Network Society

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

(ideas and comments from the audience at random — bundled under subjects and attributed when possible: Q noting an unidentified participant)

Participation and Engagement

Carol Darr: The importance of enhanced participation by means of web 2.0 applications.

Enrique Dans: To reflect on how events can be taken to a new stage by overcoming geographical and chronological barriers, extending the debate beyond the four walls or the conference room, beyond the scheduled dates of the programme.

Ethan Zuckerman: Do not focus on technology, but on engagement and participation.

Q: The Internet, a discovery/invention or a technological approach to an existing background? Where’s the limit of the Network Society? Can we evolve into a connected network where is people — not computers — what we physically connect, and thus create a single entity?

Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubi: the possibility to report reality from within the reality, closer to it than mass media. And the challenge to connect the offline and the online worlds, avoiding to create two different agoras.

Felipe González Gil: the Network requires constant exposition and constant competitiveness. Is this a masculine model?

Felipe González Gil: if creativity, engagement, the person behind, is what really matters, what’s the difference between a pencil and a digital camera?

Ismael Peña-López: it is not about having computers connected, but people; it is not about having some people connected to their community, but to connect communities in the “global village”; and it is not about being connected to communicate with the World, but to be connected to policy-making, to decision-taking, to the ones that matter (to us) emotionally and economically.

Getting people on the Network Society

Carlos Domingo & Genís Roca: the need to fill this gap (between the online and the offline) with some stewards that bridge both worlds, by not staying back in the web 1.0, not leaping forward the web 2.0, but trying to shift towards a web 1.5. Genís Roca stresses the fact that it is economic crisis the ones that somehow “validate” new economic and ideological models. Carlos Domingo goes back to the “goodness” of crises to “clean” old structures.

Ricard Ruiz de Querol: two different kind of unconnected people. The disconnected ones at the bottom, because they lack infrastructures or how to afford them; the disconnected ones at the top, because they lack the awareness to do it.

Doris Obermair: asking Yochai Benkler whether the problem of ICT usage was a generation related one, he answered that no, that as far as we’re running comfortable lives, there is no need to change. Only if we face a crisis we’ve got incentives to change our status quo.

Marc López: there are more people connected (to the Internet) than we might think. The question is how to reach/find them.

Q: we should set aside all the web 2.0 jargon so to avoid creating the geek vs. non-geek worlds.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi: to achieve the change, we have to act at the grassroots level, but also directly at the policy-making and decision-taking level.

Net Neutrality

Xavi Capdevila: the importance to get people connected, but not depending on firms, platforms, what they say or what they think or what they do.

Research and analysis on the Network Society

Tom Steinberg: two can types of research can be done. (1) Do things and reflect ex post, (2) wait until we come out with a universal truth. We should focus on hands on research, identify the benefits (and the drawbacks) and diffuse them to other communities so that projects can be replicated, adapted or just created from the experience of others.

Ethan Zuckerman: the difference between what will happen and what has happened (or is happening). Wondering about the future is great, but understanding the past and the present might even be better.

Elena Sanz: The need of a multidisciplinary approach to debate and try to understand the challenges of the Network Society.

Jaume Gatell: The Net, by providing so much knowledge to everyone, has enabled more and better communication between people. This also empowers people to engage in the analysis of what the Network Society implies. And it also implies a cultural change so necessary to be aware of the changes and how to look at them.

More info

Sustein, C. R. (2001). Republic.com. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

How do social change organizations innovate?
Ethan Zuckerman, Harvard Berkman Center

Social organizations do not innovate, do it badly, or just do it slowly. Quite usually, the assumption is to be unrealistic about the power of technology to enable social change.

Facing a blank canvas gives you the idea that everything is possible. But good art is about constraint. And if you don’t know your constraints, figure them out.

• Innovation comes from constraint

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail saying does not apply to innovation: innovation is about hacking the hammer and making it better.

Von Hipple (see “more info” below): Lead user theory: users innovate all over the time.

Learning from extreme uses, hostile environments. Africa is a good place to test technology, as the environment is roughest. What works in Africa, works everywhere (AfriGadget, about African innovation).

Some examples of innovation from constraints: the Zeer Pot, the Solar Stove. The problem sometimes is not innovation in processes, but innovation in culture. Then innovation has to be reinvented, hence the solar stove becomes the Jiko:

• Don’t fight culture
• Embrace market mechanisms
• Innovate on existing platforms

Innovation is using the ordinary in extraordinary ways: the Malawi Windmill. Innovation is about hacking existing technology. And the technology that now is spread on Africa is mobile phones: technological innovation in Africa will necessarily be related with hacking mobile phones. Mobile phones have already changed the way sub-Saharan Africans see and do things: TradeNet, to get agricultural information; M-Pesa, to transfer money and make payments; Ushahidi, crowdsourcing crisis information; reporting the 2008 Zimbabwe presidential election to report electoral rigging.

Incremental infrastructure: e.g. a mobile phone antenna that also is a vertical axis power windmill.

