Author of machiavelli.net, proud father of three, interested in shaping network society. Welcome to my blog.Sisyphus and Social Software
The biggest disappointment of social software today is that either you cannot actually do anything online (e.g. Xing, LinkedIn, Transnational Republic) except setting up your network or that what you do online is about as senseless as Sisyphus’ rolling his rock (Facebook, friendster, hi-5). But maybe, following Albert Camus that is all we strive for. “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”
The Politics of One-Laptop-Per-Child
The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) has been able to capture the imagination of the world in a surprising way. Nicholas Negroponte and his team have understood the politics of networked life in a way that not many others have. Starting out with a slogan “a $100 Laptop for the developing world” they created an eco-system that potentially will change basic education.
There is a fun review of it in “Freedom-to-Tinker“
I’ve spent all of my life around computers and laptops. I’m only 12 years old though, so I’m not about to go off and start programming a computer to do my homework for me or anything. My parents use computers a lot, so I know about HTML and mother boards and stuff, but still I’m not exactly what you would call an expert. I just use the computer for essays, surfing the web, etc.
Over the last few days, I spent a lot of time on this laptop. I went on the program for typing documents, took silly pictures with the camera, went on the web, played the matching game, recorded my voice on the music-making application, and longed for someone to join me on the laptop-to-laptop messaging system. Here is what I discovered about the OLPC laptops:
My expectations for this computer were, I must admit, not very high. But it completely took me by surprise. It was cleverly designed, imaginative, straightforward, easy to understand (I was given no instructions on how to use it. It was just, “Here. Figure it out yourself.â€), useful and simple, entertaining, dependable, really a “stick to the basics†kind of computer. It’s the perfect laptop for the job. Great for first time users, it sets the mood by offering a bunch of entertaining and easy games and a camera. It also has an application that allows you to type things. The space is a little limited, but the actual thing was great. It doesn’t have one of those impossible-to-read fonts but it was still nice. When the so-so connection allows you to get on, the internet is one of the best features of the whole computer. With a clever and space-saving toolbar, it is compact, well designed, accessible, and fast.
The Political Economy of Irrelevance
As I am moving from an institutional job that came with a captive audience (being a professor at a university) to thinking and writing about living-network-society, I am confronted with the harsh realities of the political economy of irrelevance. How do I get people to read my text? How do I get the conversation going we need in order thrive and learn? How do I have an impact? And how do I evaluate and monetarize impact?
My lifeworld crisis if course is not exceptional, it is part and parcel of living in network society. In network society we exist as long as we are part of the network and we are part of the network, when we are linked to.
So the first thing I did was asking Lizzy and Ricardo about the political economy of blogging. They told me to subscribe to directories and to link to other blogs. So do add me to your favorites on Technorati and do subscribe to my RSS-feed. Just click here to subscribe!
Business Process Modeling and Network Society
On friday in EGAP we are organizing a workshop on business process modeling (BPM) in public administration (3-6 pm, Room 104, EGAP, Mexico). The workshop builds on issues we have been working on in the last semesters, focusing on how information and communication technologies and new management practices are transforming public governance.
The Argument:
BPM proposes a radical move from a functional to a process perspective in business. This move is is parallel to the shift from institutional legitimacy to outcome legitimacy in political
theory and connects in a fun way some of the abstract thinking concerning network society to real-world developments.
Mainstreaming Project Finance
As a political scientist, I believe, that project finance is too important and relevant in today’s world to be left to the economists. If we assume that public value creation today depends on multi-sectoral and multi-level coalitions and legitimacy is derived from achieving specified results, then (as political theorists) we have to assume a structural/institutional bias towards the instruments of project finance, such as ring-fencing projects, allocating risk to the parties that can best carry them, securitizing future revenue streams, and the developing of financial architectures that fit the specificities of the project. Therefore, as analysts, advocates, policy makers, and citizens we need to become conversant in this vocabulary.
The political scientist in me was puzzled, by how the basic idea of ring-fencing projects and the parceling out of risks to the parties that can best manage them (thereby reducing overall project risk and cost) has not had a greater influence on debates in political theory and policy making. Political theorists like Ulrich Beck (risk society), Susan Strange (casino capitalism), Oli Kessler (Epistemic vs. Aleotoric Risks), Donald Rumsfeld (Unknown Unknowns) have a fairly sophisticated understanding of the nature of risk, but the simple and powerful idea of risk-allocation not being a fixed-sum game has not been well developed in political science or in public policy making.
As an observer of the project finance world, I am puzzled by how it introduces transparency and accountability in complex projects, while keeping the greater public in the dark. I am not sure who is to blame, however, with an increasing share of economic activity governed by the principles of project finance automatically comes greater accountability to the general public. Therefore, I strongly feel we need learn how to teach the powerful vocabulary of project to policy makers and the public, to increase the legitimacy of the approach.
Bottling Creativity
Pam Samuelson has just posted a new article on copyright reform. She criticizes the complexity, incomprehensibility, and imbalance of the Copyright Act of 1976 and outlines a the core principals of any intellectual property regime that could be used as a blue print for reform (7). How we conceptualize and legally frame creativity makes up a very important part of network society. Therefore an understanding of the basics of intellectual property regimes is important to anybody who wants to shape the institutional ecology of tomorrow.
