Everything I know, I did not learn in kindergarten. I didn’t go to kindergarten. Perhaps that was good, as that was the year that my father died, and I still did not speak much English anyway. It could have made for a stressful year. No kindergarten meant I could start school a bit later and I think I was really ready when I entered that one-room schoolhouse which was probably the best learning environment I ever had.

There were only three of us in Grade One, so I was also able to listen to what was going on in the Second Grade, in the same row, just ahead of me. Recess and lunch were usually fun, with all ages playing games together. There were not enough students in any one grade to form a dominant group. I was later home-schooled by my mother who never had any formal education in English. This was my introduction to public education.

I went to university straight out of high school and did a standard four-year degree. I got a gentleman’s pass from the Royal Military College and then put my books away. What remains of my undergraduate education is not so much my knowledge of History as my fluency in French. It wasn’t the classes that helped me master the language, but the girl I met in Québec between first and second year. That was real informal learning, watching morning TV cartoons with her young niece, whose French wasn’t too much more advanced than mine. I was one of only a few of my classmates who achieved fluency from no ability at all on entry. Motivation was the critical part of my learning.

Thirteen years later I went to graduate school part-time, with a full-time job and a young family. I could not have done it without the support of my wife. I received a graduate degree in Education but my real education has been in the 14 years since. I have been learning mostly online, first by accessing all of the information available on the web that interested me and more recently by connecting to a worldwide network of people, most of whom I have not met face-to-face. This network now numbers in the thousands.

I have learned that it was a shotgun wedding between robber baron capitalists and progressives, who at the turn of the last century helped to create our public education system, with age-based cohorts, classrooms, bells and a standardized curriculum. The capitalists needed workers who could read instructions, while progressives, like Moses Coady, founder of the Antigonish movement, felt it their mission to help society.

I have noticed with our boys now finishing up at school, that for the most part, the current system does not help them learn. If anything, it stops them from learning. One-size fits nobody, I call it. We were lucky, in that one or both of us parents could be at home during the day. Our boys could stay at home from time to time, such as the year one was frequently bullied — by the teacher. They knew they always had an option not to go to school. If I had to do it over again, I would pull our kids out of the system during middle school and let them become self-directed learners, later having them rejoin their friends in high school. Middle school was a needlessly stressful time for our family.

When I went to school, if a book was not available in the library system, in reality, it did not exist. Now my children can find and read most of what they need. The shift from scarcity to abundance of information is one of the many reasons we need educational reform. There can be no standard curriculum when everything is miscellaneous, as Cluetrain.com co-author Dave Weinberger says. Courses are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and connections were few. With ubiquitous computing, that time is over. Our children know that.

I watch how our kids learn to play computer games. There is no rule book. The fun of the game is in figuring it out. This is always done collaboratively. Collaboration seems natural to this generation. While studying, Facebook is usually open and classmates send messages back and forth as they share in their learning. The whole notion of cheating may be gone in a generation.

I think this generation will be one of the last in the current system. I hope the next public education system is not another shotgun wedding, or a reaction to change, like charter schools can be. Actually, I hope that it’s not a system at all. It should be a network, like the Internet — open, with no centre, using only basic protocols and allowing for innovation at the edges. If we let our children design it, that is most likely what it would be like. It might look like Stockholm’s school without classrooms or something even more radical.

Modern Education was the Result of a Shotgun Wedding

I liken our dominant educational structure as the offspring of a shotgun wedding between industrialists who needed literate workers to operate their machinery, and progressives who wanted to lift up the common person from poverty and drudgery. It wasn’t an easy marriage, and the children are a tad dysfunctional now. The union was never able to clearly identify the guiding principle of education. One book that has influenced many of my opinions on public education is Kieran Egan’s, The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding. Egan says that Western education is based on three incompatible principles, where all three can never be achieved in a single system.

1. Education as Socialization (age cohorts, class groupings, team sports)
2. Education as learning about Truth & Reality, based on Plato (varied subjects, academic material, connection to culture)
3. Education as discovery of our nature, based on Rousseau (personal sense-making, teacher as facilitator)

If you put emphasis on one of these principles, the others get ignored. The industrialists would have preferred education as socialization and the progressives would have leaned toward education as learning about truth. We have seen some attempts, like Waldorf schools, to develop systems that promote education as discovery of our nature, but that does not go well with a standardized curriculum, whether it has a corporatist agenda or a progressive one.

Shotgun Wedding 2.0

I think we may soon get invited to another shotgun wedding, this time between techno-utopians, with financial speculators as bridesmaids, and libertarians, who feel the state and teachers have screwed-up education. It’s education as socialization, but socialization to the dominant business paradigm. But any problems with the education system are a result of the governance and economic environment in which it resides. It is through democracy, all of us, that we can improve education. Public education does not need a VC-backed Silicon Valley start-up to be saved. It needs more of us to participate in it. It needs democracy.

If social business is merely a hollow shell without democracy then the same goes for the new social education, currently manifested as xMOOC’s, those backed by large institutions or private interests. Audrey Watters provides a good overview of the flaws around the notion that our new education couple will be any better than the last arranged marriage:

“Hacking Your Education advances the notion that education is a personal (financial) investment rather than a public good. The School in the Cloud project posits that education is a corporate (financial) investment rather than a public good. Why fund public schools when we can put a kiosk in a tech company’s annex? Why fund public schools when you can learn anything online?

