Primarily the WEF is kind of apparatchik gathering, though there are some really great minds in between all this groupthink. I have made a test and followed the livestream of some panel discussion. This is a good exercise in ethnographical analysis of “collective rituals of self-affirmation”. There is a very clear agenda – and one easily can sense the invisible “red line”, when attending a “discussion” via livestream. Ethnographically it is a cult with totems and taboos. If the panel allows for some questions from the audience, then you have a litmus test of power. The function of the whole thing becomes crystal clear: Commanding the rules of interpretation, selective perception of reality, setting the parole.

Ethnographically a cult of totems and taboos

Example by accident: A panel about obesity as a growing problem. Any average informed person knows that the fast food industry is a relevant topic in the debate about the issue (super-size food, seductive advertising, questionable additives etc.). When someone from the audience asks for the responsibility of politics and corporates then the panel’s/moderator’s function is to bring the debate back onto the “right track”, e.g. self-responsibility. Other strategy: Ignore the question … So, this is all quite usual and nothing new. But it should surprise us in the year 2013, where the relevant people listening to such a livestream are on a better level of information so that they will perceive a “guided discussion” like this utterly ridiculous.

So, what about a real World Change Forum instead?

But isn’t there a lot of “critical issues” talked about – e.g. climate change? Sure, it is, but it is not mapping to actions, resolutions – so in the end it still is an annual PR show for the status quo. The planet cannot afford a political-economical elite like this and it cannot afford an event like this. The leaders are actually inactive, when contrasted with the decisions they should take to solve the global mess. What we need instead is a powerful meeting of changemakers – but no, not the kind of “World Social Forum”, which is stuck in rituals and logic of  political camps, counter-lobbyism, it even has been criticised as a “NGO fair“. Please, couldn’t we have a glocal multi-sectoral forum, mixing social change agents and tech innovations, new models of governance, best practices in resilient lifestyle from all continents? A World Change Forum!

The global-leadership industry needs re-engineering – economist.com

Davos Man (“stateless elites”, Lawrence Summers etc.) – Wikipedia

Jim Harris: Davos: Talking Champagne on a Sinking Titanic – huffingtonpost.ca

Facebook trials a new way to push your buttons (world.edu)

“Want”, “Collect” and “Buy”

Depending on its performance in the current trial, Facebook may deploy a “want” button, with you – or your friends – indicating that you want a specific product or service, as promoted by this or that commercial entity.

Image source: world.edu/facebook-trials-a-new-way-to-push-your-buttons/

I did read further and actually they come to the same conclusion in the text:

That wishlist, in turn, hosts a “buy” button – also being trialled – offering a click-through feature to buy a given product, setting up Facebook as a competitor to Amazon. Of course, in clicking through, users provide the company with yet more information about themselves and, by inference, their associates.

Reblogged from Go to new site: livingbridgesplanet.wordpress.com:

CNN tv covering the IPO of Facebook

Business genius Mark Zuckerberg digitized and industrialized our Social Capital
Translated into “the industrialisation of friendship” this headline sounds quite a bit offending. The problem with this truth is, that our social graph is something yery private by definition. And so is our interest graph: If we share the books, movies, politiicians we like, if we publish our favorite quote etc., then we become more and more transparent to the people we are sharing this with. But much more problematic is the transparency for a commercial structure like Facebook. The personal data have to be monetized – after the IPO the pressure is much higher now.

Remember what happend to the walled garden of AOL some years ago
Maybe the Facebook IPO is marking the peak of monetizing social network dynamics. Technology is progressing. The same could happen to Facebook, what happened to walled garden models like AOL. There are concepts around to have open and federated social networks. Think about having a mail client program – no one controlling with whom you connect – no one trying to make money out of your mail communication. “Liberated” social networks might look like this usage scenario – all is under your personal control.

Mark Zuckerberg, planet thinking and the Nobel Peace Prize
However controversial Mark Zuckerberg (and his team) is until today – concerning his stance to privacy, I like this guy and the attitude to hack business forward. He did not only see the epochal business opportunity, but he created something really great, a platform for around 1,000,000,000 users, connecting people beyond geographical borders, connecting and syncing people during the Arab Spring, catalyzing the generation of real social capital around the world, building trust, feeding the spirit of collaboration.
He is not alone of course with this tech-based gift of felt borderlessness, there is Skype and Google contributing their tools to this experience too. I would not be surprised to see Mark Zuckerberg and his likeminded business hackers and business model inventors as contenders of the Nobel Peace Prize (see last year’s news). I personally see them (whether they intend this or not) in the light of an emergent “planet thinking”, the spirit of global collaboration – after hyper-competition the next phase of globalisation, hopefully.