• Problems are not always obvious from afar
• What you have matters more that what you lack
• Infrastructure can beget infrastructure

Ethan Zuckerman’s ICT4D Innovation test

1. Does the innovation comes from constraint?
2. Does it fight culture?
3. Does it embrace market mechanisms?
4. Does it innovate on existing platforms?
5. Does it come from close observation of the target environment?
6. Does it focus more on what you have more that what you lack?
7. Is it based on a “infrastructure begets infrastructure” basis?

Example 1: the OLPC project fails on 1, 3, 5, 6 and maybe 7, only passing on 2 and 4.

Example 2: Kiva passes on 1-4, fails on 5, and not sure whether it passes or fails on 6-7

Example 3: Gobal Voices passes on 1, 4 and 7; fails on 5-6; not sure about 2-3.

Social innovation never comes from a blank canvas. Comes from understanding the needs of all parties. Caveat: sometimes constraints leverage innovation, but are also a limitation for an innovation to go beyond itself.

Q&A

Ricard Ruiz de Querol: How to adapt the innovation based on constraints scheme to e.g. the digital divide in Spain? A: We should be aware whether there is a real digital divide or just a geeky will (unselfish, indeed) for everyone to be a digital native, when those people maybe already got what they needed. So, pushing people towards forced uses might be dysfunctional.

Carlos Domingo: But do we always have to bend to culture and stick to the past? A: It depends whether you’re talking short run or long run. In the long run, you want to figure out how to make culture smoothly evolve; in the short run, fighting culture just will enact an opposition reaction.

Personal reflections

Innovation as a darwinist evolution: no mutations, but adaptive non-disruptive changes based on what best performs on a specific environment.

More info

Von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing Innovation. Cambridge: MIT Press

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

Geek Is Good
Carlos Domingo, Telefónica I+D

Malcom Gladwell:

• Connectors
• Mavens: know everything’s that happening
• Salesmen

The difference between the geek and the connected geek: for the first time in my life, more people greeted me for my birthday on social networking sites than “offline”. Being connected is becoming a must and a differential thing too.

Big companies, understanding this, are hiring connected geeks so that they bring in new knowledge and, most important, new knowledge sharing practices.

From greed is good to geek is good

The (libertarian) philosophy of the Internet, cutting down transaction costs in open networks, is increasingly been considered as an interesting way to move forward (and beyond the crisis) and reshape the organizations’ architectures.

• Share everything
• Conversation
• Co-Creation & Crowdsourcing
• Innovation Networks
• Organization

These five axes of change driven by the “geeks inside”.

Share everything

All assets digitized, open and free to use.

This is made possible in an easy way by using web 2.0 applications that enable open sharing.

Traditional project repositories are good, but the problem is that they normally hold so much information that it makes it difficult to catch, at a glance, a general idea of a specific project. Multimedia or rich media applications (e.g. video based) allow quick information to be shared and spread and, above all, to catch the attention of the reader.

Conversation

The importance of finding tools to communicate in an informal, horizontal, unstructured way: how to recreate the virtual coffee machine.

One strategy is having each one creating and updating their own content and, then, in a centralized way, harvest the relevant or appropriate information for a specific purpose and collect it according to one’s goals. E.g. people maintain their own blogs, nanoblogs, etc. and a “central” page gets the information from selected RSS depending on categories, tags…

Other ways of doing so is gathering people around a specific quasi-corporate tool: Yammer. The point is that many tools already exist and can be implemented instantly: there is no need to wait for its implementation, not even to do costly benchmarks and/or code corporate applications. And the tool and the environment implicitly shapes the tone of the debate (”what are you doing” — Twitter — vs. “what are you working on” — Yammer).

Co-Creation & Crowdsourcing

Leveraging the “sharing all” and the “conversation” levels.

Open MovilForum or other networks the like allow sharing work in process with other developers or users/customers (in this case for mobile phone applications).

Idea marketplaces work well inside firms as they allow employees to share their ideas, discuss about them and, when an idea is acknowledged as a good one, to receive funds to develop the idea. If people are already using other tools (blogs, twitter), the conversation trespasses the boundaries of a specific platform to permeate the organization at all levels.

Innovation Networks

Acknowledging that the R+D department is not the only source of innovation: manage the know how and the know who. This can be done in different ways:

• Venture capital, to invest in ideas coming from outside of the firm, to know their thinkings, to benefit from their discoveries, to provide insight to their processes.
• Startups and SMEs, supporting them to create an innovation constellation around you.
• Large Corporations, co-operating with them, sharing different points of view from different realities to create a new shared hybrid output.

Organization

How to permeate innovative processes within the enterprise? How to organize?

Self-management being the optimum. But it is complex as it requires maturity from the employees to work independently, without hierarchies, to trust their own criterion, to incorporate failure as a normal thing in the essay and error process, ask for forgiveness (in case of failure) rather than asking (always) for permission (i.e. be proactive). A cultural change:

• Preoccupation with failure
• Reluctance to simplify
• Sensitivity to operation
• Commitment to resilience
• Deference to expertise

Ambassadors for innovation are drivers of this cultural change. Learn how to manage effective chaos.

Digital Natives, Digital Divides

[see "more info" below]

Managing digital natives with digital aliens or digital immigrants is delicate. Digital immigrants and aliens have to incorporate the discourse of digital natives, understand it and respect it, which is not easy. On the other hand, the opposite has also to be done so that the new generations do not step over the existing structures and people.