The future that TED Talks paint doesn’t want us to think too deeply as we ask these questions. But what happens,when we “hack education” in such a way that our public institutions are dismantled? What happens to that public good? What happens to community? What happens to local economies? What happens to social justice?

As such, the vision for the future of education offered in Stephens’ new book is an individualist and incredibly elitist one. It contains a grossly unexamined exceptionalism, much like the Hole in the Wall which, at the end of the day, worked best for the strongest boys on the streets.

So despite their claims to be liberatory — with the focus on “the learner” and “the child” — this hacking of education by Mitra and Stephens is politically regressive. It is however likely to be good business for the legions of tech entrepreneurs in the audience.” —Audrey Watters

We have not yet been able to effectively integrate democracy and business. Our current education systems, while flawed, still have some democratic oversight. In a networked world, our society needs to be more democratic, not less. Just as some business leaders are beginning to realize the potential of democracy in the enterprise, now is not the time to remove democracy from education. If work is learning, and learning is the work, there is little hope for democratic business if education becomes a business. For our future to remain democratic, both education and business need to be based on its fundamental principles. We are at a crossroads. Let’s cancel this wedding.

It’s back to school time and education issues come to the fore with a provincial election in a few weeks. According to a local professor, the New Brunswick education system is too centralized – but it’s not just education. Addressing the problems of centralization is an issue with all established institutions as we shift from an industrial to a networked economy. First we might look at the underlying premises of the current system. According to SFU Professor Kieran Egan, in The Educated Mind, three premises compete for attention in our public education systems:

1. education as socialization
2. education as a quest for truth (Plato)
3. education as the realization of individual potential (Rousseau)

Since no one premise can dominate without precluding the others, we continue to have conflict in our education system. When one dominates, then the others get less attention. We see this in initiatives like “no child left behind” or the demise of music and physical education in the Canadian public school systems. There is no clear idea of what our education systems are trying to achieve, and we constantly go through “flavour of the year” initiatives, like the early French immersion programme in New Brunswick. But none of these three approaches is appropriate for a modern society, as Egan explains:

“Socialization to generally agreed norms and values that we have inherited is no longer straightforwardly viable in modern multicultural societies undergoing rapid technology-driven changes. The Platonic program comes with ideas about reaching a transcendent truth or privileged knowledge that is no longer credible. The conception of individual development we have inherited is based on a belief in some culture-neutral process that is no longer sustainable.”

Public education has become all things to all people, and this conflict is clear in Egan’s book. You cannot socialize, seek the truth, and realize individual potential all at the same time – within a single, enclosed system. Our public education system was created to give equal access to all (a good thing) and to prepare workers for industrial jobs (a self-serving thing for the industrialists). Public education was embraced by reformers as well as factory owners. I call it a shotgun wedding.

The lack of agreement on what our education system should be is muddying the waters in our discussions about learning. When reduced to the basic process, learning is an individual and personal activity. But learning also has significant social aspects and can be helped or hindered in many ways. How we build systems to nurture, support, or coerce it, are the issues that we can address as a community.

While the industrialists would have preferred education as socialization and the progressives would have leaned toward education as learning about truth, we are stuck with a standardized curriculum that benefits few. In addition, the education system is in for some new competition. We may soon get invited to another shotgun wedding, this time between techno-utopians, with financial speculators as bridesmaids, and libertarians, who feel the state and teachers have screwed-up education. It will be education as socialization, but socialization to the dominant business paradigm. However, problems with any education system are mostly a result of the governance and economic environment in which it resides.

What can New Brunswick do?

• Decentralize.
• Allow for experimentation at the local level.
• Empower teachers in a transparent manner so everyone can see what is happening.

Sadly, I think the province will continue to stumble into an increasingly complex future, for which its institutions are poorly prepared.

I will be speaking this Wednesday in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France at a conference on ‘The Smart City, the Cloud, and Citizens’ (dead link).  My presentation will be short and focused. Here are the main points, in English. The French version may be webcast, so watch my Twitter feed for updates.

We are connecting our cities to the cloud via the internet of everything, so that objects share data with each other. With these data, governments, organizations, and companies can sense patterns and make decisions – from traffic control to geographically specific advertising. But this is merely the tip of the iceberg of the real potential of smart cities and digital networks. A major challenge for society will be to enable an intelligent and aggressively engaged citizenry to build upon the potential of these growing digital interconnections.

For the past century we have compartmentalized the life of the citizen. At work, the citizen is an ‘employee’. Outside the office he may be a ‘consumer’. Sometimes she is referred to as a ‘taxpayer’. All of these are constraining labels, ignoring the full spectrum of citizenship. As the network era connects people and things, society needs to reconnect with the multifaceted citizen. This is the primary role the smart city can play.

