a cultural object, thereby making it available to all other
users. The Internet is therefore a
socially constructed public good.Ó
Mark Poster. WhatÕs
the matter with the Internet?
University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 57.
[22] ÒFractalÓ is my word,
not LenihanÕs. In a society of
cultural networks, the internal rules that self-organize identity work at all
levels and are as close to universality of values as you are going to get!
[23] ÒÉknowledge, practice,
and technological artifacts are interdependent parts of an evolving social
system. This concept of community, therefore, differs from those conceptualizations
that view communities as groups of people. Instead, community is seen here as
something that does not emerge from putting together a sufficient number of
individuals. On the contrary, individuals became persons with individual
identities through their membership in the various communities they are members
of. Identity, in other words, is not something that is grounded on any possible
list of attributes of an individual person. Instead, it is grounded on
communities, with their specific systems of activity and collective meaning
processing.Ó Tuomi. Internet, innovation and open
source. Firstmonday,
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_1/tuomi/
[24] Non-zero sum games are sometimes described as
win-win, whereas in zero sum games, if I win then you lose. ÒGame theory is a formal way of
analyzing competive or cooperative interactions among people who are making
decisions Ð whether on a game board or in society at large. É
It is important to note, however, that for many circumstances game
theory does not really solve the problem at hand. Instead it helps to illuminate the task by offering a
different way of interpreting the competitive interactions and possible
results.Ó Saul Gass. What is game theory and what are
some of its applications? Scientific American, December 2003, 124. See also:
Robert
Axelrod. The complexity of
cooperation
Princeton University press, 1997.
Ken
Binmore. Just Playing. Game theory and the social contract, vol. 2. MIT, 1998.
William
Poundstone. PrisonerÕs dilemma. Doubleday,1992.
Robert
Wright. Non-zero: the logic of
human destiny. Pantheon, 2000.
[25] ÒIn electronic cafes
one cannot be authentic or be present in full presence since oneÕs body is not
there and oneÕs identity is fabricated by design. Individuals may ÒfeelÓ more real in cyberspace or more
artificial, alienated, disjointed.
Yet the machine solicitation is to reveal to oneself that one is never
oneself and that this is legitimate, a condition of the new human-machine
interface, the being of technology that has seduced humanity into its own
heterogenesis.Ó Mark Poster. WhatÕs
the matter with the Internet?
University of Minnesota Press, 2001, 37.
[26] George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson. Philosophy in the
flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic Books, 1999.
George
Lakoff. Women, fire, and
dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. University of Chicago Press, 1987, and George Lakoff and
Mark Johnson, Metaphors we live by. University
of Chicago Press, 1980.
[27] In the sense of Òeffective useÓ as defined by
Michael Gurstein in the preface quote.
[28] Jonathan Schell. No more into the breach: part two, the unconquerable
world. Harper's Magazine, April 2003, 41-55,
47.
[29] What is good? WhatÕs the basis of morality? In that new worldview, what forms the
social order of the good society?
The conventional notion is that the search for the good is objective and
it will be found in universals.
The good is something outside of, and larger than, the self. This is a view that depends on an
understanding of rationality and self-interest that empirical evidence in the
cognitive sciences is finding to be wrong. We just donÕt ÒthinkÓ (in the sense of how meaning emerges
in, or is expressed by, consciousness) like that. The good is embodied and pluralistic. It originates from the specific nature
of common embodied experience. It
is driven by EMPATHY, not by self-interest.
[30] A fuller exploration of the implications for the
policy planning process occurs in the section of this essay called, ÒChanging
the policy planning system to Internet mode.Ó
[31] ÒIn the tyranny of forecasts, everybody
struggles to meet the imaginary figure of their own making. A prediction is therefore not so much a
description of a future happening as a result of knowledge and experience. One lets happen what one wants to
happen.Ó Ingrid Molderez. Freedom
and uncertainty. Emergence, 1(3), 1999. 89.
[32] Sally Burch. Campaign for Communication Rights
in the Information Society (CRIS). Ministerial Regional Preparatory Conference of
Latin America and the Caribbean for the World Summit on the Information
Society. Bavaro, Dominican Republic, January 29-31 2003.
[33] ITU/WSIS. Draft Declaration of Principles. Document WSIS/PC-3/DT/1-E. As
at September 19/03.