These differences in training, perceptions and behaviour generates digital divides difficult to be bridged. But that need to before they become chasms.

Q&A

Jordi Assens: has been crowdsourcing been implemented not at the consultation level but at the decision-taking level? A: Slowly. One of the things that can be done is the creation of in-company start-ups so that good ideas have their own independent development. But influencing the high-level of decision-taking is still a pending issue. But that leaders are present in the conversation is, to say the least, a good step forward.

Q: Can you send ideas to a firm from the “outside”? Will it be accepted? A: It normally depends on the industry and how this industry normally works. If a specific industry is more used to sharing ideas and working together with other firms is the norm (e.g. telcos) it is more probable that new sharing and crowdsourcing philosophies would be easily adopted.

Q: How to let the society at large know about the participative processes (and benefit from it)? A: Create a “participatory brand” sometimes enters in conflict with the “official” brand of a firm. It is just one more thing of the whole bunch of aspects that have to be dealt with in new innovation processes.

Jordi Graells: How to measure the impact? A: At the employee level, satisfaction surveys are run. At the corporate level, costs should go down, as an increase of efficiency is actively sought.

Enrique Dans: How to overcome all institutional barriers? How to endure and not to burn out the innovation ambassadors? A: Some institutional support is, of course, essential. Motivation and a motivated team/environment. Identify the people willing to adopt change, and the people willing to fight change.

Ethan Zuckerman: Collaborative mechanisms vs. market-like or stock exchange-like mechanisms inside the firm, which is best? A: Market-like or stock exchange-like mechanisms are more complex (and costly) to implement, but hopefully there’ll be appearing new tools easier to set up and adopt.

Q: Why in-company start-ups? A: Flexibility, independence, market-like environment.

Q: How to incentive engagement through patent fostering? A: It does work, besides the criticism that patents get precisely for “closing” knowledge. But, sometimes, owning this knowledge is the only way to carry on with your own idea or project.

Fernando Santamaria: Where do we put this new innovation department in the organization chart? What’s its weight? Budget? A: Up to the top. It is crucial that the R+D department has direct access to the top decision-takers so that it is understood and also has visibility.

More info

Carlos Domingo (2008) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants and the News Generations

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

Communication in the Network Society
Gumersindo Lafuente, Soitu

Rigour is at stake, but, luckily, and for the first time, the audience can watch and enforce rigour.

Technology, for the first time, shapes and modifies the behaviour of the audience. The new scenario needs to be mastered by the journalist to do their work properly.

Revolution: the digital thing is not a new media, but a disruption, a shift of paradigm, a point of inflexion.

Leadership: In all this (r)evolution, leaders are required. A bad practice is that mainstream offline media are absorbing online departments, thus killing innovation and leadership. Indeed, it could well be the other way. Nowadays, the Net has already become the agora of influence, of fresh news, of flexibility, of freedom (of press), the way to recover the essence and commitment with the readers of the original journalism.

Monopoly: media and journalists have, forever, lost the monopoly of information. And this includes politicians, that have given the “friendly” media the radio or TV spectrum or the required licenses to operate.

We’re no-ones: The main discoveries of the web have neither been made by journalists, nor regarded as good or interesting discoveries. Yet, they are having a present and will have a future impact on journalists, media and journalism at large.

Front page: Front pages are (were) a solution to technological constraints. Now, each piece of news has to be treated as a front cover, as it can perfectly be an entry point depending on a link, a web search, etc.

Personalization: Advertising has already understood it. Journalists still have a long way to cover towards personalization, to offer the audience something personal, personalized surprises.

Link: Not only adding up a URL to a specific word, but finding original content, creating context, relating different things and putting them together.

Opportunity: The benefits overweight the risks, the good uses the criminal uses. Let’s trust and let the opportunity disclose.

Mobility: Ubiquity. Information will know no geographical constraints, neither on origin nor on destiny.

Q&A

Q: Front pages might not apply but… is there still a sense on having a “home” page? A: The home page acts as a brand. People browse through search engines, feed readers and direct links. The home page can be used to offer the casual reader to offer him something more so that he wants to come back. Internet enables not having a fixed front page, nor a categorized one.

Moisès Panisello: How to share? What models? Anyone can create? A: Depending on your point of view: contents or cost. Regardless of the point of view, it is not the technology — the mere ability to be able to write/publish or take photos or video — what matters, but the know how and expertise of the “artist”. Thus said, while it is true that everyone could do anything (e.g. the journalist write the article and take the photos and edit them and…) it is not that true that they should do everything because it is likely that they will not be the best ones in everything.

Ricard Ruiz de Querol: Have there been great changes in the journalism arena? A: While in the US it has already happened, in Spain there has not yet been a revolution where e.g. a blog has become mainstream and an acknowledged and reputed informer. It is nevertheless true that there is a “rumour” that is producing some “noise”.

Felipe González Gil: should blogs be regulated? A: Blogs should be free. One of their strengths is their chaotic nature, either for good and for bad. The audience will choose what’s relevant and who’s a good reporter, a journalist or a blogger, depending on their own criterion, their own specific needs at a specific time, etc.