The last century’s division of work and personal life are still evident in many organizations where employees are cut off from their online social networks. Workers are often expected to put their personal lives aside and concentrate on the work at hand for eight or more hours per day. But as we have connected computers and devices, we have made standardized work obsolete. In the emerging workplace, where complex and creative tasks become the norm, work cannot remain isolated from the rest of the world.

Complex work requires multiple perspectives and non-linear processes. While teams still need time and space to get things done, they also have to stay connected to the quickly-changing external environment. This week’s events in Greece and Europe show the volatility of interconnected political-financial systems. The challenge for the modern workplace is to connect external social systems with internal projects, and still remain capable of getting deadline-driven work done. This balance requires organizational systems that enable knowledge to flow, but more importantly it requires workers who are also engaged citizens.

Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book ‘Democracy in America’ based on his travels in 1831, identified ‘associations’ of citizens to be a driving force in the new democracy. These associations could also be described as communities of practice – self-forming groups of engaged citizens. John McKnight, in The Careless Society, described these groups as having three key capabilities: “the power to decide there was a problem, the power to decide how to solve the problem – that is, the expert’s power – and then the power to solve the problem”. The association of engaged and connected citizens that enabled a functioning democracy in early America is now necessary in the early network era. As de Tocqueville saw how a society could function without an aristocracy, we now must see how companies can function without a managerial elite, and cities can operate without bureaucratic overlords.

Today, the connected citizen must concurrently be the connected worker, as well as the connected taxpayer and the connected consumer, among many other roles. Cities can play an important part in this transition. They are the logical place for citizens to act out their roles on a daily basis. For example, co-working spaces are one way to enable the necessary cross-pollination of ideas and action. Public transportation infrastructure can enable more serendipitous encounters between citizens. Public spaces and walkable communities can encourage citizens to connect. Smart technologies should be designed to enable more connections between citizens.

The smart citizen is connected: to communities of practice, extended social networks, the community, and society. Helping citizens engage intelligently is another role that smart cities can play. In addition to creating space, opportunities to develop skills and abilities should be supported. Cities should be encouraging citizens to seek new connections and knowledge, make sense of these in a disciplined manner, and share their knowledge. Smart cities need smart citizens.

As networks become the dominant organizational form, disciplines like personal knowledge mastery will be essential for all knowledge workers.

“By creating millions of networked people, financially exploited but with the whole of human intelligence one thumb-swipe away, info-capitalism has created a new agent of change in history: the educated and connected human being.” – End of Capitalism

Being educated is not enough. Effective citizens in a post-job, creative economy will also have to be connected. As objects get connected, the platform owners will aggregate more power and control.  Smart cities without smart citizens will result in the tyranny of the platform capitalists.

“In truth, competing visions of the smart city are proxies for competing visions of society, and in particular about who holds power in society. ‘In the end, the smart city will destroy democracy,’ Hollis warns. ‘Like Google, they’ll have enough data not to have to ask you what you want.’” – Smart Cities Destroy Democracy

Power in networks is based on reputation which is developed through relationships. For citizens to exert power in the network era, they must be connected. Elected representatives have been the standard medium that citizens have used to exert their democratic power. But as everything gets connected, complexity will increase, and reaction times decrease. A connected citizenry can be an effective way to re-balance democratic power. But in order to do so, all citizens must make the effort to be connected and take the time to discuss important issues. No person can know everything, but connected people can know more than any individual, elected or appointed. Connecting to others is no longer a luxury, it is essential in order to keep our democracies alive.

Democracy vs Platform Capitalism

Today marks my 13th anniversary of freelancing. It was a situation I was forced into, getting pushed out of the company where I worked, but I do not regret. The only downside to freelancing, in my experience, is the uncertain financial situation. Perhaps that’s a small price to pay for freedom.

I have been traveling these past few weeks and not blogging much. This will continue through June with more travel planned. A few ideas have been percolating in my ‘to be blogged’ notes and I plan to expand upon them over the Summer.

The essence that humans are not computers, and should never be compared to them is something I want to discuss more. Big data is nothing without human insight and empathy to interpret it. Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California, says that, “Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will” be guided by algorithms. Networked computers can be used to enable human creativity, or control it. This is why we need an aggressively engaged citizenry.

The traditional guardians of our democracy, such as the Fourth Estate and our legislators, are in the thrall of the new platform monopolists. Interconnected and engaged citizens are our hope for a better future. We need to learn how to navigate the emerging network era. People have to take control of their learning: being connected, mobile, and global while conversely contractual, part-time, and local.

After 13 years, I continue to be directed by a vision of democratic workplaces for everyone. There is still a long way to go but the conversation is being advanced on many fronts. This is what happens when you connect 3 billion people to each other. I intend to continue to be engaged, for at least another 13 years

Image: adapting to perpetual beta

Related Reading:

Hierarchies in perpetual beta

Turmoil and Transition

David Ronfeldt, originator of the TIMN framework (Tribes + Institutions + Markets + Networks) has written a series of posts on what current political changes mean from this perspective.

“— From a TIMN perspective, the reasons for ‘American exceptionalism’ lie mainly in our approach to the T form. We have welcomed immigrants and found ways to enable people from all backgrounds and orientations to live together. Trumpish tribalism will undermine that basis of American exceptionalism, especially if he and his cohorts claim to be restoring it.

