Bottom up processes

Dr Brian and His Thoughts
It was interesting checking out the blog journalists that covered the 2004 USA Presidential Election.

There does seem to be a profound change taking place in the way politicians communicate with electors. Messages are no longer solely prepared in a top-down fashion, rather they bubble up from the grass-roots.

Self-Organising phenomena abound. Thie following is a simple example of a citizen posting a response to the election result in 2004 with a powerful polemic against an alleged political highjack in American politics:

http://blogs.salon.com/0003052/

We are witnessing the end of many top down approaches. Cloke & Goldsmith (2002) have made this point well in "The End of Management." The rise of self-organising systems leads them to posit seven strategies for change:

1. Shape a Context of Values, Ethics and Integrity; (eg. Care and Von Krogh)
2. Form Living, Evolving Webs of Association; (eg. de Geuss and "The Living Company", community)
3. Develop Ubiquitous, Linking Leadership; (e.g. converse with people - interact -
Learning Conversations (Harri-Augstein, 1991)
4. Build Innovative Self-managing Teams; (eg. The Wisdom of Teams (Katzenbach&Smith, 1998) and HBR (1994))
5. Implement Streamlined, Open, Collaborative Processes; (e.g. Dialog (Isaacs(2001)
6. Create Complex, Self-correcting Systems; (eg ecology, cybernetics)
7. Integrate Strategically, and Change the Way We Change (eg John Seeley Brown "Research that reinvents that Corporation - Harvard Business Review)
Sources around which the points (1-7) might group are given as examples in brackets.

In a television programme "Imagine" aired on BBC1 at10.35pm Alan Yentob, a media guru, interviewed Tim Berners-Lee on the origins of the web and, in particular, its foundation philosophy. Yentob seemed to be blinking and uncomprehending at all this emphasis on collaboration and not of ownership; or an emphasis on bottom-up sharing rather than top-down directing.

But in conclusion, after case after case had been given, Yentob had to say "Perhaps the business model of the past 150 years, in which the ownership of the keys to factory was the key to riches, may have to be regarded as a blip in our history.

I suspect he was thinking "That is a shame: broadcasting as a technology and directing as a management style seemed to have a neat fit for me as a Broadcasting Director."
He will have to read some of the texts given above in this post.

The Second Renaissance?

Dr Brian and His Thoughts
I came across this intriguing quote in Open Source Democracy by Rushkoff (2003:37)
"Finally, our renaissance's answer to the printing press is the computer and its ability to network. Just as the printing press gave everyone access to readership, the computer and internet give everyone access to authorship. The first Renaissance took us from the position of passive recipient to active interpreter. Our current renaissance brings us from the role of interpreter to the role of author. We are the creators."

Creativity is affirmed and given primacy here. We express ourelves, via authoring blogs, and become increasingly Self-Organising. We are enabled by technology to collaborate at a distance. We eschew Techical Rationality. All very interesting indeed. The move from recipient to creator seems like the shift i emphasis from Other-Organised Learning (OOL) to Self-Organised Learning (SOL).

This links with the previous post on the new lease of life given to Testimony. Each person now has the ability to make their views known, and receive criticism of their views. Technology and communication is becoming a richly enabled area.