Update 2012-05-18: Adding the image to the text, adding a link, correcting various paragraphs.

Update 2012-05-18 18:35 CEST

Interesting tweet from 5:29 PM – 18 May 12

Update 2012-07-31

Improved the title from
“The future of social networks is in (self-controlled) openness” to
“The future of social networks is in (user-controlled) openness”

Here are some contextual facts:

• Physical face2face gatherings enable collaborative productivity, but are rather costly compared with virtual solutions.
• With reliable broadband connections and video chat as a standard the experience has improved.
• Conclusion: The possibility of instant virtual gatherings has become an increasing attractive option.

Communication. collaboration are connected with the generation of Social Capital – now think about the ongoing (megatrend) shift from physical to digital interaction spaces

Problem: No established behavioral patterns and tools for hybrid global-local events

The  field of experience during JellyWeek 2012

• When I had to think a bit deeper about the architecture and organisation of the global-local event JellyWeek 2012 I worked with some typical use cases in mind to increase a parameter, that I intuitively realized as a key parameter for a succesful hybrid, global-local event.
• This parameter is SID = social interaction density – Maybe the expression is used differently  in other domains, however I found it adequate for the challenge of a “viable social information architecture” for the JellyWeek with its specific hybrid characteristic, connecting local groups (jellies) and single attendees, scattered around the globe together in a space of encounter.
• Some aspects of the design challenge have been described in the post about the JellyWeek Social wave and the working sphere – the  specific challenge at that time has been conceived as “Building a coordinative space for remote co-workers” – there is even a little screencast explaining the ecosystem.
• But do not get distracted – the core issue here is how to find design principles for coordinative spaces, that facilitate the communicative spaces, i.e. finally maximizing the  social interaction density

The developmental logic is this:

• (A) The communication infrastructure of the internet plus powerful end devices allows to have learning situations everywhere
• (B) The motivational factor of learning can be realized with social web logic (co-learning) plus personal tutoring via a learning platform

Result: Instead of sitting rather passively in front of a teacher in a lecture format there are now learning formats available, that are much more engaging and effective. And this is not a hymn to technocentric e-learning systems, but blended, life-long, hybrid, social, deep learning processes. A first haiku diagram about the new synergies waiting to substitute some inefficient institutionalized old school learning settings.

The upwards spiral of co-learning, co-creation and co-working

Connecting this with the betasalon yesterday: First, of course I do not restrict “coworking” to coworking spaces in the institutional form. But second they are great hubs for local change, breaking boudaries between working, learning, having fun, they are fine candidates for the new learning spaces we need.

We just heard Dale J. Stephens, founder of the UnCollege movement. He questions whether university is necessary to learning and personal development, and is challenging the high costs of college. Surprise for the skeptic: There is some statistical evidence that the absence of traditional school system is not the worst thing.

Hannes Kloepper, M.P.P. is cofounder of iversity, an academic collaboration platform and educational startup near Berlin.  Book upcoming in March 2012: Die Universität im 21. Jahrhundert

Dr. Stephan Breidenbach, founding Dean of Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance, recognises the pressing need for universities to stay relevant, and is actively working on reforming the way in which knowledge is  created and shared at the university.

Debate / learnings

Now the debate has started and my first learning is that we have to be more radical in rethinking. We have to approach the “operating system” of the whole society and economy. Some basic concepts: The need of assessment and certification in a mobile world.

Question of power arises. It is about legitimation discourses and changing them. And if an institution is a system to stabilize itself how then can we have change in the instittuions? Can we (paradoxically) institutionalize transformation?

Hey, stop, an idea: Look for this in the economy (much more evolution power, mutation rate there than in the rest of society, you know Schumpeter …).

Update …. Companies, when the reach a certain size, usually create functional units for transformation (innovation department, R&D …) – or they even do open innovation, externalizing the innovation beyond the borders of the company.

Ideas from the debate now: Why not have cinemas for TED? Inspired for action.