— TIMN implies that malignant tribalization will make our society far more vulnerable to information warfare. The ultimate goal of strategic information warfare at the societal level, whether waged by foreign or domestic actors, is to tribalize a society, the better to divide and conquer it.

— According to TIMN, America is moving into a new/next phase of social evolution — it’s evolving from a triform into a quadriform society. Just what the addition of a +N sector will mean is far from clear, and this is not the place to elaborate. But I do want to note that Trumpish tribalism, if it doesn’t abate, seems likely to imperil the prospects for getting to +N for years to come (though I can also see opportunities arising in some respects). ” —David Ronfeldt

TIMN by David Ronfeldt

We have observed that the Tribal form (e.g. families, clans) continues to exist even when Institutions or Markets are the dominant organizational form. The challenge today is that many people no longer trust traditional institutions (e.g. church, government, banks) and there is diminishing faith in our Markets (e.g. repeal of TPP, Brexit). What is missing is an appealing network model that represents not globalism but rather internationalism, where diverse people can connect without the intermediation of global platforms and companies running on a market agenda. Platform co-ops are one such option.

If we want to avoid a return to Tribal conflict and a narrow view of society, we need to build and test alternative network models: now. We are in desperate need of new models for living, working, and learning. The great work of our time is to design, build, and test new organizational models that reflect our democratic values and can function in an interconnected world. Failure by current generations to do so will leave the next ones to deal with the reactionary forces of tribalism, corporatism, and perhaps even fascism.

Open information and access to our common knowledge assets is required. We can only deal with complex systems and problems collectively. I used to think that the great work to be done at the beginning of this century was the democratization of the workplace. This is no longer enough. Our great work today is the re-democratization of society. Everything is now being communicated, and fragmented, at an electric pace. Change happens quickly in an electric, and now digital, age.

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” —Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Image: perpetual beta series

Gamers

Learning is the new literacy. Personal computers are just one example. We buy new ones every few years. Operating systems change. Programs change, get replaced, or become obsolete. But we often continue with the same habits until something goes wrong. Few of us do the equivalent of ‘looking under the hood’. We learn enough to get our work done, but often do not take time to understand the underlying systems and logic.

By not being active learners we lose the agility to react quickly to changing situations. We have to take the time to keep learning. It’s an effort that too many of us avoid. When was the last time you learned a new computer program? How many books do you read? When did you try to master a new skill? These are things we need to make a priority. If not, we risk becoming obsolete before our time. Aiming for retirement is not a bad thing, but what happens when it is forced on us and we are not ready?

“Statistics Canada estimates 158,400 people aged 55 to 64 were handed permanent layoffs in 2015. Is there any hope of a comfortable retirement for those folks?” – CBC News

When our son was in junior high school he came home one afternoon and said, “There seem to be two types of people, Dad.” “What are they?” I asked. “Gamers, and non-gamers”, he responded. As an active computer gamer, he was comfortable being given a problem with no evident solution. Most computer games do not come with instructions, as learning how to master the game is part of the game. He said that other students who were not gamers did not have any strategies on how to look at the problem they were given, as there was no set-step method provided by the teacher.

How do gamers learn? They try things out and usually fail: lots of times. They learn from these mistakes and look for patterns. If they get stuck, they check out what others have shared, in online forums. They may ask a friend for help. Sometimes they will look for a ‘hack’, or a way around an impasse. Once they learn something, they might record it and share it, so others can learn. What they do not do is look for the rule book.

There are similarities in learning how to participate on the Internet or the Web. Some people just want a formula or procedure so they can get on with their business. Facebook makes this very easy. Others want to have more control. Twitter provides a bit more. But there are others who really want to understand what they are doing. They might set up their own online community using open source software and their own servers. While we cannot all be computer geeks, we live in a computer-driven network age. We ignore automation, the Cloud, the Internet of Things, and surveillance technologies at our peril.

Learning is the only literacy that will enable us to counter the negative effects of digital technologies. This literacy is also social. It is learning through communities of practice and knowledge networks, which we have to engage with to make collective sense. How many of those permanently laid-off workers over 55 have external professional networks that can help them find work or get support? Over the years I have met many people in their 40’s or 50’s who suddenly find themselves without work. Most of them do not have a professional network beyond their organization where they may have worked for a decade or more. Once outside the company, they are adrift.

Being an active learner by connecting with others outside our everyday lives can expose us to a diversity of skills, knowledge, and perspectives. In a creative economy we are only as good as our networks. An effective network encourages us to keep learning. A good community of practice changes our practice. The more often we change, the better we get at it. For example, my Personal Knowledge Mastery framework was developed from the necessity to develop skills to be competitive in the consulting market. PKMastery is one way to push ourselves to keep on learning. There are many other ways to keep up, but active learning in social networks is no longer a luxury.

Artists

Artists are like gamers as they too have to fail many times as they master their craft. Today, we all need to think like gamers and artists. But being an artist is not easy. Scott Berkun says that, “it’s a discovery all artists make: the most interesting and bravest work is likely the hardest to make a living from.” There are no simple recipes to become an artist.