Q: Can journalists collaborate in different media and different channels? A: In Spain, in the last years, the policy has been confrontation. Indeed, the strategy was to build a comprehensive media conglomerate (press, TV, radio, publisher, etc.) to avoid collaboration and, even more, to crowd out the channel from enemy media. The Internet should break this and try and find value anywhere, instead of retaining it at all costs, an endeavour difficult to maintain. It is networks of people speaking that makes possible the rise of communities, the spread of viral news, etc.

Fernando Santamaría: How to ensure loyalty of new waves of journalists and audiences, that believe in flexibility, in swapping channels and media? A: There’s room for each and everyone. On one hand, if a medium has rigour and knows how to evidence it, there’s no reason why to think they won’t find a cluster. On the other hand, these new generations will bring with them changes and new perspectives, not only as audience or freelance journalists, but as part of the structures of the firms of the future: again, there is no reason why to think that things are never going to change (or perish).

Enrique Dans: Where’s the advertising red line not to cross? A: Ads should not be intrusive and making it difficult to have a fair user experience. Format and relevance (context) play an important role, more than raw huge amounts of visitors (that might not be relevant to your goals… or you to their needs).

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

Communication in the Network Society (II)
Andrew Rasiej, Personal Democracy Forum

In 2001, the response of US senators about the impact of the Internet on politics was:

• Until we do not get rid off pornography, senators will avoid the Internet
• I’m getting 10,000 e-mails a day: how can I stop it?

What has since changed?

Howard Dean was created on and from the Internet… even if he knew nothing about the Internet. He just let people act on their own.

Blogs are very important, but they are just a part of the puzzle. The Internet brought Howard Dean community, but it did not fetched him with money. So he lost the election.

In 2006, the Internet did neither elect any candidate, but it did actually defeated candidates and put them out of the race, by spreading bad news (footage, content, etc.) through the Internet that compromised some candidates.

In 2008, the Internet has become (more or less) pervasive, everyone blogs or tapes, but, most important, friends are on the Net, and they sent, on a friendship/trust basis, political content and messages. And conversations take place, even easier than ever: My father would have never picked up the phone and commented a piece of news or a video about Obama with any of his friend, but he does send the piece of news itself to a friend… or to 50 of them. That video has been now seen by more than 7,000,000 people, even if it’s more than 7 minutes long.

Digital identity and content creation

A lot of content now found on the Internet is created by politicians or their partisans, and more important, it points not to the mainstream media, but the their own web pages, thus closing the circle.

If politicians claim being willing to engage in a conversation, with the citizenry, with their electors, and there is no blog, no website, no fora… no anything, people, voters, get disappointed. People detect ethos, dynamics, authenticity.

vs.

The Net is merciless on what it detects is fake, as the the blogs were going crazy quote on the (last) video, something a 25 y.o. would never say.

The good and bad thing of working closely with the Internet is that it creates a community, a community that might support, but also might complain and even ask for answers on specific actions of his leader. The good new is that this feedback from the leader can now come too, so that a conversation is actually created.

Politics and technology

Two schools

• To exert more top-down control on the agenda, the message… people, were people do what they’re told, delegating their decisions to others (e.g. MoveOn)
• To engage in more and better participation (e.g. Tom Steinberg’s)

Data will still grow exponentially and search functions will be improved, being the result of it all transparency.

Digital literacy is not only the ability to understand digital media messages, but the ability to create them: videracy as the ability to be “video literate” both as a receiver and as a creator and broadcaster/emitter. Geotagging, uploading, etc. is the wave of times.

In the age of the end of the economy of scarcity, and turning over the age of the economy of abundance, it makes no more sense to present candidates that can take decisions in 60 seconds. We want politicians that can take their time, to document themselves, to ask for advice, to benefit from the abundant data, information, knowledge that is at (anybody’s) reach.

In this landscape of abundance, where the possibility to create is so huge, where’s the need for organizations? [see below, Shirky]

Civic action is different from politics, and is now enhanced by technology. We should understand civic action to understand the potential impact that’s about to come.

Q&A

Ricard Ruiz de Querol: is there really such a need for digital literacy? Why not “network literacy”? A: We cannot, nowadays, imagine a world without text? It is quite safe to picture a future where video will be omnipresent. But, of course, same with networks. Hopefully, the resolution of fear (of networks) will sooner or later come.

Enrique Dans: What’s the real importance of political networks? A: People feel some sense of ownership on these networks (e.g. my.BarackObama.com). We do not know the positive effect and, most important, how to leverage their power. But we do know what negative impacts are if you don’t take into account such networks and virtual communities.

Ismael Peña-López: Is (new) content the currency of the Net? Is creating new content the price we have to pay to be someone on the Net? A: As content becomes more complex, the issue of the digital divide becomes more relevant. What’s happening on digital training or digital capacity building? On one hand, we have 24×7 online services that serve ubiquituously on any kind of platform; on the other hand, the educational system only works 15% of the time of the year, on a specific place. So, we have to rebuilt some things from scratch, and not only at the digital level, but an a very basic level. Indeed, we’re very likely not to be understanding at all what’s happening, what all this content creation possibilities will bring, what all this connectivity will cause. So we’d better start as soon as possible to try and understand it, to put it in everybody’s hands, to let people participate in democracy.

Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubi: If you build it they will come? If content is good, no need to foster its diffusion? A: Best ideas will spread amongst nodes, and will get appropriate support. Actually, the wisdom of the crowds not necessarily will become the tyranny of the crowds.

Marc López: What’s the future of politicians in this landscape? A: The politician that does not connect to the network, in the language of the network, in an authentic way, will wither and die.

More info

Clay Shirky (2008) Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

Some reflections about the Information Society
Josu Jon Imaz, Petronor (and, before, PNV)

Growingly, we see that the network is the new paradigm of civilization, abandoning the traditional radial model. And inside networks, we find meshes that weave densest networks: the international trade, the academy, civic communities… The Internet just instrumented former existing networks.

After the French-Prussian and the two World Wars, Europe gets reconfigured, borders blur, and the territory reshapes into network-like structures. Just like this, higher level problems can be faced through innovative solutions, e.g. the creation of the European Union.

Of course, the concept of identity is put at stake, and some people and communities react against these changes. There is a need to reconcile the idea of the state with that of the network, the center vs. the network, the individual and the collective vs. the network, etc.

Increasingly, cross-border spaces arise that defy both the idea of borders and the concept of the centre. The “centre”, more an more, can be pictured wherever by whoever and still make sense.

Indeed, uncertainty seems to be the paradigm, the framework, we will be living in.

In this always reshaping and recombining world, we’re moving into a new dimension where we might discover that we do not (or not only) belong to a predefined community (e.g. a nation) but to several “territories”. E.g. two cones, living in the same plane (2D), can look (cut by the plane) one as a circle and the other one as a parabola, hence different things. But if moved to a 3D world (a new dimension) they might well find that they were both equal: a cone.

And like “territories” and “identities” have changed, so have discourses, the way we communicate, the way we broadcast. Creating content is becoming an important part of the communication process. Not just sharing information, but the part of the creativity behind. Transmission of content must be accompanied by an added value, which might be adding new content to the one that was meant to be transmitted.

Politics, politicians and political communication in the Network Society
Miquel Iceta, PSC

Why being on the Net: to be the first one to say something. Better to say things, and engage in a dialogue, than to remain silent and be not part of the conversation.

Politics 2.0: not enough having a web site, you need to go beyond the mere presence on the Net. Each channel has its rules. Nixon won in the radio, Kennedy won in the TV: politicians need to dominate the dominant media.

But in these times of uncertainty, nothing is sure: even reputation is questioned and not always the same people necessarily have always to be right. Empowerment takes place and power gets democratized.

The Internet stimulates participation, creativity, communication, community building. The Net suggests taking the path of participative democracy and deliberative democracy.

The Internet as a “digital federation” where agreements are taken freely, ad hoc, shaping a federation.

Q&A

Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí: Is it possible to have multiple identities? Imaz: not only possible, but a good thing, as it is the multiple nodes you’re connected with the ones that define you.

Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí: Is it possible to do politics, to have political institutions, in the Network Society? Iceta: it is true that one of the consequences of globalization is less power for local/national institutions (even international), but it is not less untrue that just because of this, there is a huge need for strong leadership and command, which can only be achieved by strong political institutions.

Javier Vázquez: How can dialogue be shifted from persons to institutions (the actual model) towards persons to persons (the model that enables the Internet)?
Q: Can the Internet put flexibility into the public election system, and be able to vote or choose ideas instead of blocks of ideas and manifestos?

Iceta: There is no evidence that political parties are going to change and reshape them into network-like structures or architectures. So, it still is difficult to contact the person (not the party) or some idea (and not the party’s discipline). Hence, we have to focus on the notion of the party and try and change it, so that the communication and interaction with the citizenry can evolve towards more open scenarios. Dogma, rite and hierarchy, the fundamentals of the party, have to be broken down so that change can happen. Nevertheless, we should not put all the eggs of participation in the basket of the Internet: people offline, for the sake of democratic legitimacy, should be included in the decision-taking processes.
Imaz: While agreeing with Iceta, there is already a e.g. political blogosphere within parties’ members and partisans that is having some influence and even some measurable impact.

Q: How can direct participation in a decision take place? Iceta: The problem is not only in taking part in the last stage of a decision process, but how to identify all the alternatives and, hence, all the individuals that are affected or interested by such decision.

Q: How to guarantee reputation in people and quality in content? Iceta: The network itself has to be the filter: the Net creates the problem, the Net has to find the solution. Digital literacy being a must towards this goal. Imaz: we tend to ask the Internet things that we do not dare ask the “reality”. Fake reputation or fool content happens everyday. Not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about it, but just demanding enforcement at all levels. On the other hand, we have to enhance freedom before control, and empower the weak before the strong.

More info

Levine, F., Locke, C., Searls, D. & Weinberger, D. (1999). The Cluetrain Manifesto. The End of Business as Usual. New York: Cluetrain.