Some video closely related to the discussion.
University 2.0 – Sebastian Thrun (DLD 2012)
http://new.livestream.com/dld/Track2Day2/videos/112950

Updated the image

Icon design: Anni Roolf, dezentrale.eu

How we work has radically changed during history. The social wave (with social technologies for networking, new concepts and mindsets to collaborate) has reached the working sphere for some years. E.g. there are 1.200 coworking spaces around the world now. And there is a new mindset in town with that mode of working.

Worldwide global-local event: #JELLYWEEK 2012

Today a global-local event starts to connect the growing community of coworkers. Up to now there are 206 jellies from 34 countries registered, some with even a program for the whole week. Never heard of “jellies”? Find more on the event website: #JELLYWEEK 2012 

Close observer and an active node

To come close to these new phenomena/movement as a researcher and to promote and foster transformation (I know well, that these are two different roles) I was very excited about the opportunity to be a part of organizing this open, self-governed and swarm-like event. Or less paradoxically: To create (hybrid/orbital?) spaces for communication and co-creation in the spirit of Open Space and Art of Hosting.

Challenge: Building a coordinative space for remote co-workers

It is a challenge to build a Social Information Architecture having no budget, no coder, no databse – and in the shortest time of some weeks. It resulted in decentral kind of swarm design (the swarm intelligence hype may be over – but  this concept is no fashion, but just a principle of construction). The structure is inspired by wiki thinking, but even more light, fragile, open and with a maximum of decentrality: A cloud of etherpads is having an essential role. Other “orbital” element: Google hangouts, e.g. permanent hangouts.

We are curious, whether this will work … yep, pioneering comes with risk of total failure …. “We”, that is Anni Roolf from Wuppertal and I as the core team. Anni is the initiator and founder of the worldwide #JELLYWEEK 2012. I am very grateful for the opportunity to create something new with her as a passionate and  smart person. And we only met once and did completely remote collaboration with using, google docs, facebook, skype etc., a tiny dose of project management  of basecamphq.com – and plain phone calls are still in use too. To get a bit of the spirit, here is a short message from a New Zealand space.

Update 2012-02-07-A:

The #JELLYWEEK 2012 was a great success

… and it was a huge experience and learning space to understand the phenomena, dynamics and the advantages of the diverse “connection and collaboration tools”. I will report on the learnings in a future blog post. For now I want to complete the post above with a link to the (quick and dirty) introduction video, an introduction into  the light-weight “social information architecture” for the decentral global-local event.

Screencast ”Introduction  to the ”social information architecture” #JELLYWEEK 2012  (screencast.com)  

Update 2012-02-07-B:

Adding the map picture.

"Seeing Red: Millennials Are Cooler With Socialism Than Capitalism" (good.is)

US millennials dreaming of socialist utopia (bad news)

“According to a new study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of Obama’s biggest fans—Millennials age 18 to 29—view socialism in a favorable light, compared to 43 percent who view it unfavorably.” …

“It’s not hard to figure out why our generation isn’t so gung-ho about capitalism—it has disappointed and, in some cases, straight-up failed us.”
www.good.is/post/seeing-red-millennials-are-cooler-with-socialism-than-capitalism/

Beyond 19th century ideologies (good news)

The free, connection-empowered, empathic individual – with self-responsibility and social responsibility

The mythology for decades has been: “Capitalism is best – for all and for all the world”. This mythology is still crumbling rapidly as the multiple crisis are not really solved. The fatal global ecological crisis is even in the shadow of the global ecological crisis. Worse: If world economy is “back on track” this means more destruction of the planet, as long as we have future-blind growth politics instead of economics following the social and ecological rationality, a system with inbuilt “sustainability and wellbeing loops” instead of the now dominating “short profit loops”.

In reaction to this destruction of faith the old collectivist “(blood) red” mythologies raise their head again. Neosocialist collectivist systems would be an awfully bad alternative. But: The ubiquitous internet connectivity holds a disruptive potential to redesign the political economy in a quite different manner than the ideological camps of the 19th century – capitalism and socialism – could ever conceive of. And: Smart green technologies are maturing and pave the way to a viable post-fossil society.

A genuine new system, with the co-existence of individual freedom, mass-collaboration and new “headless” value streams (eventually with nearly no banks and bosses) might be a possibility to develop. We have reasons for optimism. If anyone is locked into false alternatives – liberate!