The artistic mindset is essential to help navigate the complex relationships of the network era. Artists understand media. The age of print promoted linear thinking but digital media require more divergent thinking. Marshall McLuhan observed that, “Print centralizes socially and fragments psychically, whereas the electric media bring man together in a tribal village that is a rich and creative mix, where there is actually more room for creative diversity than within the homogenized mass urban society of Western man.” Today, the world needs more people with an artist’s perception.

One challenge with thinking, acting, and working like an artist is that the mind-set is not suitable for traditional salaried employment. Most self-employed people would not return to salaried work, knowing the lifestyle would be too constraining. But the lack of constraints also means a lack of stability. Living off of your intellectual property is a challenge. If you are considering an artistic approach to life and work, look for other artists. It is from them that you will learn the most. First find a community of practice.

Aggressively Engaged Citizens

For the past century we have compartmentalized the life of the citizen. At work, the citizen is an ‘employee’. Outside the office he may be a ‘consumer’. Sometimes she is referred to as a ‘taxpayer’. All of these are constraining labels, ignoring the full spectrum of citizenship. As the network era connects people and things, society needs to reconnect with the multifaceted citizen. Gamers and artists already blur these lines.

The last century’s division of work and personal life are still evident in many organizations where employees are cut off from their online social networks. Workers are often expected to put their personal lives aside and concentrate on the work at hand for eight or more hours per day. But as we have connected computers and devices, we have made standardized work obsolete. In the emerging workplace, where complex and creative tasks become the norm, work cannot remain isolated from the rest of the world.

Complex work requires multiple perspectives and non-linear processes. While work teams still need time and space to get things done, they also have to stay connected to the quickly-changing external environment. The challenge for the modern workplace is to connect external social networks with internal projects, and still remain capable of getting deadline-driven work done. This balance requires organizational systems that enable knowledge to flow, but more importantly it requires workers who are also engaged citizens.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America based on his travels in 1831, and identified ‘associations’ of citizens to be a driving force in the new democracy. These associations could also be described as communities of practice – self-forming groups of engaged citizens. John McKnight, in The Careless Society, described these groups as having three key capabilities: “the power to decide there was a problem, the power to decide how to solve the problem – that is, the expert’s power – and then the power to solve the problem”. The association of engaged and connected citizens that enabled a functioning democracy in early America is now necessary in the early network era. As de Tocqueville saw how a society could function without an aristocracy, we now must see how companies can function without a managerial elite, and cities can operate without bureaucratic overlords.

Both the gamer and artist mindsets can help us navigate the network era. We need to probe the system, detect patterns, and create something new. It’s time to prepare for a hustle economy by becoming gamers, artists, and aggressively engaged citizens.

Image: Amy Burvall

Note: This post is a combination of 2 older posts and was originally published on LinkedIn but I moved it back to my blog due to technical issues with LinkedIn.

In 2008, CEO’s for Cities recommended a more inclusive way of supporting learning in the community. Basically, the city becomes the learning platform, not just for schooling but for other community support activities, such as policing and heath care.

“The current offer is that education is schooling — a special activity that takes place in special places at special times, in a system where most of the goals and curriculum are set for the student, not by the student. Attainment against those standards leads to a system of grading that has a huge bearing on life chances.

The new learning platform [the city?] would offer learning all over, all the time, in a wide variety of settings, from a wide range of people. Pupils would have more say and more choice over what they could learn, how, where and when, from teachers, other adults and their peers. Learning would be collaborative and experiential, encouraging self-evaluation and self-motivation as the norms.

The principles and ideas developed for the redesign of education and learning city-wide could also apply to policing, crime and safety, health and well being, care for the elderly, carbon usage reduction and sustainability, and culture and creativity.” —Remixing Cities (PDF)

For the past century we have compartmentalized the life of the citizen. At work, the citizen is an ‘employee’. Outside the office he may be a ‘consumer’. Sometimes she is referred to as a ‘taxpayer’. All of these are constraining labels, ignoring the full spectrum of citizenship. As the network era connects people and things, society needs to reconnect with the multifaceted citizen. This is the connecting role the city can play.

Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book ‘Democracy in America’ based on his travels in 1831, identified ‘associations’ of citizens to be a driving force in the new democracy. These associations could also be described as communities of practice – self-forming groups of engaged citizens. John McKnight, in The Careless Society, described these groups as having three key capabilities: “the power to decide there was a problem, the power to decide how to solve the problem – that is, the expert’s power – and then the power to solve the problem”. The association of engaged and connected citizens that enabled a functioning democracy in early America is now necessary in the early network era. As de Tocqueville saw how a society could function without an aristocracy, we now must see how companies can function without a managerial elite, and cities can operate without bureaucratic overlords.

Today, the connected citizen must concurrently be the connected worker, as well as the connected taxpayer, and the connected consumer, among many other roles. Cities can play an important part in this transition. They are the logical place for citizens to act out their roles on a daily basis. For example, co-working spaces are one way to enable the necessary cross-pollination of ideas and action. Public transportation infrastructure can enable more serendipitous encounters between citizens. Public spaces and walkable communities can encourage citizens to connect. Cities should be designed to enable more connections between citizens.

