Migration >
Pandemics >
Globalization >
special
thank you ...
we_special_/
... to all our intrepid authors! We know our deadlines were simply lethal,
but you still made them!
... to Paul Morland our indefatigable / copyeditor.
... to Bertelsmann Stiftung whose generosity first made this issue
possible and who gave us the creative freedom we need to let
this magazine grow.
editorial
we_special_/
During the last few years I have been experimenting a lot with networks and
the Internet. Actually, we-magazine was one of these experiments. It still has its
experimental status – it is changing its face, the editorial concept, and the part-
ners WE co-operates with. we-magazine is freestyle – no borders, no limits, no
rules. Topics emerge from the network and WE go for a new edition whenever
WE feel WE are ready.
What is FutureChallenges?
WE@FutureChallenges page_
Learn
Engage
Milagro page_
Sebastián Miquel & Nicolás Tereschuk
What is
Future
Challenges?
we_special_/
What is futurec
URL
www.futurechallenges.org
USP
Discussing megatrend intersections and organizing projects
in a trans-disciplinary and international way.
Megatrends
Demographic Change > Demographic change describes changes to the size and structure of
a country’s population through rises and falls in the birth rate and
mortality rate as well as by migratory movements of people..
Climate Change > Climate change refers to the permanent changes in the atmosphere
over a longer period of time. Although there have been changes in
the earth’s climate for millions of years, global warming in the th
century must be predominantly attributed to human activity.
New Governance > Broadly speaking, governance includes all forms of coordination
among individual and collective players. Todays governance always
functions in a globalized multilevel system among state and non-state
actors.
Natural Resources + Biodiversity > Biodiversity describes the totality of living organisms which can
be measured by the number of species of animals, plants and
microorganisms living in a particular region. Natural resources are
raw materials provided by nature. People can mine but cannot
manufacture them. This renders their sustainable use imperative.
Security + Anti-Terror Policy > War and conflict have always been defining moments not just for
international politics, but also for nation states. The global security
architecture of the future must take account of new kinds of (inter-
national) threats such as cyber-terrorism, chemical-terrorism and
bio-terrorism.
we_special_/
challenges.org?
Pandemics > Pandemics refer to illnesses that occur not just locally or regionally,
but globally. They represent the emergence of diseases new to a
population and containing agents that infect humans, causing
significant, persistent illness that spreads easily among humans.
Points of Entry
Learn – more about the megatrend correlations.
Engage – translate ideas into action.
Connect – with others to realize your project.
Who?
Bertelsmann Stiftung in collaboration with international
bloggers, scientists and everybody who wants to participate.
Why?
The idea is to foster “science as a public good” and initiate a
broader dialogue between experts and non-experts. For us it is
an obligation to make science public.
How?
The Bertelsmann Stiftung will become part of the Net. It will
no longer provide ready-made solutions, but act as a moderator in
establishing new forms of participatory culture.
When?
Launch: May
Contact
Ole.Wintermann@bertelsmann-stiftung.de
Henrik.Scheller@bertelsmann-stiftung.de
we_special_/
FutureChallenges
Correlations between the Megatrends
Jonathan Stevens / Henrik Scheller
E
Economic Globalization Global Governance
Energy and Natural Climate Change and Threats to Global Demographics and
Resources Biodiversity Security Migration
Resources Equal Economic Climate Drives Commerce Security Increases Cost Centers of Productivity
Clout Climate Change Mitigations Cost Attribution of Attacks Cost of New Migrants
Extraction and Use Technology Evolving Climate Technologies Escalating Technologies Aging Western Powers
Shifts in Source and Use Biodiversity as Economic
Use Affected by Economic Value
Climate
Use Influenced by Compacts International Climate Rise in Sub-state Powers Governing Aging Societies
Common Geographic Compacts Technology Empowered Growing Unstable Regions
Resources Global Resource Sharing Individuals Re-evaluating Citizenship
Nuclear Energy Treaties Green Accountability Governing Evolving Threats Growth in Transient
Democratization of Threats Transcend Geography Populations
Biodiversity
Shifting Resource Locations Mixed Impact of Biofuels Unstable Energy-Rich Fuel/Resource Migrations
Alternative Fuels GHG and Climate Change Regions Increasing Standards
Carbon Consumption Rates Alternative Fuel Markets Dual Use Technologies of Living
Resource Technologies Rise in Alternative Fuels Migrants Stress Resources
Biofuel Land Needs Adaption Strategies Unstable Regions Most Urbanization Stresses
GHG Output Growth Species Abundance and Vulnerable Biodiversity
Dual Role of New Fuels Distribution Developing World More People Equals More GHGs
Land and Water Viability Consumption Climate Migration
Worsening Threats of High Population in Vulnerable
Bio-Attacks Areas
Resources Threaten Unstable Regions Most Rising Sub-state Powers Migrants Challenge Security
Sovereignty Affected Governing Evolving Threats Security for/from
Technological Distribution Destabilized Un/Undergoverned Spaces Quasi-citizens
New Fuels Threaten Powers Production/Transit Nuclear Containment Rise in Radicalization
Security Influences Use Worsening Bio-threats Migrants in Ungoverned
Growth vs Climate Change Spaces
WE@FutureChallenges
The futurechallenges.org core team
at Bertelsmann Stiftung explains
what futurechallenges.org means
to them personally.
Henrik Scheller Ole Wintermann Bettina Neuhaus
FutureChallenges is both a chance and a privilege. Working as an economist on the correlations bet-
The Bertelsmann Stiftung gives me the opportunity ween the megatrends, when I was writing the Glo-
to think about the current and future risks our pla- belpedia-articles for FutureChallenges, led me to
net is facing. At the same time I have the personal many new insights about how complex the world’s
freedom to create and provide concepts on how to economy is. This has led me to increasingly ques-
tackle them. To collaborate with a wide range of tion whether the macro-economic growth-model,
partners, to bring people with multiple backgrounds which was used over the last decades, fits the needs
together and to shape a great team is a thrilling of the th century.
task. Our commitment: to make the world a better
place. Being aware that it is only a small contribu- Malte Boecker
tion, I am convinced that each step matters. We have
to remember the future starts right in our own FutureChallenges is a great opportunity to reflect
front yard and it is up to us to make and drive the on the nature and magnitude of the future chal-
change. lenges lying ahead in a structured way.
Ultimately, it will encourage all of us who are in-
Ole Wintermann volved to become part of the solution. My gut fee-
ling is that the platform will call for behavioral
When developing futurechallenges.org, I became changes at various levels. FutureChallenges urges
more and more aware of what an amazing envi- us to redefine what quality of life, real economic
ronment the Internet is. With its decentralized growth and progress mean to us and to work on so-
structure and self-organizing capability, it poses an lutions that shift our behavior in the right direction.
on-going challenge to existing processes, eternal
truths and well-defined structures. Jonathan Stevens
Jacinta Escudos, Mac-Jordan Holdbrookes Noha Atef, Sonam Ongmo, Alexey Sidorenko,
El Salvador D. Degadjor, Ghana Egypt Bhutan Russia
I think we have to take advantage of the access to We can handle the challenges we’re facing by ana-
information we have at present. Never before has lyzing them and discussing this analysis. The dis-
information been so accessible and never before cussion reveals who is able to do what, and how
have there been so many ways to share. For those the problem can be diagnosed from different points
who have access to the Internet, sharing should be- of view. Once you measure the size of an obstacle,
come an obligation! you can easily overcome it.
Civil society must involve itself directly in matters
and propose solutions, projects and ideas to over- Sonam Ongmo, Bhutan
come the challenges of the ever changing situation
in our world. Independence in action must be sought In my opinion the importance of these challenges
(be it in a community, in a city or in a country!). The varies depending on where we live and there are a
Web. is, I believe, a privileged space to achieve myriad of approaches accordingly, as well. While
that. these challenges can be specific to countries, in the
end they affect us all. How can we handle them? By
Mac-Jordan Holdbrookes D. Degadjor, Ghana understanding globalization and the interdepen-
dencies of an increasingly interconnected world.
In the efforts of WE tackling issues/challenges This should not only impact our policies and attitu-
facing us this day, the best tool is the Internet. Mil- des to climate change/environment but also eco-
lions of people worldwide are using the Internet to nomics, resource-sharing and putting humanitarian
share information, make new associations and com- issues before economic greed. Understanding them
municate. During the recent earthquakes in both can have profound effects on alleviating poverty,
Haiti & Chile, information about the quakes was corruption and greed.
made available through the Internet. Ushahidi –
a crowd-sourcing crisis information organization Alexey Sidorenko, Russia
used the Internet to help/support during periods of
crisis in the world. I think, FutureChallenges can be solved if we take
The Internet is a part of my every sphere of life now. into account the following three basic things:
I can’t live without it even for a second; therefore patience, understanding and education. Patience –
I believe if WE use the Internet effectively, all every change needs time. Solving challenges needs
challenges/issues can be addressed. both time and change. Understanding – if people
would realize they’re living in a smaller world, and
there’s no place for violence and political selfish-
ness, it would be a better place. The West should
know more about the East, the South should know
more about the North and vice versa. Education –
without it, we will repeat the same mistakes over
and over again.
