These thoughts have been germinating for a while, finally coming together after reading this on Glen Pearson’s blog:
I am learning that these people ["from all political stripes" who manage to work together] are looking for a “place,” a way of being that can reflect political differences while at the same time maintaining the deep respect and friendship that characterizes their daily lives. In other words, the way Ottawa plays politics no longer suits the spirit of most communities in this country. MPs may bludgeon one another in the House, but these individuals refuse to undertake because the very quality of life in their communities is at stake and they know it.
I guess it’s fair to say that I am attempting to create that space, a kind of real life chat room, where such people can come together in order to save tribal politics from itself.
As I’m coming off an Open/Conceptual post that overlaps this topic, I’m inclined to say that “place” is not a place at all — or rather, it’s everywhere, and it’s nowhere — it’s already right here.
It’s online.
[Update: here are some remarks following the Pearson post I should've quoted.]
We could talk about this for Canada as a whole but I’m going to focus on London.
Compared to all the talk about London’s potential future as a transportation hub, there has been alarmingly little positive discussion about the implications of the fact that the global economy has shifted critically from being dominated by manufacturing, towards knowledge and services. A lot of stuff still moves around in crates, via airports etc, but momentum is shifting the proportion of economic value to stuff that moves around in data packets.
[Update Sept 8: here's a good case made in the Globe and Mail for reindustrialization.]
So the marginal utility of building up London’s capacity to exchange information is far greater than that of increasing our transportation capacity.
In other words, we have to spend a lot on transportation to gain a little, while we can spend very little on information and gain a lot.
Consider the recent research at the Richard Ivey School of Business demonstrating that simply using Facebook can increase productivity:
Haggerty argues that in an era when workers are asked to share information and collaborate with others in offices around the globe, Facebook and other social networking sites can give them much-needed tools and confidence to navigate that world of workplace information-sharing.
“It’s about employees sharing knowledge and communicating to other groups. In today’s workplaces, people share work all the time, managing projects using online tools, and it is a challenge to do that well,” she said.
And it goes way beyond Facebook. There are literally countless emerging tools and platforms (more every day) that can increase productivity and even create new opportunities. The people who are already using and mastering these tools will have a competitive headstart.
When something like Google Wave finally comes out, will the reaction around your workplace be, “This is what we’ve been waiting for!” or will it be, “What’s this ‘real-time’ stuff all about?… What do you mean by ‘collaborative document editing’?” While some companies are just learning the basic practices, someone else might already be using the technology to undermine the slow companies’ businesses models.
I’m reminded of a Seth Godin post from a few years ago, about The New Digital Divide:
Because the Net is now a broadcast (and a narrowcast) medium, the digerati can spread ideas.
The second thing to keep in mind is that the digerati are using the learning tools built into the Net to get smarter, faster. A new Net tool can propogate to millions in just a week or two. Unlike the old digital divide, this means that the divide between the digerati and the rest of the world is accelerating.
(I’d be curious to learn how many Londoners know what cloud computing is…)
Now none of this will convince anyone that promoting information is better economically than promoting transportation. Until we look at the relative costs.
The key fact is that promoting digital competence, communication, and community doesn’t have to cost anything — at least nothing noticeable compared to the rest of the city’s budget.
We could talk about improving the infrastructure. I’m not sure that’s necessary (though better wireless access in more places would be nice). All I’m talking about is encouraging more citizens, organizations, and companies in London to use the free and virtually-free stuff that’s already available.
Glen Pearson’s blog, for example, doesn’t cost him a single cent. Anyone can get one up-and-running here or here or here or here within minutes. If you want your own domain name and a little more flexibility, that costs a smidgen. Names are, like, $10/year. It costs me less per month to host all of my websites than I pay for call display and voicemail on my phone.
What do I get for that?
First, I’m learning something new every day — not just about the technology itself, but through the information I find and the skills I’m developing.
Two years ago I couldn’t have written (or even conceived) something like this that synthesizes insights and bits of information from so many different sources. It was by using the web that learned to
- find, organize, and consume so much information
- select the best, most relevant, and useful
- compose into something that others can find and subsequently remix into their own work
And the process keeps feeding back around in positive loops.
At worst, the web can be an echo chamber — if people haven’t developed the skills and attitude that make the best use of it. But users have more competence, the echos harmonize and melodicize into music.
It takes time to learn how to do it. You won’t ever learn to do anything well on the web as long as you’re worried about doing anything wrong.
Take a look at Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen. It comes out in Canada tomorrow. It makes a great case for some of these ideas.