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

Citizenry in the Network Society
Tom Steinberg, MySociety.org

MySociety is an NGO (mainly run by volunteers) whose aim is to empower the society at large so they can engage, participate and contact the policy-makers.

Initiatives:

• WriteToThem.com: send your thoughts and queries to elected charges
• TheyWorkForYou.com: know who an elected charge is and how do they act and think (e.g. what did they vote concerning a specific subject)
• The Public Whip: based on the elected charges’ actions on e.g. the Parliament, engage in a debate and evaluation about these actions.
• FixMyStreet, to let public managers know about problems in your hometown: holes on the road, graffiti on your walls, etc.
• PledgeBank, to help people diffuse their pledges and gather other people around them so that pledges can be accomplished.
• OpenAustralia, similar to TheyWorkForYou
• WhatDoTheyKnow, about getting public data and information from governments
• Groups Near You, to find communities (”real” or virtual) in the neighbourhood, to connect with them, participate, engage

The common ground of all these initiatives is follow-up: all actions and reactions (or lack of them) can be tracked and surveyed by e-mail and RSS. This follow-up feature acts as an implicit — and most times explicit — enforcement tool that helps to get things done, or to have evidence to backup criticism for inaction.

Q&A

Marc López: Why Spain have no initiatives like those? How would a Spanish elected charge feel when facing such “controlling” devices?

Q: What do the institutions and politicians think about all these initiatives? A: Most probably they feel right when ranked positively on these sites according to their answers to queries sent by the users.

Q: Is it the low Internet usage level in Spain the reason not to have such initiatives? Lack of interest? A: Because of the low cost to set up and run any of those initiatives, there’s no need to have a huge “market” to turn them on. So, it’s not worth waiting and, instead, just wait for a couple of good uses of the tools. If they show benefits, then “people will come”.

Q: How to get the data that feed these sites? Are governments eager to publish them? A: Normally, harvesting them is tough. But it is also true that most data should be public by law, so you’re in your right to enforce the governments to make them available [see also WhatDoTheyKnow above].

Andrian Mangin: Do you notice (and how) changes in the politicians? A: There are indicators within the sites that measure performance of the politicians featured there, so at least, indirectly, through the evaluations the users make of them, you can guess whether there was a change or not.

Ricard Ruiz de Querol: How to replicate some of the initiatives? A: So you want to start an organisation like mySociety? Some tips for aspirants. Of course, funding, even if small, is always an issue. Starting purely with volunteers always an option, at least for the kick off.

Felipe González Gil: Do you think these initiatives will help reducing bipartidism, which is fostered by mainstream media by letting minority parties out? A: Can’t tell, but, potentially, the Internet (and, most specifically, these sites) it is a horizontal platform so that anyone can have the same coverage. But, with the exception of America (because of many reasons), these sites have not had any impact on e.g. presidential elections. So, they’re good for monitoring, but not for campaigning.

Ismael Peña-López: what about the trade-off between common good and wanting the elected charge to scratch my own and only itch? A: All sites collect statistics at the aggregate level, even if you’re asking for a personal problem (e.g. like Amazon’s suggestions). Everything’s public and easy to see what happens at the “community” level. Nevertheless, the caveat is: if you build something what will help other, it’s great, and it’s got its place; but the more focused the site is in your own needs, the more likely you are to use it, to be engaged, as the impact affects you. On the other way, by putting yourself on the map (because of a personal demand), you’re likely to contacting other people with the similar needs and end up by doing things together at the community level [see also Groups Near You, above].

Q: What about the digital divide? A: Let’s look it the other way: what about people that would never ever had contacted an elected charge because it was way too difficult? On the other hand, the sites are really user friendly, easy to use, so a simple action can be quickly done and the return of the effort is immediate. So, it is easy to shift up towards more complex virtual actions in these or other sites.

Q: Is there any impact? A: Even if the output is “just” having an answer, an e-mail, from the Prime Ministers, the issue is that technology has made it possible and almost costless. Contacting back 2M people that signed a petition was almost impossible and, by all means, its cost made it non-viable. Now, feedback can be sent, personally, at almost zero cost. That’s an improvement.

Q: In what kind of cities/town is the impact and use more likely to be found? A: Most probably, in bigger areas, where there is no personal acquaintance with the politicians. Also where the civil society is less articulated.

Q: Is there any law that obliges the Members of the Parliament in the UK to answer public petitions? A: Yes, according to some rules, they have to give explanations, but, in general, they are not obliged at all.

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

Citizenry in the Network Society
Carol Darr, Harvard Kennedy School

One American in then tells the other nine how to vote, where to eat, and what to buy. They are The Influentials (Ed Keller & Jon Berry).

Obama had little influence, short experience, etc. to have rallied for being the democrat candidate to the presidency of the US: to raise votes and, most important, to raise money. What did happen so that he could be a candidate to the primary elections and, actually, to end being the candidate to the presidential elections? Everybody can buy products, but not everybody does: how do you make people buy your product? There’re some people that influence others to do things.

The Influentials find new ideas, find new people, and gather information because they are all the time picking and pulling information from anywhere. The Influentials know what’s happening in their communities and build social networks, because they know e.g. twice as many people as any other person, and hence they are at the forefront of whatever is happening… or going to happen.