>
>
>
>
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>
>
Annette Heuser Henrik Scheller Jonathan Stevens Ole Wintermann
Annette Heuser is executive direc- Henrik Scheller read politics and Jonathan Stevens is director of the Ole Wintermann read economics,
tor of the Washington, DC office musicology. In he joined Demographic Change Project for politics and sociology in Kiel and
of the Bertelsmann Foundation. the Bertelsmann Stiftung where the Bertelsmann Foundation. Göteborg. He was a research assi-
Annette read political science, law he is responsible for issues of Jonathan was an epidemiologist stant at the University of Göteborg
and sociology, and is a member governance. before moving to teaching and where he wrote his PhD on the
of the World Economic Forum’s public policy. He worked at the ability of political systems to react
Global Agenda Council on the Centers for Disease Control and to crises. After being head of
Future of the European Union; Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. department for economic and
the Atlantic Council’s Strategic social policy at the former German
Advisors Group and the European Employees Union (DAG). Ole
Council on Foreign Relations. She joined the Bertelsmann Stiftung in
also serves as vice-chair of the to work on demographic
Council on Foundations’ Global change. Since he has focused
Philanthropy Committee. on the interdependencies of glo-
bal megatrends with the develop-
ment of the Internet. His latest
project is: futurechallenges.org
we_special_/
Security and Anit-Terror Policy Our third aim is to explore how the knowledge of
War and conflict have always been defining the Web can be used to find the solutions that we
moments not just for international politics, need to meet future demands.
but also for nation states. The global secu-
rity architecture of the future must take
account of new kinds of (international)
threats such as cyber-terrorism, chemical-
terrorism and bio-terrorism.
we_special_/
Internet. This has the enormous advantage that people who are not directly taking part in the con-
we now get much quicker feedback and can make ference to influence the course of the proceedings
corresponding changes to our own work and the in Washington through their commentaries. On the
issues with which we deal. other hand we want to facilitate exchanges among
people in the northern and southern hemispheres.
we-magazine > This is a major issue for us and one that should also
be determinant for futurechallenges.org. Our aim
The platform will have its soft launch at a major is to round off the day with presentation of a spe-
conference in Washington. What’s the conference cific agenda for the futurechallenges.org platform.
about?
we-magazine >
Annette Heuser >
Where do you see yourselves in one year or eigh-
You mean our conference on “Opportunities in teen months with the www.futurechallenges.org
Crisis – Avenues to Growth”, which takes place on platform?
April this year in Washington. This is the second
conference of its kind that aims to bring to the Ole Wintermann >
forefront the opportunities and new perspectives
engendered by global crises. This is another im- We hope that FutureChallenges will grow into one
portant message that futurechallenges.org should of the most attractive of the international plat-
get across – that global transformation is an forms, a place where, above all non-experts also
opportunity for positive change! Broad public per- have the confidence to post their ideas and
ception – whether it be of megatrends themselves thoughts on the mutual impact of global mega-
or the ways they interact with one another – always trends. At the same time we are also encouraging
carries a certain fatalistic element with it. The all- a broad range of academic institutions such as the
pervasive feeling of being powerless, of being Brookings Institution and Resources for the Future
unable to change the course of events, is a major (RFF) in Washington or the Potsdam Institute for
impediment both to individual and political enga- Climate Impact Research and the George Mason
gement. But that needn’t be so! Take our founda- University in Virginia to use the platform for disse-
tion, which is cooperating with a host of other mination of their work in the sense of “science as a
institutions, NGOs and social business initiatives public good”. The idea of networking has central
which are already successfully on the ground. The importance for us, and we’re delighted that we’ve
only thing they often lack is broad public notice been able to arrange partnerships with Global
and, of course, money! Voices and other online projects.
we-magazine >
Future
Learn
– about the correlations
between the megatrends
Challenges
>
>
Photo: www.kubikfoto.de
tags > collective intelligence, networks, semantic, web culture,
nextpractice
The
Network is
Challenging
Us
Peter Kruse
Peter Kruse is founder and managing partner of nextpractice GmbH in Bremen, Germany. He worked for over years at several
German universities in the field of brain research. His main areas of research have been the processing of complexity and auto-
nomous order formation in intelligent networks. He is internationally successfull as a consultant for over ten years now.
we_special_/
to share with you. It then becomes a landscape, a When the Internet started, the first boom was trig-
group of people or some animals in the wood. Our gered by people’s fascination with easy access to a
brain is extremely well trained in this process of rich world of knowledge, ideas and pictures. With
reducing complexity by order-formation. Like the hyperlinks, connectivity in the network exploded
Internet, our brain is a self-organizing system. So and it started to become increasingly unmanage-
the Internet and the brain make a perfect fit. No able. The focus of users shifted from the provider
need for payback. to the search engine, from access to filtering. But
What happens when you look at a pointillist pain- users quickly realized that search engines are not
ting is directly comparable to what enables an able to solve the problem of qualitative evaluation.
entrepreneur to put forward a future business The structural possibility of connecting bits of infor-
opportunity earlier than his competitors or what mation via hyperlinks takes information out of its
enables an author to formulate the attitude to life context and makes it extremely difficult to decode
of a whole generation. J. D. Salinger published his intended meaning. To describe this loss of con-
novel “The Catcher in the Rye” in as a book for textual support, the British sociologist Anthony
adults, but the stream of consciousness he gave Giddens invented the telling term “disembedding”.
to his protagonist Holden Caulfield has attracted The reaction of users to this was to solve the pro-
adolescent readers round the world ever since. His blem by “rooming in”, giving poor lonesome infor-
antihero is an icon for teenage rebellion – an mation a caring social environment or community.
archetype, a basic pattern. The focus of users shifted from search engines to
But for me by far the best way of explaining the the social software of Web.. First motivated by
idea of pattern-formation as a way of reducing the need to reduce complexity via recommenda-
complexity are the fascinating think tools we call tions, users were soon inspired by a new motiva-
“metaphor” or “analogy”. They enable the direct tion to be present in the Internet: leaving one’s
transfer of an insight from one area of application mark in order to be recognized by others. The first
to a totally new one without substantial loss: “a Internet-boom of access to information was follo-
new broom sweeps clean”, “the early bird catches wed by the second boom of active participation.
the worm”, or “too many cooks spoil the broth” etc. The first huge migration of the information age had
begun. People changed from being Digital Visitors
we-magazine > who use the Internet as a tool into Digital Inhabi-
tants who just live in the Internet. The Internet
Would you describe the Internet then as a huge started to become a cultural area in itself. The
social brain? distinction between “real” and “virtual” disappea-
red long before the idea of augmented reality
Peter Kruse > was born. From a systems theory perspective, the
explosion of connectivity was amplified by the
No, this would be an analogy with major short- explosion of the number of spontaneously active
comings. Our brain is an assembly of single cells elements. A network was formed with many links
whose architecture is far less complex than the and nodes able to produce non-linear dynamics.
architecture of the overall system. In the Internet On top of this, by inventing the re-tweet-function,
every active user has – hopefully – a brain and Twitter-users added the possibility of circular exci-
therefore all users are themselves equipped with a tation which in the brain is a basic feature of short-
basic architecture more complex than the Internet term memory. Merging high connectivity with the
as a whole. Each user is able to create a phenome- plethora of spontaneously active elements and
non like consciousness. But the Internet is not able the emergence of dynamic engrams by circular
to reach such levels of order-formation. The Inter- excitation gives a very effective incubator for un-
net is a network of brains that sometimes creates predictable hypes. This dynamic characteristic of
collective intelligence – nothing more. Mystification the Internet opened the door to the famous “long
doesn’t help. The brain and the Internet are without tail” – suddenly everyone was in principle able to
doubt self-organizing systems with non-linear set off an avalanche to reach the centre of public
behaviour and a high degree of unpredictability. attention.
Photo: www.kubikfoto.de
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
I do not see this on the horizon nor am I sure that For me it simply is equivalent to having access to
I would like to see it. Things as promising and air or water. The Internet is a global commons. We
powerful as the Internet generally bring dangerous should invest everything to bring it to even the
side-effects with them. There’s no such thing as a remotest places on earth.
free lunch! Even today the Internet is in a delicate
balance between “what’s in for me” and “what we-magazine >
price do I have to pay”. The semantic Web enhances
the risk of misusing information to a degree that One last question ... please give us characters
will not be easy to tolerate. Some big brother may on “the network is challenging us :-)
well grow too big. So I am quite satisfied with the
shortcomings we are now facing. Even today the Peter Kruse >
mere amount of information is so high that any
attempt to take control quickly reaches its limits. The Internet is a tutorial made by mankind to instil
The real master of the universe is still the entity of the need of changing the value system under-
Internet users. If the Internet really does get the pinning the “subdue the earth” imperative.
>
Fact-Based >
>
Hans Rosling
Hans Rosling is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute and one of the founders of the Gapminder
Foundation which wants to make statistics used and understood so we get the fact-based worldview.
we_special_/
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
business you want to know where banks and com- not to tell those in power, it’s to tell the general
panies are – you need a map to find your way public. The real danger is not on the leaders’ level.
around. Gapminder provides an updated economic, It’s really that people in the world get the sense and
social and environmental map of the world so users the trust that we can live together, that we can
can find their way around. share this world in a decent and respectful way.
What are the major future challenges we are facing? But this is more than to change people’s mind, we’ll
need a mindset that will translate into action ...
we-magazine >
I’m not so convinced that you’re right. People ask we-magazine >
me “Do you reach the powerful people – the billio-
naires, the heads of state?” Yes, I do. And what they Which is?
tell, me is – turn around and tell the public.
There is one simply reason for that: we get the po-
liticians the public want. We get the decisions made
that the public want eventually. The big challenge is
we_special_/
we-magazine >
plus which was used not just for daily consumption, we-magazine >
but for creating something which became part of
the heritage of all mankind. Where do you get your data from?