The network era citizen is connected: to communities of practice, extended social networks, the community, and society. Helping citizens engage intelligently is another role that smart cities can play. In addition to creating space, opportunities to develop skills and abilities should be supported. Cities should be encouraging citizens to seek new connections and knowledge, make sense of these in a disciplined manner, and share their knowledge. Smart cities need smart citizens.

Throughout history, some cities have had the luck to become incubators of innovation. This geography of genius seems to depend on disorder, diversity, and discernment.

Disorder, as we’ve seen is necessary to shake up the status quo, to create a break in the air. Diversity, of both people and viewpoints, is needed to produce not only more dots, but different kinds of dots. Discernment is perhaps the most important, and overlooked, ingredient. Linus Pauling, the renowned chemist and two-time Nobel prize winner, was once asked by a student how to come up with good ideas. It’s easy, replied Pauling, “You have lots of ideas and throw away the bad ones.” —Eric Weiner

Only cities can provide a sense of place

Cities should engage in network weaving:

• Reach out to be more inclusive
• Help people find resources
• Connect people with common interests

Cities can be facilitators of knowledge-sharing:

• Facilitate meetings
• Help set up the structure of the network/community
• Help people find others interested in the same things

On a daily basis, cities should be coordinators, putting networks and communities together:

• Coordinate working groups
• Help people work together on projects
• Help people keep organized
• Help set up good communication systems & resources
• Set up training & support for weavers & facilitators
• Make sure time is set aside for reflection

Cities can support learning at all levels: city staff, communities, social networks, commercial organizations, non-profits, and all citizens. The city becomes more than a learning organization. It becomes the learning platform that enables knowledge-sharing and curates the knowledge of its citizens.

TIMN

“According to my review of history and theory, four forms of organization — and evidently only four — lie behind the governance and evolution of all societies across the ages:

• The tribal form was the first to emerge and mature, beginning thousands of years ago. Its main dynamic is kinship, which gives people a distinct sense of identity and belonging — the basic elements of culture, as manifested still today in matters ranging from nationalism to fan clubs.
• The institutional form was the second to emerge. Emphasizing hierarchy, it led to the development of the state and the military, as epitomized initially by the Roman Empire, not to mention the Catholic papacy and other corporate enterprises.
• The market form, the third form of organization to take hold, enables people to excel at openly competitive, free, and fair economic exchanges. Although present in ancient times, it did not gain sway until the 19th century, at first mainly in England.
• The network form, the fourth to mature, serves to connect dispersed groups and individuals so that they may coordinate and act conjointly. Enabled by the digital information-technology revolution, this form is only now coming into its own, so far strengthening civil society more than other realms.”
  —Overview of social evolution (past, present, and future) in TIMN terms, David Ronfeldt

There are strong indicators that society is heading toward a quadriform structuring (T+I+M+N) with network culture dominating in many fields: open source insurgencies, Blockchain financial transactions,  political manipulation through networks, crowdfunding, etc. This is also bringing tensions between the old Tribal, Institutional, and Market forms against the emerging Network form.

“The more entrenched an older form, the more difficult it will be for a newer form to emerge on its own merits: This mostly occurs where tribal or hierarchical actors rule in rigid, grasping, domineering ways; but it may also apply where pro-market ideologues hold sway … Examples may include governments rife with a clannish tribalism, militaries wallowing in lucrative business enterprises, and ostensibly capitalist market systems fraught with collusive, protectionist cronyism. The stronger are tribal/clan tendencies in a society, the more likely are corrupt hybrid designs. A society of myriad monstrous hybrids is likely to be a distorted society, even a mean-spirited one.”
—Explaining social evolution: standard cause-and-effect vs. TIMN’s system dynamics, David Ronfeldt

Cities for Learning

In cities as learning platforms, I suggested one role of the city in the network era would be to enable knowledge-sharing and curate the knowledge of its citizens. Cities should be designed to enable more and better connections between citizens. Learning and innovation are more about making connections than having unique ideas.

In The Geography of Genius, Eric Weiner researched how creative genius flourished in cities through history and identified three key factors — diversity, disorder, discernment — but no recipes, only some hints and suggestions. He concluded:

“Creativity doesn’t happen ‘in here’ or ‘out there’ but in the spaces in between. Creativity is a relationship, one that unfolds at the intersection of person and place.”

Cities can provide the intersections for learning. Here are some of Weiner’s observations of what made cities places for not just learning, but genius. As you can see, there is no unifying theory. Also note that these ‘golden ages’ only lasted for a few decades each.

• Athens: simplicity, civic engagement, open competition not for personal glory.
• Hangzhou: playfulness, poetry, humility.
• Florence: wealth, freedom, uncertainty.
• Edinburgh: literacy, empiricism, practicality.
• Calcutta: chaos, individualism + gregariousness.
• Vienna (1800): web of creators, audience for genius.
• Vienna (1900): tension, pressure, intimacy.
• Silicon Valley: fluidity, loose connections, experimentation.