The Influentials are important, especially for politicians and governments:

• Other people look for them and value their opinions
• They engage and are active within their communities
• They are at the cutting edge of events, 2 to 5 years beyond the rest of the world
• They are deeply interested in politics

Being influential is about being engaged in community activities, disseminating information about these activities, letting your ideas being known in media or at events, directly letting your ideas being heard by decision-takers by taking part in their events or agendas or teams, etc.

Influentials, Poli-Influentials and Politicians

Influentials and Poli-Influentials do more things that define the profile of an Influential than politicians or other people do, especially those activities that are more active. But, indeed, also passive political activities have a higher level of engagement amongst Influentials and Poli-Influentials.

When talking about online proactive political activities, Poli-Influentials detach themselves from Influentials and Politicians, that (while less active the latter), approach their profiles.

Poli-Influentials have usually (and significatively) reached a higher education level, being 60% of them post-graduates (PhD, masters, etc.). Notwithstanding, education does not affect the kind of activities taken by anyone, just the degree. In other words: the more education, the more influential activities people engage in, but in just the same proportion (online vs. offline, imparting a conference vs. writing an article, etc.) that other people not as much engaged. As expected, passive activities get the lion’s share vs. proactive activities.

It’s astonishing [appalling?] to see how little involved Politicians are. And, against all myths, how highly involved are intensive Internet users.

Q&A

Q: If Barack Obama won the presidential election, would he be keeping the online channel “open”? Or was it just for campaigning? A: He does not have a choice. The conversation is set, so it is plain impossible to close it. People are now empowered, and they are not letting this be lost. On the other hand, the online channel benefits Barack Obama: because of the young profile of Internet users; and because the Internet requires proaction (is not passive) so it benefits charismatic leaders because their magnetism drives people inside the Internet and proactively look for information and engage in whatever online action.

Ismael Peña-López: This is the description of a profile… but what about the performance of these profiles? Politicians (by construction) get what they planned (they’re ruling anyway), but what about Influentials and Poli-Influentials? Why not everybody that does the things that influentials do, are that influent? What happens when influentials become rulers? Is it good? Is it bad? A: We might not know what Influentials’ impact is as individuals, taken one by one. But we do know that the activities that define the Influentials and Poli-Influentials profiles do have an impact on politics. Hence, we can infer, at the aggregate level, that the more influential activities you’re engaged in, the more influential (again, at the aggregate level) you’re likely to be. And, indeed, people behind influential activities are often used as an asset by partisans and politicians, to get ideas from them, to recruit them, etc. Concerning politicians (and other people) not engaged, this is a luxury that is not sustainable in he long run: the Internet has showed the power that it can feed to a newby (i.e. Obama) that knows how to be engaged and use empowering tools to raise communities and debate around him.

Q: what’s the liaison between online and offline engagement? A: There’s a closest link. People were already engaged before the Internet. The Net just made it easier. Of course, as an easier way to be engaged, it is becoming an excellent entry gate for people flirting with being influential, but all in all, sooner or later, they’ll create their offline or local communities, and engage in many other activities different than online.

Q: are offliners cease to be influentials? A: Not yet. There’s always people that knows everybody, the big media, the professional apparatus, etc. But it is likely to happen that the raise of video, that does not require written fluency, will shift the landscape towards a more balanced distribution of influence.

Q: Was it the lack of women in the Internet the reason why Hillary Clinton was not elected? A: Not likely. Barack Obama won because of other reasons: change, connection with the young, a personal philosophy similar to that of the Internet (freedom, conversation, proaction). Hillary Clinton represented just the opposite philosophy.

Marc López: Are we going towards a fragmented way of policy making? Towards a world of nano-lobbies and politicians serving nano-lobbies’ interests? A: Guess it’ll be just that way. Every single person of the world with a cellphone + camera has a world wide reach TV emitter.

More info

Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (2004) Political Influentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign (, 2.92MB)

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

Organizations in the Network Society (II)
Santiago Ortiz, Bestiario

To think of the enterprise as a network, as we can think of this course as a network: Visualization tool of the course Network Society

The reality is composed by networks, networks that can understood through the approach of complexity or complex systems. And the definition of the individual, and even the way it learns (Maturana & Valera), can be explained in relationship with the exterior, with the environment, and its relationships.

In this train of though, ICTs can help map and visualize the relationships that are weaved among individuals and organizations, how they get and diffuse knowledge. This can indeed help to build confidence: confidence is based on visibility, thus digital presence enhances confidence by increasing visibility.

Emergence

Many concepts of the complex theory can be applied to enterprises: pattern transmission, movement or changes that emerge from simple rules [see more info: Johnson], etc. E.g., the football club: the players change, the coach changes, the followers change… and nevertheless the club remains “the same”.

Fractals are another way of looking at it: simple structures, combined with exponential repetitions and successions, conform new approaches, constructions, relationships that do take place in reality.

Complexity provides us with tools and a language to approach nowadays (ICT mediated) relationships so that we can understand them, measure them, replicate them. Every so often, people feed the Internet not with content, but with applications, which is another way of saying that they feed the Internet with dynamic ideas.