So what I say about statistics, is that the world will
never ever be understood without statistics. But Hans Rosling >
equally it can never ever be understood only with
statistics. Because you have those other dimensions The United Nations. The World Bank. The OECD.
like human rights, culture, dignity, which we can- Data is no problem. The problem is that we haven’t
not measure. Some things have to be handled as grasped what is happening in the Middle East, in
issues and described in written language. This is most of Asia, in Latin America. We haven’t grasped
one thing we have to accept ... that healthwise Brazil is progressing faster than
Sweden ever did.
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
Where do people get such a kind of world view?
Isn’t it also a problem that much of this data never
Hans Rosling > reaches the public? It might be available but ...
You can teach children that child health is good in Hans Rosling >
Egypt, that Muslim Arabs having been very profi-
cient in improving health, that they have family It does reach the public, it goes into their eyes, hits
planning, that the age for the first marriage in the retina, but the problem is it doesn’t go into
Algeria now is . Teach them facts. Simple facts! their brains! In nutrition we have a rule that food
Tell them that Vietnam has the same health and not swallowed has no nutritional value. You can
life expectancy as the USA in . chew it and spit it out – and that’s what we do.
I could end by saying that I have a neighbour who
we-magazine > knows different types of wine. He knows the
names of the grapes, the families who grow them,
So you are challenging the way we are teaching the proper storage temperature ... I only know two
our kids? types of wine: red and white. That’s enough – I’m
not interested in wines. But my neighbour only
Hans Rosling > knows two types of country – Western and develo-
ping – because he’s not interested in the world. And
Yes, we’re not teaching them the truth! I know countries and can tell you the per capita
GDP, the literacy rate, the child mortality rate, the
we-magazine > speed and progress in reducing CO emissions. The
problem in Western Europe is that we have too
But the data for this fact-based learning is available many who know wine and too few who know the
... world. And major companies in Western Europe
have too many wine-tasting evenings and too few
Hans Rosling > world-tasting evenings.
>
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tags > Social Business, Yunus, Vision Summit, poverty,
development aid
From Macro-
Challenges
to Micro-
Solutions
Peter Spiegel
Peter Spiegel calls himself a “possibilist” – equally proof against blue-sky optimism and gloom and doom pessimism.
What mainly interests him as a possibilist is using the “how” to find the best – and sometimes unexpectedly good –
possibilities inherent in all types of situation.
we_special_/
Peter Spiegel, you’ve travelled the world a lot and What kinds of specific action do you need to take?
you’ve put a lot of thought into how you can make What kind of approaches do you adopt?
it a better place. So why is the world so out of joint?
Peter Spiegel >
Peter Spiegel >
On the one hand you need to tackle people’s
For me the single most excruciating problem is the general lack of commitment and you also need a
issue of world poverty. I find it absolutely outrage- fundamentally different mindset to what we’ve
ous that we can accept a world in which one to two used so far – at least used in the main part of our
thirds of all people live in totally degrading condi- responses.
tions. We draw up lofty declarations of human
rights while trampling the same rights in the dirt! we-magazine >
There’s no justification whatsoever for this, not a
single reason! For the past years we’ve had all What do you mean by “different mindset”?
the means we need at our disposal to rid the world
of poverty. Yet we’re not using them! That’s some- Peter Spiegel >
thing that never ceases to amaze me!
One aspect of it is that we start to consider “poor”
we-magazine > people as intelligent and highly talented individuals
and not just as aid-recipients in urgent need of our
Which countries have the worst poverty? help. There’s often something slightly disdainful or
condescending about such forms of assistance:
Peter Spiegel > “You poor things can’t make it on your own, we
have to help you!”
It’s a universal issue. For a long time poverty was The best example I can think of that runs counter
something that happened in remote, far-off places to this mainstream thinking is Muhammad Yunus
so we didn’t worry our heads too much about it. and his model for micro-loans. What he did was to
But as the decades go by it’s not getting any better, simply ask people what they needed – something
it’s steadily getting worse and the slight recoveries which a development worker would hardly even
it shows are only short-lived. And now in the wake dream of doing. He sat down and actually talked to
of the global financial crisis it’s drastically worse- people to get an idea of what they really need. They
ned. What most people still don’t realize is that the told him that what they needed was a little money
interface of the future economic miracle is precisely to buy the materials they needed to start a little
focused on the poverty front of the world! That’s business so that they could stand on their own
the critical point that concerns our own interests two feet and became independent in the full sense
and our own future – not just the future of the of the word. And just imagine what happened –
people who live there. beggars suddenly turned into entrepreneurs who
were able to take control of their own lives! This
we-magazine > “different mindset” has a very long-term impact in
the countries where it’s deployed. In Bangladesh to
So it’s no coincidence that the phrase “we’re all date some percent of poor people have access to
sitting in one boat” is doing the rounds in the west micro-loans. What used to be the world’s poorest
now. country until only fairly recently is now one of the
most dynamic of the emerging economies. And the
Peter Spiegel > whole country is showing genuine signs of “lifting
out of the poverty trap”. Psychologically speaking,
Precisely. micro-loans mean turning the spotlight on people’s
innate human dignity. This can solve a whole raft of
problem issues. There are now many more similar
we_special_/
kinds of projects with similar kinds of innovative This is a hundred times more cost-effective than any
quality than just the micro-loan idea which has now previous model. Such a training system for nurses is
spread all over the world. an extremely efficient extension of the healthcare
system, yet it comes at a fraction of the costs char-
we-magazine > ged by the World Health Organization. So there is
indeed a huge and very close connection between
How can individuals like yourself or small organi- modern technologies and meaningful develop-
zations make a difference? ment.
Look, this totally modest, tiny idea that Yunus What sort of projects do you think deserve funding?
originally had has now grown into a worldwide mo-
vement that has enabled no less than million Peter Spiegel >
people to take advantage of this kind of empower-
ment. We have to take a proper view of things, we The innovative value of social projects is the thing
have to look at them on the micro-level. We have that matters most to me. Having the local people
to try them out on the micro-level and get an exact develop their own projects is of the upmost impor-
idea of their strengths and weaknesses. All these tance – and that’s precisely what the development
innovative new works must first function on a limi- aid world neglects to do in over cases out of a
ted small scale. If the idea matches the needs and hundred. It’s also vital that the follow-up effects of
development opportunities in a particular country, the project are immediately felt: they must bring
then we’ve given birth to something really big. about a direct change in people’s consciousness –
right from the word go. People must be shown the
we-magazine > way to independence and autonomy.
Can new technologies play any role in all this? we-magazine >
of antennae to field them out. This might sound very define what their real needs are, to prioritize them,
trite but it’s basically true – because my antennae structure them, organize them and finally evaluate
are tuned and sensitized to such people and pro- them. All this meant that suddenly NGOs were cast
jects, I do keep finding them, one after the other. in a completely different light. They were no longer
the know-it-all beneficent helpers from the great
we-magazine > outside world. And the women themselves were
suddenly the ones making demands and saying
Like the adult education project in Nepal? what we need from you is this and this and this.
But all this didn’t exactly endear the project to
Peter Spiegel > the NGOs which saw it more as a direct challenge
to their key competencies – despite its wildly
That’s right. People came together in Nepal with sensational success.
the vision of helping , women out of po-
verty. It was a major pilot project. They instructed we-magazine >
local women in five modules, five training units.
And then these women passed on what they’d A success which showed itself as?
learned – after the snowball or Train-the-Trainer
principle, if you like. What were the five training Peter Spiegel >
modules? The first was adult literacy for which we
also received funding. Which showed itself as an incredible percent
increase in the income of these women over three
we-magazine > years. I don’t know of any other development pro-
ject anywhere in the world which can even begin
Who did the funding – development funds? to measure up with the success this project has
achieved. Even so, it still hasn’t become a success-
Peter Spiegel > ful global model. Not yet anyway. We still have
some ways to go before we get there.
International development organizations. The second
module was how to set up poor women without we-magazine >
any money in business. The third was setting up a
small banking system. Do you think that you can easily transfer a project of
this type to other parts of the world?
we-magazine >
Peter Spiegel >
Where did this money come from?
Yes, I do and we already have proof that we can.
Peter Spiegel > The Nepal pilot project has been replicated in
Africa. Not with an percent increase in income
From savings. From the savings of poor people who over three years but even so with a respectable
used it to set up a system of village banks because percent increase. That’s a figure that bears some
they recognized just how valuable such a system looking at! This type of set-up is now operating
could be. And they succeeded in what they wanted in over African countries. But even today this
to do: in three years they set up over , village is the only organization that is driving this kind of
banks. approach. And that is simply scandalous!
The fourth module is concerned with making poor
people aware of the state-guaranteed rights which
they have but which in most cases they’re totally we-magazine >
unaware that they have. And the fifth module
is project management for the have-nots, project It’s the total negation of the established develop-
management for the poorest of the poor. What ment model as evolved over all the years and
does this involve? It involves enabling them to decades.
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Exactly! However, that’s precisely what gives it its What we have to do was clearly stated by an Indian
unique innovative quality. And we have to drive this economist, Professor Prahalad, when addressing
kind of innovation forward. Even more than in any the CEOs of international corporations. He said
other area, we need a completely new kind of thin- “Do you want to survive in the long-term? Do you
king in the social sector. still want to be on the global playing field in ten
years time? Then get moving and start developing
we-magazine > services and products for the needs of the world’s
poorest people. Why’s that? Simply because these
How can that be done? markets are the high-growth markets of our future!”