[34] GCNP is an
international online community of national community networking
associations. See also the Garth
Graham papers cited in footnote no. 4.
[35] ÒWe all have our own
theories and ways of understanding the world, and our communities of practice
are places where we develop, negotiate and share them.Ó Etienne Wenger. Communities of
practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press,, 1998.
[36] The concept of an open
networking culture came from J.C.R. LickliderÉ..
ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY, Washington
25, D.C., April 23, 1963,
MEMORANDUM FOR: Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network
FROM : J. C. R. Licklider
SUBJECT : Topics for Discussion at the Forthcoming Meeting.
http://www.olografix.org/gubi/estate/libri/wizards/memo.html
In
Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider 1915-1990 The Computer as a Communication Device,Ó reprinted
from Science and Technology, April 1968.
http://www.histech.rwth-aachen.de/www/quellen/SRC61-Licklider.pdf
Chapter 7 of Netizens: An Anthology, Behind the Net: The Untold History of
the ARPANET and Computer Science, By Michael Hauben.
<http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/>
Howard Rheingold. Tools for Thought. Chapter
Ten: The New Old Boys from the ARPAnet
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/7.html
David S. Bennahum. Net Result; How the Internet
was built. Posted Tuesday, August 27, 1996.
ÒWhat emerged from the debate was strong evidence
that the networking community felt a deep stake in the creation of the Net,
ARPA funding or no ARPA funding, and was trying jealously to guard its right to
determine its future. In a realm where, in a sense, personal identity is
defined entirely by the words people choose, free speech seemed second only to
concern for the survival of the realm itself.Ó
[This excerpt of Wizards, a history of email titled "Talking Headers," appeared in The Washington Post Magazine on August 4, 1996. It was edited by Bob Thompson and John Cotter.] Copyright 1996 by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. From the book Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Simon & Schuster Inc. Printed by permission.
http://www.olografix.org/gubi/estate/libri/wizards/email.html
[37] In organizations such
as the Internet Engineering Task Force, the key criteria for decision making is
Òrough consensus and running code.Ó
[38] Jeffrey Roy. Rethinking
communities: aligning technology and governance. Lac Carling GovernmentsÕ Review,
Special edition, Smart Communities, July 2001.
http://www.itworldcanada.com/portals/portalDisplay.cfm?oid=009E6228-3176-4A84-987A4CE809121E7C
[39] ÒNew communications theorists will arise, as if
from straight out of the asphalt, the concrete, the vinyl tiles, or the
Permapour flooring. But one thing
will not change. First they will
have to contend with McLuhan.Ó Tom
Wolfe, in the forward to; Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines. Understanding me: lectures and
interviews by Marshall McLuhan. McClelland and Stewart, 2003.
[40] William J. Mitchell. City of bits, MIT Press, 1995, 49.
Or,
to put it another way: ÒFrom its simplest to its most complex forms, life
emerges in networks comprised of webs of interconnected webs. É In terms of
network structure, this means that the site of emergence falls between too
little connectivity, where systems are frozen, and too much connectivity, where
they are chaotic. At a critical
juncture, more becomes different. This is the tipping point where order emerges
from disorder and patterns develop from noise.Ó Mark C. Taylor. The moment
of complexity: emerging network culture. 187.
[41] MISTICA
[42] Ikka Tuomi. Internet, innovation and open
source: actors in the network.
Firstmonday,
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_1/tuomi/
[43] MISTICA
[44] I still like Bateson's definition of information
as, "the difference that makes a difference," because it is both
relational and self-referential at the same time. I'm pretty sure the processes of knowing and (in)forming are
relational, self-referential and recursive. I think Bateson left "recursive" out of the definition. But it doesnÕt take much thinking about
dynamic systems to realize that the real definition, when it comes, will
include it.
Gregory
Bateson. Mind and nature: a necessary unity. Bantam Books, 1980. pp. 72, 105.
[45] MISTICA
[46] ÒAccording to actor-network
theory, society consists of networks of both human and non-human actors. É As the actors in the network can be
both human and non-human, actor network theorists sometimes use the term actant
to refer to such actors. Society, organizations, agents, and machines are all
effects generated through the interactions of actor-networks. A person, for
example, cannot be understood as an isolated entity; instead, he or she is
always linked to a heterogeneous network of resources and agents that define the
person as the specific person in question. Without his or her instruments, laboratory, and social
relationships, a scientists, for example, loses his or her identity as a
scientist.Ó Tuomi. Internet,
innovation and open source.