The core elements of an IP regime, as I have articulated them, include:
1. a statement of the subject matter(s) that a particular IP regime may be used to
protect (i.e., what kinds of intellectual creations are eligible for protection);
2. eligibility criteria for specific people and works:
a. who is eligible for any IP right that might exist?
b. what qualitative or other standards does a particular instance need to
satisfy to qualify for those IP rights?
c. what if any procedures need to be followed to obtain the rights (or
effectively maintain them)?
3. a set of exclusive rights (this is what the IP owner owns);
4. a duration for the exclusive rights;
5. a set of limitations and/or exceptions to those exclusive rights;
6. an infringement standard;
7. a set of remedies against those who infringe
Battling for the Institutional Ecology of Tomorrow – A Call to Arms
[Challenge] In 2002 the world came together in Monterrey to address the millennium development goals. The goals were developed by governments for governments. Today, global problems and global interconnectedness are challenging us to reflect how we govern social life on all domains, not as governments but as human beings. The institutional ecology metaphor reminds us that our social institutions are complex webs, that we can impact, but that are driven by emergent logic and unintended consequences.
We have an opportunity and a responsibility to act upon this challenge.
[Transformation] We are undergoing radical changes in our lifeworlds, societies, markets, governments, and inter-governmental relations. This is affecting the family, work-life balance, spirituality, institutions of the state, market, civil society, production, distribution, statehood, and inter-societal relations.
[Governance]The focus on governance in the contemporary discourse of political science and policy making acknowledges this transformation by moving the focus from political science to the meta-level, where we discuss what is the role of governments, civic associations, and the private sector in creating economic, social, political, and inter-collective public goods. In corporate governance, we ask how can we regain the trust of investors and society, in global governance, we ask how can we address global challenges, in good governance, we ask how can governments gain the trust of multi-lateral lending institutions through better administrative practices and policy making, in e-governance, we ask how do information and communication technologies and new practices impact how we structure societal life.
These are not abstract academic discussions; these are battles happening in the real world, with real consequences for the politics of our worlds, because decisions made today will outline the conditions of possible public value creation tomorrow.
[Legitimation] Any institution as an institution is only as effective as it is legitimate. Legitimacy involves the capacity of the institution to sustain the belief that the existing institutional practice is the most appropriate for society. Legitimation then is the process of acquiring legitimacy by persuading intersubjectivities of the validity of a governance structure. As a process it is historical, which means it changes through time and is path-dependent. Therefore, legitimation needs to be analyzed from a macro-historical perspective. Today, the move from law-based legitimation to results-oriented legitimation changes our conception of our social worlds as much as the 16th Century move from transcendental to immanent law-based legitimation.
[Responsibility and Action] The role of the academy in the emergent network society is that of a gardener or maybe even a landscape architect. We live in a time in which we can frame, shape, delineate, and delimit the [public] spaces of our societies. Let us take that seriously, because great responsibility comes attached with such a role. The Monterrey Forum gives us such a platform. The questions that need to be addressed are: How is the landscape in which we can think about public value changing? What is the role of new technologies? What are changing legitimizing practices? How can we shape our institutional landscapes? What do we need to know to do that? How and where can we intervene?
On Expertise – authority, legitimacy, and CTS
As a European family we are trying to meet all our transportation needs with public transportation, bicycles, and roller blades. Therefore, on Saturday we were in the market for a Child Transportation System (CTS) – a bicycle trailer that can transform into a “jogger,” a “stroller,” or a “xc-skiing-system.” [check out http://www.chariotcarriers.com]. We went to the specialized store, got advice from one of their specialists, who with authority selected two potential matches for our needs (the cougar for 780 Euros or the more comfortable but less sporty Corsaire for the same price). A bit shocked, we went for a walk over the Theresienwiese, where workers were putting up the skeletons of the beer tents for the Oktoberfest, hoping for a beer in one of the worker’s cafeterias. At home we surfed the CTS-websites, consulted ebay, craigslist, discussed suspension systems, and became comfortable with the vocabulary. We even started to like a new brand: http://www.croozerdesigns.com/croozer_baby.html. All the signs of the emancipatory power of the web. However, in the end, most probably we will go to just one more store and succumb to the power of expertise. The punch line… not sure.
Magical Network Society
Today, several million people on this planet are immersed in the deathly hallows of Harry Potter’s seventh year. I took my copy of a staple in the main bookstore in Munich, remembering buying the last one in Berlin, the one before in Cambridge, the one before in… A diachronic and planetary community magically in synchronicity for a day.
backing up data online: hoping for the evernet
after having lost one year of Mexico and family pictures to a broken external hard drive, I have been looking at online storage solutions. In a perfect world all data would be automatically online, however, we would not even notice where it is, but it would be available on any hardware, anywhere, anytime. This is what we have called the “evernet” in the early 2000s and what Marc Andreesen (of Netscape fame) was trying to do originally with Loudcloud in 1999.
It seems that Mozy is the best solution out there right now. They offer 2 GB for free. If you click on the link below and sign up I get 256 MB extra (and so do you).
cheers,
Philipp