Well, for instance we can set up educational insti- What do you mean by “long-term thinking”?
tutions for systematic instruction in the way such
innovations come about. Potsdam has the Hasso Peter Spiegel >
Plattner Institute, the School of Design Thinking.
Hasso Plattner realized that if the western world is Long-term thinking for me is a question of survival.
to keep its place on the competitive global playing If we all want to survive, we have to think long-term
field, what it needs more than anything else is because short-term thinking destroys the funda-
innovations. And he developed a system where mentals of life support, destroys systems – the
students can learn about the systematic generation ecosystem, the financial system, our healthcare and
of innovations and pass on what they have learnt social systems. If we don’t start to think in the
to others. And it’s a huge success! If we adapt new long-term we can simply write off all our systems.
ways of thinking, if we focus even a part of our Long-term thinking also involves sustainability
innovation-development on the social and civil pro- thinking and above all thinking in terms of global
blems we’ve been talking about, our reward isn’t perspectives and global responsibility. Self-centered
just that we’re able to deal with a whole host of thinking leads us up a blind alley into a trap from
problems. Because what we’ll also get is a new eco- which we can never hope to extricate ourselves.
nomic miracle. The benefits we’ll derive on our side Systems can no longer function without perspecti-
are at least as great. ves of global responsibility, no matter what form
these might take. An ethical perspective is no
we-magazine > longer the unique endowment of philanthropy or
welfare thinking; an ethical perspective in the sense
What do you think we now have to learn to secure of global responsibility is a matter of sheer survival.
this new balance that’s now emerging in the world? This means that global responsibility is no longer
some kind of bedtime story for people of good will.
It’s a matter of direct concern to each and every one
of us!
George Siemens
Since the Internet is a growing point of informa-
tion access and communication, providing new
affordances and opportunities, yes, Internet access
is quickly moving into the realm of a human right.
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Concerted
Action
Needed!
Surendra Munshi
Munshi, the noted Indian sociologist, was Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC) until .
He has researched and taught in India and abroad in the fields of classical sociological theory, sociology of culture, qualitative
research, and industrial sociology. More recently, he has published with others: The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Good Governance
(SAGE, ). He is at present a Fellow of the Bertelsmann Stiftung.
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We were living in separate boats earlier. All that was I. Present Crises and Borrowing from the Future
needed was to formulate rules to make sure that
there was no collision of boats. The situation has What are the three most important global crises
changed with the beginning of modern globaliza- humanity is currently facing. This was the question
tion. All the people of the world are now living in formulated in different ways that was asked to
the same boat, and different countries of the world each one of them. It is interesting to review their
are like cabins in the boat. We take care of our responses. While clear responses are given to this
cabins without worrying about the boat as a whole. question, there are some who expressed reserva-
This is how Kishore Mahbubani of the National tions to this mode of asking the relevant question.
University of Singapore, one of the fifteen thought Jerome C. Glenn of The Millennium Project, for
leaders interviewed for this paper, sees the world example, draws attention to the fact that in their
today. Millennium Project an attempt has been made to list
fifteen global challenges that provide a ‘framework’
to assess the prospects for humanity. Anthony
Judge, formerly of Union of International Associa-
tions, sees the danger of listing challenges, for then
it is possible to lose sight of the context within
which a challenge is to be considered. The key is to
see the interconnection between the elements of
the set. The point of interconnection is emphasized
by others as well. Thus, for example, Martin Lees of
the Club of Rome says that from the point of view
of the Club the challenges are interrelated. He pre-
fers to talk of ‘blocks’ rather than ‘bits’ of challen-
ges. The world is facing – according to Walter Fust
of Global Humanitarian Forum – ‘a multidimensio-
nal crisis’ today.
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With these qualifications in mind, the crisis that Is there any leadership deficit in our world today?
received the greatest attention was the crisis of For Karl-Henrik Robert of The Natural Step (TNS),
environmental degradation, followed by the crisis the key issue to which all other issues are sub-
created by persisting poverty. The recent financial ordinate is the incompetence of present leadership.
crisis received attention as well but it was not seen He assesses this incompetence not in terms of in-
as just as a financial crisis. The other crises that were telligence or goodness but as the capacity to see
noted related to population, water and security. the world in a manner that takes it towards sustai-
nability. What is lacking is systematic thinking to
If this is the range of our crises, how have we understand complex systems. Speaking metaphori-
handled them so far? The general response to this cally, ‘what leaders need today is to understand the
question is that given the gravity of these crises we trunk and branches of the challenges ahead of us’.
have handled them inadequately, bordering on, in The tree metaphor is meant to suggest that the
the words of Garrison (State of the World Forum), trunk and the branches of a tree help to connect
‘criminal neglect’. Though some progress has been the leaves, the details. If the trunk and the branches
made with respect to poverty and local pollution are taken away then all that one has is a big heap of
problems in many parts of the world (Flavin of leaves on the ground. If this is understood and sha-
Worldwatch Institute), the point to note is that, as red, a possibility for ‘flat leadership’ arises where
Johnston (Oxfam International) says, we are basi- people can come together, feel engaged, and using
cally putting the solution of the crisis into the fu- their creativity to come up with their own solutions.
ture, borrowing from the future. We are, according
to Lees, passing on to our children and grand- On education: while the interview partners are
children not only vast financial debt but also vast clear about how crucial education is, they are also
ecological debt by overusing our biological capital. aware how an undesirable process of education is
‘That means’, says Likhotal (Green Cross Internatio- taking place. Television is, as Garrison notes, edu-
nal), ‘that we are simply stealing (speaking openly cating an entire population to be consumers. The
and frankly) from the pockets of our children’. idea of linking happiness with consumption is de-
structive, especially when goods are produced that
The optimistic voice comes out of Asia. For damage our atmosphere. This point is further ela-
Mahbubani, ‘history starts a new chapter every borated by Oscar Motomura of The Earth Charter
day’ and he believes ‘the world will continue to Initiative. He cautions that counter-education pro-
move forward’, becoming a better place to live in. vided by entertainment industry, advertisement, the
He sees hope in the millions of Asians joining the Internet, and through other means is very powerful.
middle class with the projection that by there No amount of engagement with the educational
will be . billion Asians living in the middle class process can be effective unless the process of coun-
environment. ‘And as you know’, he concludes, ‘the ter-education which leads to unsustainable practi-
middle classes tend to be responsible stakeholders’. ces is considered and countered in a strategic
manner.
II. Leadership and Education for Sustainability
This does not mean the rejection of these means.
Leadership is needed at different levels, from the As far as the television and movies are concerned,
village to the international level (Fust). A new kind we can counter them effectively by using them.
of leadership that is identified in the context of Glenn suggests taking real science to a movie like
the knowledge economy is what Glenn calls ‘self- Walt Disney’s The Black Hole. ‘If it is true,’ he says,
selected leadership’. Unlike ‘out-front’ political ‘that people get their news from comedians, and
leaders’, self-selected leaders use their knowledge their world affairs from terminator movies, then let
and possibilities offered by technology to take us take those movies and comedians seriously. If
individual initiatives to deal with pressing pro- this serves the purpose of education in the world,
blems. then this is the classroom we have to focus on’.
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This brings to mind the emphasis given by Judge to III. Frameworks for Collaborative Action
the right way of communicating the message. He
asks: why is there no climate change song? Why If we learn to see connections in a world facing a
should unmemorable documents not be made multidimensional crisis, we need to take the next
memorable by putting them to lyrics and music? His step and understand that neither ‘one brain’ nor
argument for sustainability is that unless the docu- ‘one organization’ can solve our problems (Lees).
ments concerning them are made singable they We need to come together. There is a need to work
remain unmemorable documents. across disciplines, sectors, cultures, and countries.
There is another kind of education that needs to be The promoting factor is technology. The revolution
carried out, and this is best illustrated by the initia- in communication technology makes it possible for
tives covered here, from Amnesty International people to connect in ways that were inconceivable
to Worldwatch Institute. This kind of education only some years ago. For Garrison, while global-
is concerned with creating awareness about our ization is weakening institutions, it is empowering
rights and responsibilities as human beings, and it voluntary networks of individuals. These voluntary
is carried out in different ways. Thus, for example, networks can be powerful and harmful as shown
Motomura tells us that there is a need for leaders by the example of Al-Qaeda. Voluntary networks
in different sectors to become sensitive about ‘the can also play a very positive role as shown by,
global society of all human beings’. It is not enough for instance, Amnesty International. Through an
to think of sustainability as something concerned inexpensive mode of communication, voluntary
with protecting our natural resources. The concept networks of committed people can come together
of sustainability as conveyed by the Earth Charter and achieve much. It is possible to build the multi-
goes beyond it. We put life, he says, at the centre of stakeholder approach as well through these net-
everything. We honor all forms of life. When all works. Networking means serving the chosen cause
forms of life are honored it leads to ecological together. Though such networks can be strong,
integrity and also to economic and social justice. It we should not overlook the impediments of pre-
leads to concern about keeping different forms of judgments and clichés. Drawing from his experi-
violence away from this world. Ecological integrity, ence, Fust draws attention to the manner in which
social and economic justice and peace – they are all many people from the private sector have reserva-
connected with each other. tions about government officials and they in turn
Photos: www.kubikfoto.de
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are hesitant to talk to people from civil society or we are facing are far beyond the ability of indivi-
foundations, not that the apathy is not reciprocated. dual nations to handle. For Lees, ‘the national-
international interface’ is going to be a crucial con-
Having noted these problems, there is no reason cern for all of us. While different people need their
not to look forward ... Glenn sees in Wikipedia a different senses of involvement and identity, the
model for making it easy for people to participate interests of all the people of the world considered
globally in doing what is good. If we are all in the together need a collective way of handling global
same boat, he argues, we have to form an idea problems. We are also in the process of adjusting
about the boat, how big it is, what it looks like, and our perspective on how to approach these pro-
how to make it work. ‘How do we make the Earth, blems. As Johnston sees it, we have had a tendency
with humans,’ he asks, ‘work as a whole’. A similar to follow absolute solutions, for some socialism was
question is asked by Ekman (Tallberg Foundation) the answer and for others the market, and ‘both of
and his foundation: ‘How on earth can we live to- these absolutes have been found fundamentally
gether?’ Wikipedia has shown that global colla- wanting’. As Lees shows it is now clear that the idea
boration can take place cutting across different that the market regulates itself and governments
boundaries. And yet with all its success, for Glenn, should step back from regulations has partially cau-
Wikipedia is just a pointer to what is possible in sed the current financial crisis. ‘We have to find a
the future with the power collective intelligence. proper balance’, he says, ‘between the role of the
market and the role of government which is the
IV. Global Governance Revisited custodian of the common interest’. This ideology of
giving the market a free run and reducing the role
Why do we need to revisit the issue of global go- of government has had implications for internatio-
vernance? The question is related in the first place nal institutions as well. Lees concludes: ‘it is this
with the manner in which the world has changed combination of weakening government, interna-
since the Second World War and the manner in tional governance, and the extreme freedom of the
which the United Nations systems are seen to be market which has got us to the point where we are
functioning within the changed global situation. today’.