Visibility, transparency of relationships

They Rule, Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen.

Patterns of emergence: movement, attractors… They create and destroy networks: in the human or animal realms (birds flock 3D).

Share of the radio spectrum, City Distances. Sometimes (Spisi) the results are non-conclusive: we can represent the information but no pattern and/or causability seems to arise.

The notion of collective intelligence, of a sort of “exo-brain”, where relationships are most important in the learning and storing of knowledge.

And education itself can be understood too as a challenge to represent — and transmit — complex information. For instance, Mitozoos is a simulation game about genetics, where a genome determines a phenotype, and this phenotype the relationships amongst individuals, their ability to survive or endure, etc.

Archivo de la Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (1907-1939) to analyse grants to scientists to do research abroad, relating people, years, disciplines and geography.

Q&A

Felipe González Gil: isn’t this the hegemony of the visual? Is it sustainable, due to the effort needed? Is there room for sound? A: we overestimate the real cost/effort of viewing a network. So, it is no hegemony (in a pejorative sense), as it is not elitist; and it is sustainable, just for the same reasons of low cost/effort. Sound has not been analyzed or worked with in depth, and it is true that present tools do not offer much flexibility to experiment with sound and, thus, combine visualizations with sounds.

Personal reflections

The most interesting part of Santiago Ortiz’s speech is the subversion of hypertext: in hypertext, the text is the core, the conceptual unit, and the link or hyperlink a means to relate two different texts (and through several links, to create a network).

In Ortiz’s approach, the core, the conceptual unit, is the link itself. It is the relationships that matter. And they do not matter because they explain how two different things are related, but as an explanatory construct in itself: it is the network that speaks, not the nodes it is made of; it is e.g. how texts are related one to each other that tells us things, not what the texts themselves say.

To do list: try 6pli.

More info

Juan Freire La empresa como interfaz

Juan Freire De la superficie a la interfaz: de la superficialidad a la complejidad

Notes from the course Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens, Barcelona, 15-17 October, 2008.

Organizations in the Network Society
Enrique Dans

The evolution from the oral tradition, to writing, to the press is that of making it possible, between people and along time, communication: first, is lasts; then, is can be replicated. And it was put at the service of the society at a “reasonable” cost. Same happened with the media (TV, radio, etc.) revolution. But still it had a cost, and thus, timespan was expensive and not accessible by everyone. The Internet opens the box.

What’s the impact on organizations?

Ronald Coase: firms exist because of transaction costs.

But now, we can see that these transaction costs have dropped and many people can engage in shared projects at lowest costs [see below, Benkler].

Intellectual property rights are, systematically seen as a barrier, as a new transaction cost that seems (a) useless and (b) induces to circumvention.

A Netocracy is arising that demands a reflection about the needs to rethink some long-established conventions, as Tim Berners-Lee de facto did in designing the World Wide Web.

Some examples of new organizations

• The real innovation of Amazon.com was not selling books online, but rearranging the shelves of the bookshop for each and every customer that “entered” the shop… at (almost) zero cost.
• Ebay made profitable selling some goods by (a) attracting massive amounts of customers while (b) keeping very low the transaction costs.
• Google build an index by having people built it for free: when doing links, when doing searches, etc.
• Napster made music distribution available at low transaction costs.
• Blogger, making it easy to publish content online
• BitTotrrent, to distribute huge amounts of data without having to own a powerful server and access to the Net
• Friendster, to maintain one’s own network
• Keyhole, to put yourself on the map and get geographically contextualized information
• YouTube, to share videos
• FaceBook, making it possible to develop applications and turning the social networking site into a platform

And more and more people are used to work based on the afore mentioned services, plus voice over IP, etc. But still there are different layers of adoption, where early adopters are way beyond the rest of the organizations, that still think about computers. But computer-centric technology/philosophy just does not allow this decentralized way of working, of cutting down transaction costs. Cloud computing is about the opposite of PC-centric computing.

Access to information and the economy of scarcity

We stick to old mental models, based on the scarcity of information, and we tend to collect and store information instead of learning (and teaching) how to find it. The added value is no more in finding, getting, storing the information, but on transforming it.

But it is true that to have changes being done, an added value proposal for that change is to be attached. And evidence shows that it is easier to begin from scratch (i.e. a brand new firm) that bring change on an existing infrastructure.

One added value: peeping through the keyhole. Knowing what’s been told about you / your enterprise.

Access to information and the economy of attention

The amount of information is so huge that it is very difficult to catch anyone’s (e.g. the custormer’s) attention. People shift between media with most ease and at no cost. And not only between media, but between platforms, e.g. from the TV to the Internet.

Some new strategies to catch the audiences’ attention necessarily have to be created: the presentation of the iPhone, the release of Google’s Chrome…

Using social networking software (SNS) might not be a goal in itself where there’s not a natural social network. But using SNS’s capabilities to improve other environments can add value to old or traditional processes.

On the other hand, it well might be a goal in itself, as digital natives will sooner or later enter the organizations and bring with them all the technologies and ways of working of the Generation Y. And, as a matter of fact, this is something that will surely happen.

More info