If you read IBM's 1 page statement of the 8 characteristics of an autonomic computing system, which resembles a biological nervous systemÉ..
http://www.research.ibm.com/autonomic/overview/elements.html
....you
realize that what they are NOT quite saying is that such systems really are
alive! They would interact with
the world around them as autonomous agents. People do that too, although perhaps not with exactly the
same agendas. For example, even
now programmers say that code doesn't really work very well outside of the
social context in which it was written.
When the community of practice that wrote the code is down sized,
outsourced or laid off, you can buy the drives and the software and the
copyright. But the damn
stuff just won't interact with you because you just don't get the language of
the country that grew it.
Systems of human-machine interaction are social networks already. What IBM's research does is pay
attention to that fact.
In
the short-term, the word "infrastructure" seems to serve for a common
understanding of what needs to get done about broadband now. But in the long term, any really good
biological nervous system is going to give you an argument about the
appropriateness of any such label.
[47] To ÒoccurÓ does not mean to be active in use. It
has recently become clear that decisions to link web pages are not random. The patterns that form follow the rules
of power laws. You cannot predict
in advance which are the links that use will reinforce. See, for example; Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and Eric Bonabeau,
Scale-free networks. Scientific American, May 2003 60-69. Bernardo A. Huberman. The laws of
the web: patterns in the ecology of information. MIT Press, 2001.
[48] The more we make our technologies resemble and
behave like ourselves the more anthropomorphic or convivial they become. Then our relations with them cease to
be matters of Òuse.Ó Our
relation to such tools becomes inherently social. That is to say, we have begun to use technologies of
communication to structure models of ourselves that interact with other
models. To the degree that those
avatars or agents act autonomously, our social relations become complex in a
new way. What do you say to a tool that becomes anthropomorphicized? You say, ÒHello.Ó
[49] Obviously this is a
metaphor of community as mind. In
this metaphor, the mental states of communicating individuals replace neurons,
and acts of speech replace neurochemical transmitters. The collective memory of a community
establishes itself when certain subsets of individuals within it communicate
with one another repeatedly about certain topics or concerns. Such communications involve and evolve
the expression of ideas about the context of common experience. Repeated
interactive communications cause particular forms of expression (the way of
seeing and speaking to the issue) to increase their potential to be
descriptively useful.
As
it is used, a language dynamically alters the semantic and linguistic forms of
expression that convey the quality of its usersÕ experience. Individuals with new ways of seeing
introduce new turns of phrase.
Existing participants experiment with different ways of expressing
themselves. Existing participants
who experience variety in their circumstances perceive the meaning of
long-standing patterns of expression in new ways. Some of these speech acts, the differences that make a
difference, get reinforced. Thus
they alter the ways in which the perception of common experience is shared and
therefore the ways in which the collective behaviours of the community interact
with the worlds it inhabits. Variation in language, for example shifts in
dialects, is evidence that a community of like-minds is perceiving and
remembering its world in a particular way. That is to say, language in common use among community members
in side the community will alter to encode (or to ÒmemorizeÓ), the ways in
which the community overall interacts outside the boundaries of itself.
[51] For example: "In affect, if not in intent,
generated in the social spaces of what-eveness, the flash mob is the practical
critique of the politics of representation: making an autonomous spectacle out
of oneself. It doesn't represent
anything but it expresses something quite unique: the power of combination to
produce affect." Arianna Bove and Erik Empson. Online generation.
Makeworld paper#3, September 2003, p 2. www.makeworlds.org
[52] Mark C. Taylor. The
moment of complexity: emerging network culture. 4-5.
[55] Communist Party of
Vietnam, Directive No 58-CT/TW of October 17, 2000, on Accelerating the use
and development of information technology for the cause of industrialization,
modernization.
http://www.gaia.ca/appendixd.pdf
[56] Garth Graham. Leapfrog
strategies for VietnamÕs digital economy. Hanoi, VCIT, January10. 2001. http://www.gaia.ca/appendixe.pdf
[58] Ursula Franklin. Beyond
the hype: thinking about the information highway, Address, Breakfast on the Hill
Seminars, Social Science Federation of Canada. ÒIt is important to me to define
technology and to say that technology, in my definition, is practice. Technology is, essentially, the way we
do things. It is quite clear that
many of the human tasks of providing shelter, food, guidance and order have not
changed throughout history, however, how we provide food, shelter, health and
housing has changed profoundly.