The world has changed in so far as we live in a There are other aspects that need to be considered
world of interdependence and the problems that in this respect. The United States, as Garrison
argues, is unable to play for a variety of reasons the The overall purpose of global governance that
leadership role that the world needs. More basi- needs to be differentiated from global government
cally, in the analysis of Mahbubani, we are witnes- which is not under discussion here is served by
sing an important power shift in the world: ‘the end inclusiveness, ‘normative diversity’ (Fust), and a
of the era of Western domination of world history’ recognition that global governance is emerging
and ‘the return of Asia’ to the world scene. through a variety of mechanisms.
As far as the United Nations systems are concerned, The problem of global governance can be approa-
they find their defense in the voice of Glenn. For ched from another end. Robert suggests that we
one thing, they are evolving a ‘global culture of have to build role models on a smaller scale and
governance’ where people from different cultural then try to design larger institutions and co-opera-
backgrounds learn to work together ‘trying to make tive units based on these experiences. He mentions
the world work for everybody and not doing it here his experience with municipalities where
for just one country’. Secondly, it is important to people have been able to transform them and with
keep in mind that the United Nations is not just the them the quality of their own lives through a shared
Security Council, for, while there may be valid mental model. A shared vision of what these
reasons for wanting to bring changes in the Secu- municipalities might be like in the future helps
rity Council, it cannot be denied that organizations individuals to work towards it with trust in each
such as the World Health Organization or the other. The need for vision is emphasized from yet
International Atomic Energy Agency are serving another angle. Lees notes that for designing or
us well. Thirdly, the need for global norms to make redesigning an institution it is important to be clear
global systems work is met by the Universal Decla- about its objective. While the United Nations
ration of Human Rights and UN treaties that lay out will need to find a way of ‘addressing systematic
for all of us the manner in which we are to behave problems in an integrated way’, we need at the
with each other. Finally, the UN is in a sense like same time to develop globally a vision of the world
‘training wheels for global civilization’. We are that we want, the world which is desirable and
learning how to make it work, and if there are hopefully still possible. We are unable to interest
deficiencies that does not mean we should throw people in what is negative or problematic in the
out the baby with the bathwater. absence of a vision, for 'there is no fire, hope, nor
excitement’.
The idea then is to make the United Nations more
representative, more efficient, and more effective. V. The Next Sensible Step
The most persistent demand is to broaden the
membership of the Security Council. As to the emer- We need to make a mental shift. We need to tell
gence of G, though its emergence is seen as a our political leaders, as Brown does, that they
good sign, there are demands that if G want cannot afford to be shortsighted any longer. You
to be global leaders they need to lead by setting need to think beyond election terms. We need to
the right example (Brown, Amnesty International). tell them, as Glenn would say, to connect the ideas,
Also, it is not clear whether G is sufficiently people, and resources. ‘There are a lot of good
democratic (Fust). As to institutional change, Lees answers out there, but the world is so full of noise
cautions, it is ‘a very tough assignment’. There is a that we can’t get the good answers through’. Above
long honorable tradition of efforts to reform the all, we need to tell them, listening to Fust and our
United Nations, but the results have not been very other partners, please listen to others, for there is
encouraging. There still is a long way to go. virtue in listening. We need to listen to politicians
as well. We need to recall what Mikhail Gorbachev
told Garrison when he asked him the reason for his
fall after the Soviet Union had been dismantled.
Gorbachev told him: ‘There were many political
reasons why I fell, but in the end I fell because I
was not analyzing reality ruthlessly enough’.
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http://www.voices-for-the-future.org
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Re-Thinking
Science
Alan N. Shapiro
Alan N. Shapiro is a trans-disciplinary thinker who studied Science and Technology at MIT and Philosophy, History and Literature at
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He is the author of Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance (), widely recognized as a
seminal work in science fiction studies and the conception of futuristic technoscience. He is the editor and translator of The Techno-
logical Herbarium by Gianna Maria Gatti (), a major study of art and technology. He is a practicing software developer and is
the co-inventor, with Alexis Clancy, of the New Computer Science, which promises to be something like a new Manhattan Project.
He is currently founding a utopian company called Shapiro Technologies, which will be based on the principles of friendship and
‘not working’. Alan Shapiro is recognized as one of the leading experts on the philosophy and cultural theory of Jean Baudrillard.
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Influenced by Martin Heidegger’s philosophical nities). We need a new unified perspective. Science,
essay The Question Concerning Technology, Theo- as the privileged perspective and methodology for
dor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s core Critical gaining access to and knowledge of objective rea-
Theory text Dialectic of Enlightenment, and Stanley lity, is over. John Horgan made this clear more than
Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s epic science fiction a decade ago in The End of Science. Science goes
film : A Space Odyssey, I believe that we have from the th to the th century. It’s been a specific
come to the end of the long era of technology paradigm, and this paradigm is now exhausted.
being conceived and developed as a tool for the There’s going to be a paradigm shift, in the sense
‘domination of nature’, regarded as inanimate, and that Thomas S. Kuhn wrote about in The Structure
built to act upon what are assumed to be ‘inani- of Scientific Revolutions. A paradigm shift is going
mate things’ in the social and natural worlds. to take place. The coming shift primarily has to do
I want to change our way of thinking about and de- with no longer excluding art, philosophy, theology,
vising technologies, to participate in a quantum spirituality, sociology, languages, poetry, literature,
leap in evolution at the beginning of the st cen- etc., from the foundations of science. Many will find
tury, to reconnect with the original meaning of the this to be a controversial statement, but in my view,
Greek word techne (which means the creativity of applied science during these past centuries has
craft, art, or skill exercised as the implementation taken an engineering approach. This is especially
of theoretical/practical knowledge), to treat tech- true of computer science, which is not yet a science.
nologies as alive, and as equal partners with hu- Computer science must paradoxically go beyond
mans in the making of new artificial-natural- the smug satisfaction of being an engineering sci-
social-individual environments for enabling greater ence to first become a real science, at the forefront
human happiness, individual freedom, embodied of the new advanced poetico-techno-scientific era
existence, and the autonomous vitality of techno- that lies ahead, beyond science.
entities and techno-objects. I want to go beyond I believe that the invention of a New Computer
the dualism or binary opposition between the Science, one more powerful than the one that pre-
natural and the artificial, and between nature and sently exists, is possible; a more powerful computer
culture. I think of the great scientist Charles science that often goes by the names of Artificial
Darwin’s book The Voyage of the Beagle, a work Intelligence, Artificial Life, and Quantum Compu-
of both science and literature. During his world ting. The goal of quantum computing has been
travels, Darwin examined with the same keen clearly and explicitly defined by computer scientists,
observational eye and cool-headedness the objects but the mathematics of how to implement qubits
of his investigations, regardless of whether they and superposition states does not yet exist. To-
were phenomena of animal wildlife behavior, geo- gether with Alexis Clancy, I am working on the
logy, or human societies. architecture, design, and coding of Quantum Com-
Knowledge in the current Western academic-uni- puting in Software. A crucial characteristic of quan-
versity system, in the natural sciences, in engineer- tum mechanics known as entanglement occurs
ing, in the social sciences, in the arts and the hu- under certain experimental conditions. Subatomic
manities, has been divided into separate disciplines. particles become ‘inextricably linked’ in such a way
Our knowledge is fragmented, and thus we are not that a change to one of them is instantly ‘reflected
properly positioned to formulate the right questi- in its counterpart’, no matter how physically sepa-
ons about what we need to do as a civilization. I like rated they are. Quantum theory postulates a
the German word Wissenschaft which is used both ‘superposition of states’ that destabilizes the intui-
for the Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) and tive sensorial notion of spatial separation. Entan-
the Geisteswissenschaften (human sciences, huma- gled particles transcend space and remoteness.
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (translated from the German by William Lovitt) (New
York: Harper & Row, ); Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (edited
by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr) (translated from the German by Edmund Jephcott) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, );
: A Space Odyssey (directed by Stanley Kubrick) (written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke) (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, ).
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (introduction by David Amigoni) (London: Wordsworth Editions, ).
John Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (New York: Broadway Books,
).
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ).
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They belong to a ‘shared’ system that acts as a operation that transforms one function of a real
single entity. The distance that divides the particles variable into another, called the frequency domain
no longer plays any influencing role that would representation of the first function, as the hypo-
lead them to be judged as having distinct identities. thesized way to solve the problem. The quantum
Once the entanglement state is established, the Fourier transform is primarily thought of as being
subatomic duo stays forever bonded. The two par- implemented in hardware. A hypothetical quantum
ticles will always have either precisely opposing or computing device would have so-called ‘reversible
‘elegantly complementing’ relative values of key logic gates’ which continuously allow sequences
quantum properties such as polarization direction, of reversible decompositions into mathematical
independent of how far apart they travel from one unitary matrices. There is little progress in the com-
another. puter industry in achieving this implementation.
Quantum physics imposes on us the limitation that In January , I attended the conference “Cons-
the quantum information in a system is available to ciousness and Quantum Computers” in Lucerne,
us only with the greatest of difficulties. Since the Switzerland, organized by the Swiss Biennial
th
mid- century, physicists have discovered that on Science, Technics & Aesthetics (SBSTA). In his
there is a reality of quantum physics, but have had opening remarks, René Stettler, Founder and Direc-
trouble observing that reality. A measurement of tor of the SBSTA, talked about the trans-disciplinary
superpositions yields only one value, and at the work that would be involved in the project of brin-
same time destroys all the others. Computer scien- ging to fruition quantum computing. It is especially
tists working on quantum computers therefore rely an expanded understanding of consciousness that
heavily on the Fourier transform, a mathematical would be required to gain a real grasp of quantum
Related to this conference is the publication Zu einer neuen Quantenphysik des Bewusstseins - Gespräche an den Grenzen der
Erkenntnis (edited by René Stettler) (Lucerne: Edition Neue Galerie Luzern und Schweizer Biennale zu Wissenschaft, Technik und
Ästhetik, ).
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physics. Yet, as Stettler pointed out, universities do the riddle of quantum physics: not measure, but
not even seem to be striving for this trans-discipli- perceive. An expansion of consciousness supports
nary knowledge. Hans-Peter Dürr, former executive an expanded perception. Quantum behavior is a
Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and reality. Physicists thought that they could not
Astrophysics, and former collaborator of Werner observe or measure this reality without destroying
Heisenberg, emphasized in his keynote address that the information therein. But they conceptualized
physicists do not have the philosophical training ne- the methodology of observation conventionally.
cessary to understand what quantum physics really The space from which one can observe the reality of
means. The celebrated mid-th century physicists quantum behavior without destroying the informa-
who discovered quantum mechanics did not un- tion therein is also a reality, a fact of nature. We do
derstand it, they only spoke about it in metaphors. not have to invent this space, we only have to per-
They settled on the practice of using applied quan- ceive it. This space of non-destructive observation
tum physics statistically without understanding really exists, just as quantum behavior really exists,
what quantum physics means. and we will get it working in software. To perceive
But quantum physics, according to Dürr, is the most this space, we have to change our consciousness.
profound rational knowledge that we have gained That's all that we have to do! We have to recognize
about the world. The necessary expanded under- as being scientific some ways of perceiving that be-
standing of consciousness and action would have long to other traditions that Western science has so
to come from engagement with philosophical far small-mindedly regarded as non-scientific. This
traditions like phenomenology, Buddhism, and expanded perceiving includes creative mathema-
Hindu cosmic perspectives like Vedanta. Excellent tics, Buddhist and Hinduist meditation/ontologies,
talks on the relationship between Buddhism and Aboriginal-sacred-mystical-expanded consciousness
the philosophy of science were given at the confe- thinking, and Continental semiotics/grammatology.
rence by Geshe Obsang Tenzin, a Tibetan Buddhist The process of preparing for publication the Eng-
psychologist living in America and working on lish edition of Gianna Maria Gatti’s book The Tech-
mind/body medicine, and German philosopher nological Herbarium led me to reflect on the need
Christian Thomas Kohl. for a New Holistic Biology. I translated the book
Only with an expansion of consciousness does a from Italian into English, edited it and added an-
protected space open up where the impossibilities notations, and interacted intensively with Gianna
of quantum mechanical observation are suspended Maria Gatti to clear up any misunderstandings of
(as an act of friendship by the divine towards us, so her Italian text that I may have had. During the time
to speak). In this protected space, we can do trans- of doing this work, I discovered two seminal books
formations in a different way. It will not be the which seem to me to be crucial for the future de-
Newtonian taking of a measurement that destroys velopment of the New Biology. One is Aufbruch der
the state measured. The presumed way of measu- Lebensforschung: Der Mensch in einem neuen
ring or observing the object (the question of the Weltbild by the Swiss biologist Adolf Portmann,
media of scientific mensuration) has remained which Gatti comments on poignantly. The other
within classical Newtonian spacetime mechanics. is Reflections on a Theory of Organisms: Holism
st
Corresponding to a new century postclassical in Biology by Walter M. Elsasser. I was told about
spacetime, the fruitful way to take measurements Elsasser’s book by the sociologist Victoria Grace
on both sides of a created universe, of the model and her husband the scientist-entrepreneur Louis
and its phantom, to access all of the quantum Arnoux.
information that is going on in a system, is to have Elsasser argues that the task of elaborating a truly
a safe, protected space in between where one is scientific biology still lies ahead of us. Physics and
allowed to be, prior to ‘becoming (measurable)’, chemistry, in their current states of knowledge, are
other than being disciplined. Here is the answer to truly scientific, according to Elsasser. Physics, for
Adolf Portmann, Aufbruch der Lebensforschung: Der Mensch in einem neuen Weltbild (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, ). Italian trans-
lation: Le forme viventi: Nuove prospettive della biologia (translated by Boris Porena) (Milano: Adelphi, ). There exists no
English translation of Portmann’s book.
Walter M. Elsasser, Reflections on a Theory of Organisms: Holism in Biology (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
, ).
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history of life. The individual member of a species knowledge, we need to span several disciplines,
decodes in real-time, as it faces each new circum- that only shows that what we really need is a major
stance, its species-memory. It creatively retrieves project to rethink what the categories of know-
this species-memory through a process of informa- ledge should be.
tion transfer that is effectively ‘invisible’, and does It is not only necessary to broaden science; it is also
not take place via any intermediate storage or trans- necessary to make science more accessible, and to
mission media. Holistic information transfer happens increase citizen participation in public conversa-
over space and time, “without there being any tions about science. Rather than entering into the
intervening medium or process that carries the economic debate about whether science is a private
information.” Whereas the genetic code is memory or a public good, I focus in my work on another
considered as ‘homogeneous replication’, holistic dimension of the sociology of science, identifying a
memory is one of ‘heterogeneous reproduction’. hybrid public/private dynamic where the imagina-
We also need a New Sociology – a kind of quantum tion or ‘collective unconscious’ of popular culture
physics sociology. The ordinary macro world also actively affects technoscience. I emphasize that the
has a lot of quantum properties. As Jean Baudrillard true originality of Star Trek stories and fan commu-
wrote in his book America, America is a system of nities engenders a reality-shaping ‘science fiction’
circulation that “precedes the real” – the real mean- that formatively influences ideas, technologies, and
ing that classical sociological reality in which clas- even sciences like physics, informatics, and biology.
sical sociologists believe. Classical sociologists, As participants in techno-culture and in the media,
who base their ‘scientific sociology’ on a th- ordinary people are already making science. I wish
century paradigm (that of Auguste Comte) which to augment our perception of this heretofore over-
assumes a world of docile objects waiting to be ‘ob- looked existing sociological reality as well as to
jectively’ investigated, a classical worldview that encourage efforts to enhance and strengthen the
assumes the existence of a social world and social public creation of science. With the military, for
problems rationally ordered by the sovereign thin- example, there already exists a hybrid public/pri-
king subject of social science who is in control. The vate dynamic in the dissemination of technoscience
New Sociology (in honour of Jean Baudrillard) is that is institutionally operative. The public funds
th
also scientific – it is based on the -century of the military are invested in the research and
sciences of quantum physics, special/general rela- development labs of private universities and private
tivity, and chaos/complexity theory. It considers corporations. The military orchestrates technologi-
much stranger and wily objects in an unmasterable cal inventions, uses them for essentially destructive
social field governed by relations of radical uncer- purposes, and then releases them to the public,
tainty and paradox. The World thinks me; the Inhu- where they tend to be applied more beneficially.
man thinks me. Everything is relativistic, enigmatic, What I draw attention to in my work is a kind of
and aleatory. Social reality is nearly a total chaos. reversal of directionality of this public/private
Countries, nationalities, immigration, religions, hybridity: the origination of new scientific goods
hybrid languages, identities, gender, sexuality: it is flowing from public cultural resources into the core
almost beyond our comprehension, laden with foundational assets of the commonwealth where
strange effects. they can, in turn, endow private entrepreneurial
Some universities – like the Massachusetts Institute ventures. The currency of investment in the crea-
of Technology (MIT), for example – are trying to be- tion of new science is not strictly monetary; it is also
come more interdisciplinary. Well, interdisciplina- symbolic. Capital and wealth are not only mone-
rity isn’t enough. We have to face the fact that the tary; they are also symbolic. There is a media cul-
existing classification of knowledge is obsolete. ture public sphere which is literary, imaginative,
Interdisciplinarity in itself is more or less worthless. playful, psychoanalytical, creative, innovative. This
It is only an indication, a sign, that something is literary imagination drives scientific invention.
very seriously wrong. If, in order to obtain valuable
Ibid., p. .