Reviewing CYOE for The American, Ben Casnocha related his own experience learning about libertarianism (you can substitute whatever topic you like):
By following links (the currency of the Web) I found more blogs, added a few libertarian thinkers on Twitter, and listened to podcasts. Because of the social nature of the Web, I became friends with the authors of the content and hooked up with them on Facebook. On my blog, meanwhile, I tested out some of my own ideas on the political theory.
Over time the bits have cohered into something meaningful. My bottom-up, interactive, iterative, in-the-background accumulation of bits about libertarianism has made me an informed amateur. Unlike subjects of study in school, where I read a few books about something for a semester and moved on, libertarian bits populate my daily blend. I am sticking with it…
For individuals, the social aspect makes this rewarding in itself. As Casnocha went on,
Self-education has gone from being like a loner sitting in a bar… to being in the center of a packed, rocking night club.
And that carries over, to the offline world as well. Dan Brown at The London Free Press wrote about how his blog has led to offline friendships. I can relate.
Occasionally the connections have tangible benefits too: networking opportunities, employment referrals, etc.
For companies and other organizations that might be focussed more on the quantifiable side of things, the web delivers. Mind you, it isn’t magic — but that’s precisely why you’ve got to be trying it to learn exactly what it can and can’t do for you.
Now as for city as a whole, this is the level at which we have the most to gain. The key to the social web is that the more people using it, the more useful it becomes.
With only a few dozen people tweeting regularly about locally relevant topics, it’s difficult to see the benefit; but once you start reaching the point where the activity is measurable, and the sample is big enough to be fairly representative, then we can start incorporating it more into the decision-making process. Social media potentially renders the practices of polling and petitioning obsolete.
(Facebook has a more representative sample of users than Twitter, but it isn’t as open to analysis at this point.)
Then there’s the promotional aspect: the more people are blogging, tweeting, commenting, and tagging about London, the more visible the city becomes to the world.
I don’t mean that we should organize an online-oriented version of Ambassador London; that’s almost the opposite of what I’m talking about [though I wouldn't be at all opposed to something like that playing a role]. We don’t have to make concerted and direct appeals to people outside of London. As long as we’re generating content that’s about London (which includes “liking” & retweeting, etc, content from other Londoners) the technology does the rest of the work for us — promoting it via search results, automated rankings and recommendations, hot lists, etc.
A great example is PodCamp London. Over 100 people attended the event and a couple dozen of us tweeted about it all day. We generated enough activity on Twitter to register as a “trending” topic, visible to people all over the world. It was featured on Twitter’s main site, and people from other cities and countries jumped in to comment on or ask about the event.
Potentially, many people could have easily looked at our Twitter profiles and seen all the other London stuff we’d been tweeting about and linking-to. I’ve learned a lot about other cities that way. Portland seems to have a lot more going on than I expected. Every day I notice cool things happening in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Chicago, London England… learning a little bit more about what life is like in those cities.
Another example is the London Photo Walk and any other group or tag for London on Flickr. The more pictures of London that get uploaded, the more likely they are to show up on other people’s screens.
Every little bit increases the chances of being noticed, and the more times London is noticed the more likely people might be to move (or stay) here. Not only does that directly add value to the local economy, it also gives the city better chances in the “sweepstakes” that decide where high-profile & high-value entrepreneurs and researchers land.
Like UWO’s new president, Amit Chakma said, “we need to beat our own drum“:
“Sometimes communities like ours, we’re challenged — our challenge being we’re not Montreal, Toronto or Boston — and yet there’s so much potential for us to move into clusters, medicine is one area, so we need to beat our own drum collectively . . . (to) make sure people know the strengths that we have.”
But we’ll never get a good rhythm going until London and its people get more involved with social media.
[Update: That last sentence sounds stupid to me now (Aug 17). Instead of "we'll never..." it should read more like "the quickest and most effective way to get more people involved is through social media" -- it's a way to try leapfrogging a little.]
By simply posting pictures and videos of the city’s features and special events (say, Sunfest), we increase the the city’s exposure both within London and to people from all over the world — leaving little breadcrumb trails in the form of links they can (and will) follow to our door.
Meanwhile, groups and individuals deliberately promoting things via social media also affect the content and tone of discussions about how to govern and allocate resources.
At the same time (this is my favourite), by actively participating in civic discussions, we can’t help but create more social capital and integrity — richer relationships, deeper ties, stronger community…
And did I mention it’s free?
More at Open/Conceptual and LDNbeta.ca.
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