Perhaps there are some lessons to be learned from these shining examples of learning cities. I would suggest that planners look at the three D’s and see how they play out in their cities. Encourage diversity at all levels and in many ways. Discerning what is appropriate for current circumstances and with respect to economic, political, and technological realities is where art and planning can meet. Cities should look to the edges for inspiration, particularly the gamers and artists, to see what can add diversity to the current city makeup. Don’t over-control but ensure that things remain somewhat in disorder. As Leonard Cohen wrote:

“Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

The Network Era

Given the TIMN framework, how can cities apply network principles to begin to develop network ways of operating? Patti Anklam has identified the core values of a knowledge network, citing three related factors: openness, transparency, and diversity. These three factors reflect several of the attributes of the cities mentioned above.

“Innovation and discovery across disciplines are not possible without the property of transparency. A fully transparent network is visible to all: Its artifacts are public, its decisions (including those on the topics of purpose and value) are taken in plain sight of and with the participation of the whole network, and the boundary between leadership and membership is permeable.” —Net Work, Patti Anklam

At the city level, openness can be promoted through subsidiarity. The principle of subsidiarity is: “that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level that is consistent with their resolution” –Wikipedia. Subsidiarity can enable more transparent knowledge sharing. Cities can promote this by providing or encouraging learning spaces, public or private. The coffee houses of London and the salons of Paris are two historical examples of Shaping the Public Sphere (PDF).

“Coffeehouses brought people and ideas together; they inspired brilliant ideas and discoveries that would make Britain the envy of the world. The first stocks and shares were traded in Jonathan’s coffeehouse by the Royal Exchange (now a private members’ club); merchants, ship-captains, cartographers, and stockbrokers coalesced into Britain’s insurance industry at Lloyd’s on Lombard Street (now a Sainsbury’s); and the coffeehouses surrounding the Royal Society galvanized scientific breakthroughs. Isaac Newton once dissected a dolphin on the table of the Grecian Coffeehouse.” —The Telegraph 2017-03-06

Knowledge sharing can foster innovation, especially if diverse groups of people are engaged in active experimentation. Some examples of current network era knowledge sharing and experimental structures are co-work spaces, makerspaces and fab labs. As trust emerges over time, more openness and knowledge sharing can drive more innovation.

Is tribalism a reaction to our concerns about the emerging network era, which is putting into question our existing institutions and markets developed in previous eras?  Jalaja Bonheim wrote about this phenomenon in Why We Love Trump and describes a potential counteracting force: “A new consciousness is awakening that recognizes our oneness as a global community.” But David Ronfeldt thinks there are smaller scale efforts that do not require such global engagement.

“In any case, I am struck so far that many readings about tribalism end up recommending ways to improve interpersonal relations, and/or ways to foster global consciousness. Yet there are intermediate levels that, so far, have been neglected by those who discuss malignant tribalisms.

Consider, for example, ideas about our needing a new social compact, or social contract, or national covenant. As I’ve often argued from a TIMN [Tribes + Institutions + Markets + Networks] perspective, getting the tribal form right is essential for a healthy society. The obvious elements are families and communities. Yet the bright side of the tribal form is also found in social compacts, contracts, and covenants that political philosophers and historians like to discuss.” —David Ronfeldt

This is an obvious opportunity for cities. They can provide a safe place where Tribes (families & communities) feel at home and are not threatened. But they can also make connections and provide safe intersections between different Tribes. In addition, they can experiment with new Institutions (e.g. cooperatives) and Market forms (e.g. sharing economy, micro-finance). All of these can be done at a manageable scale. A new social contract can be developed at a more human level. This is a learning city

“Learning Cities harness their knowledge, social networks, environmental assets and financial capital to facilitate the development of skills, knowledge and values by local people and organizations.” — Janet Candy, Planning Learning Cities, 39th ISoCaRP Congress 2003

The UNESCO definition (2015) of a learning city expands on this definition.

A Learning City is a city which effectively mobilizes its resources in every sector to
• promote inclusive learning from basic to higher education;
• revitalize learning in families and communities;
• facilitate learning for and in the workplace;
• extend the use of modern learning technologies;
• enhance quality and excellence in learning; and
• foster a culture of learning throughout life.
In so doing it will create and reinforce individual empowerment and social cohesion, economic and cultural prosperity, and sustainable development.

Learning cities can foster connections and create intersections for active experimentation to develop new social compacts for a healthy network era society. Learning cities can ‘get the Tribal form right’.

There is a tradition of using public broadcasting for debate and public education in Canada. Two  popular programmes on CBC radio in the 1930’s and 1940’s were the Citizens’ Forum and the Farm Radio Forum.

“Farm Forum innovations included a regional report-back system, whereby group conclusions were collected centrally and broadcast regularly across Canada, occasionally being sent to appropriate governments. In addition, discussion – leading to self-help – resulted in diverse community ‘action projects’ such as co-operatives, new forums and folk schools. Farm and community leaders claimed that the give-and-take of these discussions provided useful training for later public life. In 1952, UNESCO commissioned research into Farm Forum techniques. Its report was published in 1954, and consequently India, Ghana and France began using Canadian Farm Forum models in their programs.” —Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Even though radio is a one-way medium, innovations such as programme guides by mail one week in advance, local discussion groups, and national feedback on individual responses kept people actively involved. Imagine a group of farmers gathering at a neighbour’s house, bringing food for a communal supper, and then discussing issues of great social relevance,  like the possibility of medicare. Today, the CBC produces programmes such as Cross-Country Checkup and the Radio Noon Phone-In for similar purposes.