Jean Baudrillard, America (translated from the French by Chris Turner) (London: Verso, ).
Jean Baudrillard, Impossible Exchange (translated from the French by Chris Turner) (London: Verso, ); Aurel Schmidt,
“Only Impossible Exchange is Possible,” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, January (translated from the German
by Alan N. Shapiro).
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How Does
the Educational
System Become
Decentralized?
George Siemens
George tags himself as “Curious. I’m inquisitive. I like exploring. I’m exploratory. I think I’m resistant in terms of existing trends and
I’m always trying to find some of the deeper issues that arise. I think connected. I emphasize relating to and being properly affiliated
with other individuals and working together.”
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not % convinced it would be the final tipping particularly around visualization – all these do in-
point – are several things. First of all, current eco- deed change the educational process. We have a
nomic concerns are forcing a rethink of the model unique condition where we have very fertile soil. In
we have. There’s a recognition that – and this is other periods we’ve had fertile soil for reform, but
what Ivan Illich addressed in the early s as well – we haven’t necessarily had the tools to enact the
the education system, the funding costs of the change we conceived. But now, as I stated earlier,
education system are so enormous that there has we’ve distributed control to a network function.
to be a breaking point. We’re now facing certainly With that distribution of control, responsibility has
issues around the suitability of funding approaches been distributed as well. I think that a combination
to this kind of system and we realize that it’s of factors may prove to be significant for reform.
perhaps not working as well it could be – especially
considering the outcomes we’re generating. There’s we-magazine >
that sense of a climate of change. There’s fertile soil
for change right now that we didn’t have in the ‘s Should access to the Internet, meaning access to
when everything was going well. We didn’t have education, be a human right?
that same sense of need for change, that urgency.
George Siemens >
education model in the developed world was crea- changing and what’s morphing. How does that im-
ted to serve the needs of another era. The pressu- pact on youth in the classroom? I think it’s too early
res and concerns the education system faces in to tell. There are definitely some psychologists who
these countries is one of relevance – i.e. producing have suggested that the change is negative – that
learners with critical mindsets and skills that enable it’s changing our ability to socialize. Video games
them to participate in today’s society, recognizing are changing how we interact with others, in some
whole person learning, lifelong and life wide lear- cases desensitizing us to violence. There are nega-
ning, etc. Education should map the reality of the tives that exist, but there’s no such thing as change
society it seeks to serve. For developing countries, without a negative disruption. The real question
the same issue exists: relevance of approach, pro- isn’t, “What are the negatives?” The real question
cess, and model of education is the key. is “What is possible with this and then how do we
minimize the impact of the negatives?” I think that’s
we-magazine > what I mean when I think of house technology
changing, of how the Internet is changing. I think
What kind of impact do you see the Internet and all it’s creating a global populace of learners who are
these social network kind of things is having on kids aware of what’s happening around the world in a
– on their social behavior and their environment?
address this notion of networks because we talk a course system that duplicated, or at least created,
lot about networks and we hear a lot about net- that sense of being overwhelmed so the informa-
works. I think that’s the wrong focus actually. tion flow was really quite hectic. The first year we
had around – hundred people sign up. Not
we-magazine > everyone participated, of course. But we had the
same number on the mailing list till the end of the
Why? course so I’m assuming there was some level of
interest – unless, of course they just couldn’t click
George Siemens > the ‘unsubscribe’ button at the bottom of the
e-mail! We had a combination of trying to fragment
The real focus has to be on connections because the course and the content and the conversations.
networks are patterns of connections. We can’t Then we were experimenting with different ways
interact with networks in the same way that we in-
teract with the connection. To give you an example,
let’s say someone says, “When you take a group of
individuals on various boards of different corpora-
tions, you start to realize there are certain patterns
that exist here”. That pattern is useful but a network
is a high-level abstraction that you can’t directly
interact with. When you reduce it down to a unit of
change that we can control, it’s a connection.
we-magazine >
nect with others for social or intellectual informa- George Siemens >
tion purposes will always be important. So there is
a role for physical space, and there’s a role for on- Perhaps a better question is to ask how do the
line spaces. The challenge becomes how to balance educational systems fit into this distributed decen-
the various options you have available. Should tralized world that we live in. Because as teachers I
schools be the kind of facilities they now are with know we always like to squeeze the world into our
cubicles designed and closed in? Or should we have classrooms. I think we’re at a point where we have
more open spaces that are driven for socialization to squeeze our classroom into the world. Well, not
and interactions around complex ideas? How do we squeeze! We have to open up our classroom into
strike a balance? Should students go to school five the world rather than trying to push things in. That
days a week in a physical space? Or should they has I think potential for transformative impact in
go for five or eight hours a day? Or should they be terms of how people will create curriculums. How
going twice a week and then three days a week to people will learn, how people will interact with
various online social spaces or virtual worlds or each other. So there’s potentially a fundamental
whatever else. I think these questions haven’t been shift that could arise out of that decentralized struc-
addressed yet. Some educators are starting to ask ture. As I mentioned earlier, the teacher typically
them but our education system is – like any of the forms a narrative coherence in a classroom, but
big systems of society are government, education, when we go into distributed environments, lear-
or healthcare – tightly integrated. Integrated with ners also form a narrative coherence. They under-
funding. Integrated with legal guidelines. Integra- stand the discipline by how they connect to each
ted with the expectations of society. They’re in- other, by how they relate to each other, by the
tegrated with something as simple as both parents signals they send off, by the amplification of infor-
being able to work with children of a young age. mation through these social structures. And they
You send your children to school so both parents begin to understand the world through weaving
can work. These systems are so integrated that you and stitching together these fragmented entities.
can’t change one without causing a ripple or cas- The question is, okay that’s what’s going on in
cading effect on the others. In that regard the po- the world as a whole, literally. How do we then
tential of reform is currently somewhat limited make our classroom compatible with that kind
by the difficulties that we have with the existing of environment? The skills required to do so are
systems we’ve created. critical and that’s what our students should be
acquiring as they move forward.
we-magazine >
What the
East Can Teach
the West
John Hagel III is an author and former McKinsey consultant who specializes in the intersection of business strategy and information
technology. In , Hagel, along with John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, founded the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation.
Hagel is also involved with a number of other organizations, including the World Economic Forum, Innovation Exchange with
John Seely Brown and Henry Chesbrough, the International Academy of Management, and the Aspen Institute. He is credited with
inventing the term “infomediary” in his book, NetWorth. with Marc Singer, published by the Harvard Business School Press in .
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Without any doubt we are living in a number of Your reports say that Asia is a good place to look
crises. What are the major indicators that we have at. What can America learn from some Asian com-
fallen into these crises? panies?
We published a research report last year called If you think about the challenge for companies in
“The Shift Index” which was largely driven by the general, it has to do with how do you connect into
fact that business leaders have generally become a larger set of relationships and partnerships that
very focused on the short-term economic cycle. can give you access to new knowledge in a much
Over the past couple of years we have been in the more rapid and effective way. Some entrepreneu-
midst of a major economic downturn on a global rial companies in both China and India are way
scale. Business leaders are understandably focused ahead of most Western companies in terms of
on that and trying to cope with it. But at the same management techniques needed to build scalable
time there is a much longer-term trend that has networks. We are talking about networks of thou-
been playing out, and it has to do with the decline sands of partners and relationships, not just the few
of profitability of companies over many decades. key partners in your supply chain or distribution
In “The Shift Index” we looked at the profitability channels. They have mastered a technique to do a
of all public companies in the United States since much broader and more diverse set of relationships
. What we found was a very significant and than most Western companies would ever be able
sustained erosion in profitability. Profitability has to attempt.
come down % over that time period.
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
How come?
Due to what reasons?
John Hagel >
John Hagel >
A lot of it has to do with the issues that Western
It has to do with the emergence of the new tech- executives viewed as major challenges for these
nology infrastructures, digital technology infra- companies. When I talked to a Western executives
structures that help us to connect and communicate or years ago, they confidently said about
much more effectively on a global scale, combined China: “don’t worry. China is not going to be serious
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competition for two reasons. First, they don’t have vely protected and built scale to exploit. What
a well developed financial system, so they don't we are facing now is a world where knowledge
have access to loans and money to fund their stocks depreciate in value very quickly because
growth. Secondly, there is no protection for intel- our surroundings are changing so rapidly. If all you
lectual property. So any innovation they come up are focused on is protecting what you know today,
with will be rapidly copied and therefore there you are going to end up very challenged very
are no real incentives to innovate.” What Chinese quickly. The opportunity is to connect into a broa-
companies have done is to take those challenges der range of more diverse and relevant knowledge
and turn them into opportunities. flows and more actively refresh what we know at
If they don’t have access to a lot of financial any one point in time.
resources, they have been forced to focus on how That’s a very different way of thinking. If you are
they can very aggressively and creatively connect going to participate in knowledge flows, you have
to as many companies as possible to leverage their to be willing to share some of your knowledge. If
capabilities, and just focus on the things they do your mindset is all about protecting what you know
best, and rely on others to provide the rest. and not letting anyone else get it, it is very hard
to make the transition.
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
When you are talking about these Western mana-
gers, what is Western for you? If you transfer this to political thinking on the
government level, what challenges do you see with
John Hagel > the rise of China? Is the Western world ready for
such a powerful number one Eastern country?