The way we do things Ð which today involves, of course, machines, but
also considerable knowledge and organization, planning and management. That is what I call technology, i.e.
the way that things are done around here.Ó This definition directly encompasses McLuhanÕs, Òthe medium
is the message.Ó
[59] Garth Graham. The animation of community: a quiz
on practices for living in a networked society. June 1998,
unpublished.
[60] Kim Echlin . Fiddle and Bow: A Fugue Essay. In ÒTaking Risks: Literary Journalism
from the Edge.Ó Edited by: Barbara
Moon and Don Obe. Banff Centre
Press, 1998.
[61] In fact, community
cannot sustain itself as a complex adaptive system unless its constituent
individuals have autonomy in their choice of membership.
[62] Kevin Kelly. The nine laws of God.
[63] Or, for that matter,
Canada.
[64] Rick Levine,
Christopher Locke, Doc Searles and David Weinberger. The Cluetrain manifesto: the end of business as usual. Cambridge, Mass., Perseus Books, 1999.
[65] When I imagine being
ÒinsideÓ or ÒoutsideÓ a community, I am applying a sort of spatial container
metaphor. Such metaphors are
everywhere. For example, consider
the sentence, ÒBy putting community online, we begin to
transcend the limits of that physical understanding.Ó
[66] Steve Cisler. Digital
divide: metastatsis of a buzzword.
Makeworld paper#3, September 2003, p 6. www.makeworlds.org
[67] Fear - agitation in the
presence or anticipation of danger; profound reverence or awe, especially
toward God; alarm, misapprehension, distrust, terror.
[68] International Records
Management Trust. Evidence-based
governance in the electronic age: a World Bank / International Records
Management Trust partnership project. (IRMT website: www.irmt.org) This reference is not meant to
disparage the substantial achievements of IRMT in its own context. I refer to it to provide contrast with
what I am not talking about. What
I do know is that an Òelectronic recordÓ is not essential to the formation of
community online, but that ÓcommunityÓ is an essential governance principle in
understanding the cultures of networked societies.
[69] Mark Poster. 125.
[70] ÒÉwhat is at stake is
the direct solicitation to construct identities in the course of communications
practices. Individuals invent
themselves and do so repeatedly and differentially in the course of conversing
or messaging electronically.Ó Mark
Poster, 183.
[71] James M. Buchanan and
Richard A. Musgrave. Public
finance and public choice: two contrasting views of the state. The MIT Press, 1999, 18.
[72] Etienne Wenger. Communities
of practice.
ÒÉlearning is so fundamental to the social order we live by that theorizing
about one is tantamount to theorizing about the other.Ó 15.
[73] Mark C. Talor. The moment of complexity: emerging
network culture.
212.
[74] Social
AppropriationÉ. Beyond their
functional uses, ICTs can contribute to development when there is social
appropriation of Internet resources.
Social appropriation occurs when Internet resources help transform daily
life by contributing to the solution of concrete problems. Evidence of appropriation is not found
in the use of ICTs, but rather in the changes that they have brought about in
the real world. Only when Internet
resources become useful tools for transforming everyday life do ICTs reach
their full development potential. (Ricardo Gomez and Juliana Martinez. The InternetÉWhy? And What for? Ottawa, IDRC, 2001, 6-7.)
[75] I am no longer
comfortable with the idea of cyberspace (apologies to William Gibson). The ÒcyberÓ part of the word comes from
governance in the sense of mechanistic feedback systems, and the reference to
ÒspaceÓ supplies an inadequate spatial metaphor to the locus of our
collaborative practices online.
Supplying dimensionality just confuses our sense of what is happening to
our relationships in processes of collective learning.
[76] Stafford Beer. Diagnosing
the system for organizations.
Wiley, 1985.
