Unbundling is cool

One of the many memorable bits from Obama’s stump speeches was a promise to make politics cool again. A new citizenship aesthetic; the rebirth of cool.

IMO, cool politics comes from scraping away old notions of what is not ours, and recovering our sovereignty in the process. At the same time it is about giving. Just ask the jazz greats.

The Vancouver Changecamp is over. It was cool. Lots of enthusiasm, and a new commitment to engagement.

The slidedeck from my piece on ungovernance is below. Click on the title for slideshare tools to enlarge etc.

Unbundling Governance

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Government - the problem is in the language

Jeff Jarvis, in his new book, What Would Google Do, and on his blog, demonstrates that there is an inverse relationship between control and trust.

This is an issue for governments: the more control I have of the ship... the less citizens trust it...the more disenfranchised citizens feel...the less they get involved (tax avoidance, declining volunteerism, poor voter turnout)... now the government tries to "get more involvement" from the citizens so that the government has more legitmacy, more clout. Or, in some cases, the government happily goes about what it wants to do anyway, while people are looking the other way.

The problem is in the language. A government governs. That is, Government drives.

You can't say that a government that is elected with 60% of the vote, in a 25-40% voter turnout has a mandate. Imagine instead government as something that we all do. That the seat of government is distributed. City Hall is there to help people govern themselves. Better outcomes.

Vanchangecamp unconference is coming to Vancouver.

Giving to get

The problem with 'social media' is that it largely isn't.

'I do this for you in order for you to do that for me' describes a relationship that has mutual utility; it's a pale imitation of a caring relationship, and may describe the subtext of traditional business relationship.

We get surplus vitality from giving. Is giving to get social? What does this attitude do to social capital?

Godwin 2.0

At Queen's University I studied some political theory, and spent a term thinking about William Godwin. He was married to feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, and their daughter was Frankenstein author Mary Shelly. Overachiever.



At school, I was enthralled by his notion that "government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind" - a thought that would have Godwin characterized as an early anarchist. He was writing at a time when the paint hadn't dried on representative democracy, and was full of ideas about forms that encourage truth and beauty. That old rub.


Govt 2.0 includes a web enabled surge of expectations, and the ability to concretely participate more effectively in our government. We are seeing decentralized governance in the deconstructed, modern workplace; the reformation of government can't be far behind.

As we begin to get more access to, and take responsibility for, our politics, cynicism is dealt a blow because government no longer has to be seen as something outside of us. This is a big change: the way we govern ourselves in private and in our neighbourhoods can, with tools for distributed governance, dovetail into broader involvement in political governance.

Government becomes less to do with influence peddling and more about empowered individuals: lots of them. I make friends with my neighbours; my conduct enables the cohesion or lack of cohesion of a self-forming neighbourhood group; we come agree on some fundamental issues (e.g. need a better way of removing snow on our steep hill), and we participate in the bigger community on this same issues using meetings and the open web; we see where our thoughts can fit into the reformation of the Official Community plan.

Because govt 2.0 isn't inherently oppositional, there is no antipathy to government - there is no anarchy. It's stable, and trustworthy...interesting to see that the people involved in the BOWEGOV project on Bowen Island are split, left and right leaning. The ooutcome is a tighter fabric, and more affordable one, because work, responsibility and reward are more evenly distributed.

John Godwin, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, John Locke, - all those writers had a zeal for human potential, and political forms that would encourage an examined life. They were humanists. In much of the Govt 2.0 thinking there is a similar sensibility; it could be that web enablement has rekindled a kind of useful idealism. The culture of openness, fail safe, & distributed intelligence is changing the workplace. It may also be providing us with a base to realize the same root of compassion that gave 17th and 18th century political theory so much resonance.

- photo via Wikipedia.

Talking to Michael Cayley

Since publishing my ChangeThis manifesto, I've had the chance to speak to some great folks - including a call and follow up repartee with Toronto thought leader ( Social Value Capital Add and memetic brand) Michael Cayley.

Michael has characterized the new mediascape as IAM – "Individual as Medium", where shared perception is shifting from channel-based to social-network-infrastructure-based.

Today, messaging that tries to sublimate the target with the might of the message and its image quickly becomes obnoxious to us. Branding of this type, which I will call conventional branding, runs counter to the new sense of freedom that user controlled media delivers on. In short, this won't work. The power of the symbolic brand must make room for the power of the brand's actual social capital.

The symbolic brand will stay on as an important signifier on the supermarket aisle: we’ll continue to reach for reliable brands on the market shelf, and reject ones that we think deliver less value.

The message that lies as the heart of my paper, 'Built to Fade' is this: possibly the most egregious application of conventional branding is on supposedly “green” products. If green has to do with attention to the environment, the displacement of actual engagement with the spin of the me-brand embrace is a major disjoin; the resulting sanctimoniousness that comes with being a green “buyer” is a disjoin too. When conventional symbolic branding is applied to green products the result in the market is cynicism, and a tarnished brand. Green companies are better off exploring a different tack; those that manage the transition in messaging will blaze a successful trail.

It's natural to reach for all kinds of sedatives to sublimate our unease. Distributed networks can be this drug, as much as television, with their own promise of pseudo belonging. Companies that capitalize on our wish to live unexamined lives will do so, but this capitalization is not the same as the earned, long term trust that reliable brands will earn.

Michael notes in SCVA, that “Human capital is the primary source of competitive intangible earnings for today’s corporations.” It could be said that Social Capital Value Add has to do with the accumulation of social merit.

The brands that we reach for or are willing to pay more now have to be authentically aligned with social values, as opposed to arbitrary values dreamed up by some marketer. In the context of the environmental crisis that we face, "zero is the new black" will have, in the words of Michael Cayley, incredible memetic qualities. Looking for comapanies to explore this new aesthetic with. Michael is too.