Thanks to SwitchNewMedia I was able to avoid 8 hours of train travel yesterday and participate in Reboot Britain from the rural heart of the country.
Faced
with economic meltdown, dismally low levels of public trust in
political leadership, growing concerns about the ability of big
government to succeed let alone sustain itself, there's an urgent need
to "re-imagine, re-invest, and re-invigorate our economy and society."
These words of Diane Coyle, editor and facilitator, apply beyond the
shores of the little island that formed the focus of yesterday's
event...
To provoke debate, the organizers (NESTA) commissioned a series of essays
that are well worth reading. I also recommend you bookmark the site as
all the presentations will be available shortly and check out
#rebootbritain to sense the Twitter pulse.
While
the focus was on the public economy, there was plenty of interest to
the private sector and associations in all facets of life and business
in the UK and elsewhere.
Kudos to Stephen
Moore(@stevemoore4good), NESTA and the organizing team for initiating
the conversation - even though the format (mostly in the main lecture
hall) was surprisingly conventional with limited opportunities for
audience participation. Next time, a split screen would enable online
participants to see what the speaker was referring to and it would be
great if moderators could accept questions from tweeters/bloggers
regardless of their location......
It was a rich experience -
even from a distance and without the benefit of F2F buzz, but, despite
Howard Rheingold's insightful conclusion and optimistic wardrobe, the
title left me feeling very uneasy.
While eye and ear catching
in its modernity, the concept of ReBoot, is on reflection merely a 2.0
version of "kickstart." It implies an assumption that a traditional
economy, which has gone into nosedive, can be brought back to life with
a reset button and all will be well. Remember, it comes after the
messages: "Abort", "Retry", and "Fail"! But the intent of the
conference suggested that it isn't a reboot that's needed but an
entirely new operating system, based on a fundamentally different set
of operating assumptions and guiding principles - far greater even than
a switch from PC to Mac! I notice that some other bloggers came to
similar conclusions separately.
The term ReBoot also implies
that a new economy (networked, open, lightweight, environmentally
responsible, socially just, creative, agile and resilient...) will come
about as a result of external intervention when, in fact, it's already
emerging because the conditions are right.
Truth is, we're
being carried forward by a host of change forces that have generated
sufficient pent up energy to cause a tectonic shift in perception
regarding who we are as human beings on a finite planet and how we
should behave...
Talking about 2.0 versions of government,
marketing, journalism, healthcare, leadership, HR and manufacturing is
really healthy but will only move beyond talk to action when we can
sustain our attention spans long enough to understand these deeper
forces and harness their dynamics. It's ironic that here we are a
pivotal point in human history when we could become conscious of our
own evolution and the technology that binds also shatters our attention
into tiny fragments such that we seem to be viewing reality through a
kaleidescope rather than a microscope.
One agent of change never shy to use the term Paradigm appropriately
and forcefully is Don Tapscott (@dtapscott) who, like David Weinerger
and crew (Cluetrain authors), and Tim O' Reilly cut his intellectual
teeth on IT problems but has just gets wiser and more insightful with
age. For those of us whose time is limited between meetings, tweets,
emails, the following 2 minute video clip reminds us that it'll take more than a reBoot to move Britain forward.
Another agent of change, Paul Hawken, recently author of Blessed Unrest also
affirms that the ground is already shaking beneath the feet of
traditional institutions. Every time I watch the following clip from
the Bioneers conference a few years ago, I am reminded why we're living
in such an exciting time, so full of opportunity, so filled with
consequence.