At the same time that these early radio programmes helped spread public discourse on issues of national interest, the Antigonish Movement initiated adult learning activities focused on economic improvement in a generally impoverished region of Atlantic Canada.

“Adult education was learning brought directly to the workplaces and homes of the people. This teaching method, organized by intensive fieldwork, became a technique for mobilizing adults for continuous study, by means of small and serious social action study groups. The end result was the generation of new economic cooperation for the common good. Yes Christian faith played a part and democratic ideals were central, but the Movement can be understood most simply and accurately as an attempt to improve people’s economic status via cooperation in a secular, non-partisan, ecumenical arena.” — StFX Extension

The Movement was coordinated through the newly created Extension department of St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

“Local communities were organized into neighbourhood groups, usually composed of five to ten members who met in homes, halls and schoolhouses. Most communities would have several groups, and these ‘kitchen study clubs’ became a distinctive feature of the Movement. Study clubs fostered a process whereby ordinary people, with the guidance of fieldworkers or others, read and studied on their own; they then brought back their ideas for debate and elaboration. The clubs studied various subjects – credit unions, cooperative methods, home economics, and farming and fishing techniques; the people decided what they wanted to learn about. As study and discussion proceeded, leaders would emerge who helped to initiate practical cooperative projects. These projects often succeeded because they were adapted to local circumstances and needs; furthermore, they had the support of the community.” —StFX Extension

Today, we are seeing the birth of Antigonish 2.0 focused on similar objectives to the first Movement: education and cooperation. It consists of three layers, reflecting the interconnected nature of the post-web world we live in.

1. A distributed international network of media and education specialists.
2. Capacity building hubs located in educational institutions, both K-12 and post-secondary.
3. Local and community-based hands-on study clubs.

As Bonnie Stewart writes in Antigonish 2.0: A Way for Higher Ed to Help Save the Web, democracy requires ongoing public engagement.

“I want to focus on a different sort of poverty and disenfranchisement: our current, widespread incapacity to deal with our contemporary information ecosystem and what the web has become. The attention economy and the rising specter of ‘alternative facts’ create demographic and ideological divides that operate to keep all of us disenfranchised and disempowered. Antigonish 2.0, therefore, is a community capacity-building project about media literacy and civic engagement.” —Bonnie Stewart

I have lent what little support I could give to this new movement so far and will continue to do what I can. A new category on my blog highlights articles that are aligned with its objectives: Antigonish2. We are in dire need of a new era of connected democracy.

Image: Extension Department, St. Francis Xavier University

I signed The Copenhagen Letter. Perhaps you should too, if you think that all people should control the technology that runs the world, not just the surveillance capitalists. Well, at least read it, please.

To everyone who shapes technology today.

We live in a world where technology is consuming society, ethics, and our core existence.

It is time to take responsibility for the world we are creating. Time to put humans before business. Time to replace the empty rhetoric of “building a better world” with a commitment to real action. It is time to organize, and to hold each other accountable … We who have signed this letter will hold ourselves and each other accountable for putting these ideas into practice. That is our commitment.

chaordic [kay-ordʹ-ic], adj., fr. E. chaos and order. 1. The behavior of any self-organizing, self-governing, organ, organization, or system that harmoniously exhibits characteristics of both order and chaos. 2. Patterned by chaos and order in a way not dominated by either. 3. Blending of diversity, chaos, complexity and order characteristic of the fundamental organizing principles of evolution and nature. —Dee Hock

Our institutions and markets are failing us. We need new structures and the return to tribalism currently manifested as populism will not save us. As the advent of the printing press helped usher in an age of inquiry, first in the Christian religion and later in the enlightenment and scientific revolution, so we have to engage in creating new organizational and governance structures for a global network era.

Dee Hock summarized the symptoms of our current age:

Unhealthy health care systems,
Welfare systems in which no one fares well,
Schools that cannot educate,
Corporations that cannot cooperate or compete,
Universities that are far from universal,
Agriculture that destroys soil, poisons water, and degrades food,
Police that cannot enforce the laws,
Unjust judicial systems,
Governments that cannot govern, and
Economies that cannot economize.

Unfortunately Dee Hock has not written his follow-up post from 2018-02-02 where he finished by stating that, “I intend to write another entry to this blog in the coming month suggesting how such a global governance organization might be conceived and realized.”

So it is up to all of us to keep working on new structures and systems. This is perhaps the only great work to be done for the next few decades. We have the science and technology to address most of the world’s problems. What we lack are structures that enable transparency and action on behalf of humankind, and not the vested interests of the rich and powerful.

If you are a professional, what are you questioning?
If you are an educator, what are you teaching?
If you are a journalist, what are you investigating?
If you are a citizen, what are you modelling with your behaviour?

One challenge is to change our work structures so that it is much more difficult for sociopaths to succeed.

For complex problems, we need simple structures that enable the blending of “diversity, chaos, complexity, and order” in the right mix.