[77] As Henry McCandless
says, ÒWe have confused responsibility, the obligation to act, with
accountability, the obligation to answer for responsibilities Ð which means
having authorities report their intentions and their reasoning, and later what
resulted from their actions.Ó Henry McCandless. A citizenÕs guide to public accountability: changing the
relationships between citizens and authorities. Victoria, BC, Trafford Publishing,
2002, 6.
[78] ÒIt is we, given that
the Mind can provide imaginary representations of impossible worlds, who ask
things to be what they are not. And, when they carry on being what they are, we think they
are telling us no, and setting limits for us.Ó Umberto Eco. On
being. In: Kant and the Platypus: essays on
language and cognition. Vintage, 2000. 56.
[79] Any community that
shares a "world" is necessarily bound into a network of
responsibility. Without the
continuing support of a community, any world (that is, any space of being) will
begin to fall apart. If cyberspace
teaches us anything, it is that the worlds we conceive (the spaces we
"inhabit") are communal projects requiring ongoing communal
responsibility. (Margaret
Wertheim. The pearly gates of cyberspace. New York, Norton, 1999, 304.)
[80] But what about the view
that globalization is a kind of cultural conquest? ÉWhere governments reflect
the preferences and beliefs of most citizens, democratically or otherwise, and
where those preferences call for cultural distinctiveness and non-western
values, economic integration does not militate against diversity, least of all
against religious diversity. In
the west, globalization has been running at full power for years. Has it mashed the United States,
France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Japan into a homogeneous cultural
putty? It has not, and there is no
reason why it ever should. (ÒIs globalization doomed?Ó The Economist, September 29, 2001.
p14.)
[81] My guess is that weÕll
find the distribution of successful attempts to achieve community online
follows a power law (20% of all attempts will satisfy 80% of human
needs?). That could mean for one success
in achieving community start five networks, and be prepared to abandon four.
[82] ÒIt is perhaps not a
surprise that photography developed as a technological medium in the industrial
age, when reality started to disappear. It is even perhaps the disappearance of
reality that triggered this technical form. Reality found a way to mutate into
an image. This puts into question our simplistic explanations about the birth
of technology and the advent of the modern world. It is perhaps not
technologies and media which have caused our now famous disappearance of
reality. On the contrary, it is probable that all our technologies (fatal
offsprings that they are) arise from the gradual extinction of reality.Ó Francois Debrix, translator. Photography,
Or The Writing Of Light, Ctheory 4/12/2000. A Translation of Jean Baudrillard,
"La Photographie ou l'Ecriture de la Lumiere: Litteralite de
l'Image," in L'Echange Impossible (The Impossible Exchange). Paris:
Galilee, 1999: pp. 175-184.
http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=126#note1
Also,
ÒThe worldÕs effect on the mind is a function of the relationship of the knower
to that world. Concepts do not
have referential or objective properties but rather interactional properties that index the position
of the knower. There is no
GodÕs-eye view of reality for human beings.Ó Bradd Shore. Culture in mind: cognition, culture, and the
problem of meaning. New York, Oxford University Press,
1996, 333.
[83] Peter GzowskiÕs advice to MacleanÕs Magazine,
published in the Globe and Mail, March 31, 2001.
[84] ÒAny biosphere expands
the dimensionality of its adjacent possible, on average, as rapidly as
possible.Ó Stuart Kaufman, Investigations. Oxford University Press, 2000.
151. In effect, a dynamic system
is a living system if it follows KaufmanÕs law.
[85] ÒClearly, we need an
open dialogue between politicians and the public, and between public servants
and politicians, to ensure that the implications of the electronic world for
our democratic institutions and processes are understood and dealt with
constructively. And I know that that dialogue is not taking place in Canada
today.Ó David Zussman. Governance
in the public service: how is technology changing the rules? Keynote address: Commonwealth Centre
for Electronic Governance Seminar, Integrating government with new
technologies: how is technology changing the public sector? Ottawa, February 25, 2002, 6.
[86] Osvaldo Leon, Sally
Burch and Eduardo Tamayo. Social
movements on the Net.
Quito, Agencia Latinoamericana de Informacion, September, 2001.
[87] In fact, as a
consequence of writing this essay, I discovered I ÒinhabitÓ community
networking associations at all ÒlevelsÓ of the spatial hierarchies of
governance Ð local, regional, provincial, national and international. To be forced to wear that many ÒhatsÓ
is a condition of my dependency.
[88] MISTICA