Following on from my two previous posts on whether the web makes things better, and the great comments on them, I now find myself wondering about the degree to which the web can be taught. I don’t mean teaching people how to drive their browsers or how to use a blogging tool, though to be honest most people find even the basics unfamiliar, but more how to pass on what works in terms of using the web to achieve things and make the world a better place. Should we be teaching the ethics of the web, the sociology of the web, the history and politics of the web?

Most people I encounter in business really struggle to get a handle on what is happening. They may use Facebook at home and share their documents in a “knowledge repository” at work but have little experience or understanding of the transformative power of the tool that is literally at their finger tips.

And then …… my daughter’s ICT classes appear to consist mostly of how to do bullet points for Powerpoint!

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I have had a very polarised week so far with people expressing both extremes of “the web will change everything” to “the web changes nothing” and everything in between. This was partly focussed on a debate I took part in on Wikileaks and I have also started reading The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate The World by Evgeny Morozov.

I guess my own feeling is that the web will change nothing until we use it for that propose but the way it enables us to do so is new. What matters is that people understand it and use it. Take it seriously to shape the world. Not just see it as another channel to consume.

I go back to the frequent comment that I am unreasonable expecting people to think, and say what they think – that some people prefer not to think. Is this true or is it that we have trained them that it is risky to think?

Does the web move us away from a mass to an ecology of niches and individuals or do we just become a disorganised and chaotic mob? Do we need ideologies or -isms? If we need organising principles who is to say which wins – democracy or authoritarianism? The web can enhance both.

Maybe thinking is too hard after all …

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I am currently listening to Christian Rodska’s wonderful reading of Sir Winston Churchill’s History Of The Second World War and absolutely loving it . I don’t know what the audio equivalent of “a real page turner” is but this is certainly it.

Churchill’s dry wit and his amaxing ability to convey in a single sentence complex historical and cultural ideas is gob smacking. I keep finding myself comparing him to modern politicians and they don’t come out of the comparison well. It is also fascinating to hear him tell of his own meetings with the key figures of the war and of his political ups and downs.

Iam currently about eight hours in to the first of four ten hour volumes and can’t wait for my next chance to listen.

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Many moons ago, in the early days of blogging David Weinberger described it as “writing ourselves into existence”. I was reminded recently of just how transformative blogging has been in my life. How much more aware I am of my thoughts and feelings – and of the world around me.

Once you have a blog you notice more, you start to think “I might write about this on my blog” What do I want to say” “What will people’s reaction be”. Over time you get better at noticing and the better at noticing you get the more noticed you get! You end up in the wonderful collective web of “Oooh that’s interesting” which I now wouldn’t ever want to be without.

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North America contains just five per cent of the world’s population, yet we consume 33 per cent of the world’s resources. If every person on the planet consumed as much as us, we would require at least four more planets to feed the demand. At the heart of our unsustainable North [...]

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During my occasional trip down blogging memory lane today I cam across this post from 2006 and thought just how little things have moved on!

Workplace culture

I find it increasingly paradoxical that the “grown up” world of suits and offices and job titles is the one that encourages you to remain childish. You are not really encouraged to say what you think, you pass responsibility up to the grown ups above you and you are rarely able to be held accountable for your decisions.

On the other hand in the supposedly childish online world of forums, blogs and wikis you have to be prepared to say what you think, be prepared to stand by it and jusfity it in a debate and if you have fucked up your written thinking is there for all to see forever.

I wonder when the grown ups will get this?

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While walking around Köln recently, discussing my reactions to visiting the massive cathedral there and my antipathy towards organised religion, my companion Thomas Koch said “maybe we need a new religion”.

The church and its myths predominated for centuries until Darwin, Freud and the carnage of the first world war trenches knocked a big whole in those assumptions. People weren’t ready for the vacuum left by the undermining of those stories though so the totalitarian regimes of Fascism and Communism filled the gap. When those myths too fell apart we were left with the myth of capitalism and the market and isn’t this beginning to look decidedly suspect since the collapse of the banking industry? Even watching the farce of the old them and us story of the right and left politics running out of steam in the UK general election is like watching another big story die.

So what do we have next? What sense making frameworks would best suit our current state of evolution? What would form the basis of our new religion? What stories will help us make sense of the world we find ourselves in? I am wary of replacing one ideology with another and my inclinations are anarchic rather than ideological but maybe we do need a new framework within which to make decisions. Maybe we need loads of them. Maybe we need individual ones! Maybe we don’t need big stories anymore? Maybe we can play out the universal themes of being human on a more human scale with our own stories well told?

David Weinberger once wrote that by blogging we were “writing ourselves into existence”. This is where I believe our future sense making lies. In the collective and shared stories we are beginning to learn to tell using the tools made available to us by the web. This is not some overarching ideological story or some rigid dogmatism securing the influence of a small group over the crowd. This is collective sense making happening on the fly and at a rate that has never been seen before in mankind’s history. We are just learning how to do it and just beginning to grasp how immensely powerful it can be. Isn’t it exciting?

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Oil and gas subsidies total $500 billion a year globally!!

Why are global governments subsidizing the most profitable corporations in the world?

Seven of the top 20 most profitable companies worldwide were oil companies in 2008 – and their cumulative profit roughly equaled the other 13 companies added together.

Subsidies to [...]

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Walking around Toronto this morning I was struck yet again how alien cities on the American content can feel to those of us from Europe. It is like walking around inside a 3D Sim City. I always feel intimidated by the scale and impersonal nature of the architecture and this time was struck by just how much the corporate world is allowed to dominate the physical space over here.

This got me thinking of the different ways some of us choose to make our mark on the world. For some their choice is physical and imposing, building immense structures and slapping their names on the side of them. For others it is taking on massive challenges. Waking past an old sailing ship moored in the harbour I was struck by the courage of those who discovered this continent , literally risking life and limb for their achievements.

I also know that it is really ideas that change and shape our worlds before anything concrete manifests itself. I love what I do and feel honoured that I get the opportunity to inspire people to use social media to do whatever it is they are trying to achieve but it is certainly different from building skyscrapers or sailing across the world!

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I’ve just been booking my flights over to New York to join a really smart bunch of folks taking part in Stowe Boyd’s Social Business Edge Conference on the 19th of April. He describes it thus:

Today, more than ever, management is reexamining and rethinking the basic principles of business: how to innovate and prosper. To that end, managers are looking to stay in step with a changing world, and the rise of the social web in particular. How should today’s business leverage what is being learned about the social web?…

Some of the leading thinkers in this area believe that we are at the start of something much larger than a retake on marketing. We are seeing a rethinking of work, collaboration, and the role of management in a changing world, where the principles and tools of the web are transforming society, media, and business. The mainstays of business theory — like innovation, competitive advantage, marketing, production, and strategic planning — need to be reconsidered and rebalanced in the context of a changing world. The rise of the real-time, social web has become one of the critical factors in this new century, along with a radically changed global economic climate, an accelerating need for sustainable business practices, and a political context demanding increased openness in business.

These issues cannot be dealt with one by one, but instead approached as connected elements of a new world order for business. Social Business Edge is designed to address these issues, and to bring together a community of visionaries, practitioners, and tool makers, to collectively explore what the form the social business — and our aspirations to design it — will take.

Can’t wait!

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