Western in this context is the United States and
Western Europe, and potentially even Japan. They John Hagel >
adopted a set of management techniques that are
very much driven by our Western thinking. Japa- I don't think we are ready for it yet. We still believe
nese executives were very much influenced by the that China is not an innovative country, that there
quality movement that actually originated with a is not much economic innovation that we can learn
variety of Western thinkers. So I think that Japanese from. So there is a tendency to diminish or under-
companies face as much of a challenge as compa- estimate the power of what is being created there.
nies in the United States. On the other hand there is an opportunity to learn.
There is no reason that we cannot adopt many of
we-magazine > the practices that are emerging in China that will
refresh and reinvigorate our economic activity as
What is this Western thinking about? Is it a kind of well.
value pattern?
we-magazine >
John Hagel >
What do you see personally as the major challenges
The key assumption that drives Western companies that companies and governments in the so-called
and created enormous wealth in the th century Western world are facing?
is the notion that economic value is largely con-
centrated in knowledge stocks. This view holds John Hagel >
that your ability to create value depends on what
you know today, how well you protect those The biggest challenge is this notion of shifting our
knowledge stocks and then how efficiently you mindset, the key assumptions we have about where
extract value from them. If you look at all the suc- economic value is, and how to more actively and
cessful companies in the th century that emerged productively participate in a global economy. The
in the US and Europe, they were focused on deve- successful Chinese companies that we have studied
loping proprietary knowledge that they aggressi- are really focused on how to compete effectively
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in the global economy. They are not just focused on had time-sensitive supply network operations, you
the local markets. They started with a global per- didn't want to be in Pakistan. It was very insecure.
spective of the opportunities to compete in a global Within three weeks, Li & Fung had moved all of its
market. production activities out of Pakistan and into other
countries that were more secure. That's a degree of
we-magazine > flexibility that is not feasible for Western companies
with traditional supply chains. From our perspec-
When technology comes in, and . thinking with tive, the most impressive aspect is the degree to
values like transparency, reputation, openness, which Li & Fung is focused on creating a network
what kind of roles does this kind of thinking play where the participants are learning from each other
in the way we are dealing with these challenges? much more rapidly than they could on their own.
So the value of participating in the Li & Fung net-
John Hagel > work is that, as a partner, you are able to improve
your performance much more rapidly than if you
It has a central role. Web. at one level is all about were operating on your own.
how do you connect in to a broader set of networks
and leverage those networks to create more value we-magazine >
for the markets and customers you are serving. That
is a central assumption that we need to embrace People who are flexible like this, who are network-
and pursue. A lot of Web. thinking tends to focus savvy, have to be educated some place. Would you
on data and information, rather than knowledge, say our education systems are ready for this? Do
because it tends to be developed by technologists. our kids learn the right things at school to be pre-
From my viewpoint the opportunity is to take pared for this?
Web. thinking and focus it on how to build a
personal relationships in a much more scalable way,
using technology. Ultimately, the most valuable John Hagel >
networks are networks of people relationships, as
opposed to just connecting into data or informa- In a short answer: no. I think our education systems
tion services of various types. That to me is the big are far behind the practices that are emerging in
opportunity. various parts of the world. So there is a huge op-
portunity to really rethink not just what we are com-
we-magazine > municating, what we are educating our students
with, but even how we educate. One of the trends
If you would have to name one example, one com- that we believe is playing out is moving from a
pany in Asia that is doing really well, which com- world of push to a world of pull. In the education
pany would it be and where are they really system we are still very much in a world of push.
exceptional? The notion is that we can anticipate for the entire
educational program of a student, from the day
John Hagel > they born, what they will need to learn when. Pus-
hing knowledge based on a prediction, a forecast
Li & Fung in China, which is not really well known of what they are going to need to know. We believe
in the West. They emerged over many decades as there is tremendous need to rethink education as a
one of the leading players in the clothing industry. pull system, where more and more of the learning
They organize customized supply networks for We- occurs on an as-needed basis. This involves con-
stern apparel designers. What is particularly inter- structing the platforms and tools to help students
esting is they have developed a global network of connect to people and knowledge when they need
more than , business partners, highly specia- it based on their specific situation. It is a very diffe-
lized companies, that they bring into individual sup- rent educational philosophy than most of our edu-
ply networks on an as-needed bases. One example cational institutions are currently pursuing.
is that in the immediate period after / they had
a lot of their activity in Pakistan. If at the time you
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we-magazine >
Future
Engage
– translate ideas into action!
Challenges
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Photo: butterflyworks
tags > co-create, sustainable, design, liberate, maker
To Engage
Means to
Create!
Emer Beamer
Emer Beamer is a social designer and conceptor who founded NairoBits and Butterfly
Works together with Hester Ezra and Ineke Aquarius. Her current post is research and
development director at Butterfly Works, social design studio, Netherlands.
we_special_/
Thanks to WE for giving us the opportunity and the challenge to talk about
the way we Engage individuals, communities and organisations to provide
sustainable answers to international social issues. Often we are so deep
in doing, that we don’t get around to documenting our approach, so here
goes an attempt to do just that.
One of the major challenges the future is bringing us, and indeed a chal-
lenge already much present, is underutilisation of the talents of millions
of young people on the planet. This is a nice way of saying that there are
way too many people living in stark, totally unacceptable, inhumane poverty
and that they feel real bad about it.
Butterfly Works is one WE, crafting and recrafting an approach with the
aim of developing programs for people to move out of this poverty. Since
the we of Butterfly Works has, with users, co-created some programs,
now running or starting up in countries. The work may not appear to
have a common approach, including as it does, design education for youth
from the slums; national peace campaigns; HIV/aids school programs; tin-
kering festivals in Africa; artisans product export programs and co-design
processes leading to new branded products. There are, however, common
ingredients and methods involved, which I aim to unpack here. The term
we use is ‘Liberate the Creative’.
butterflyworks
Example : NairoBits community munity based organisations. There is no fee for parti-
cipation, but a tough selection procedure ensures
NairoBits, which we founded in liberates that only those who are really motivated and genui-
the creative in youths from the slums of Nairobi nely have no other opportunity for further educa-
whereby they get jobs, move themselves and their tion get the chance.
families out of the slums, inspire others, create cool
Websites and set up all kinds of youth initiatives for What’s interesting in this process, which after
their peers. These are young people who thought years can now comfortably be called a movement
their only option was to become a criminal, a drunk (with plus graduates) is that while many, but
or both. Now they are movers and shakers. Nairo- not all of them become employed as Webdesigners,
Bits has since spawned AddisBits in Ethiopia, Zanzi- they do all carve out their own paths, be it DJ,
Bits in Tanzania, Kilimanjaro Film School in Tanzania setting up a youth NGO, teaching, further study
and currently in the make are KampaBits in Uganda at university, setting up their own business, you
and BeijingBits in China. All these schools are built name it.
on the same ethos.
The other fascinating part is the sense of community
The essence of the program is a one year training in that has arisen amongst students and graduates,
design, personal development and African culture. young people from different tribes and parts of
Working in teams and on individual projects, choo- the city are now united in an informal network
sing their own topics to design and create Websites which freelances together, shares coding tips, job
about, each student is challenged to choose, then opportunities and strong friendships. They are
design and program their ideas. They learn to pre- bound by the new culture which is not ‘we are
sent and defend their work. All students are selected poor’ and not ‘we are rich’ but ‘we are creative,
on the basis of motivation from a group of com- we can create what we need’
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The World Starts with Me is an e-learning program ‘Return to Sender’ selects manufacturers in develo-
on HIV/AIDS prevention and general teenager life ping countries, and in co-operation with the HEMA,
skills, developed firstly for Ugandan teenagers and a large department store in the Netherlands ensures
now running Uganda-wide and happily, adapted a market for their products. The resulting profits
and implemented in Vietnam, Indonesia and Thai- are channeled back to the region of origin through
land. Butterfly Works was asked to develop an projects designed to improve the local economy.
approach for HIV/Aids prevention by the World ‘Return to Sender’ is also a television program pre-
Population Foundation. To do this we formed a sented by Katja Schuurman, the founder and well
diverse group of artists, youths, teachers and topic known actress, which gives a window to viewers on
experts, who together developed the framework the story behind these special products.
and depicted the priorities for the digital curricu-
lum of The World Starts with Me, through a series In the start-up two years Butterfly Works was
of brainstorming and co-creation sessions. responsible for selecting the participating countries
and producing partners and managing both profit
Each lesson begins with two virtual peer educators expenditure and the follow-up for those involved
who discuss themes such as ‘friendship’. Each par- locally.
ticipant then draws a map of their friends, revealing
the closeness, level of support and type of influence Sourcing these small local makers with potential
each one has on their lives. This exercise gets was an exhilarating challenge and a risky business,
people beyond talking and into reflective space they had to be small enough to know you were really
through doing. (By the way, it’s also fun to do this helping a small producer to grow and take people
exercise as an adult and can be quite revealing.) out of poverty yet they also had to be able to rise to
The curriculum then takes the individual on a jour- the demand of delivering large quantities of qua-
ney of self discovery, encouraging them all the time lity goods to satisfy the needs of a large store chain
to get the facts and then make their own informed ( outlets) in Europe. We were also looking for
choices for their lives on topics such as identity, products that cherished some local culture or tech-
society, gender roles, human rights, sexuality, nic without being stereotypically ethnic looking.
sexual abuse and HIV/aids. A four year study has The producers in Brazil, for example, didn’t have a
shown positive impact on participants and the pro- shared working space, they all worked from home
gram has been earmarked as best practice at the making these beautiful felt and embroidered items.
World Aids conference in Mexico and by UNESCO. They have since gone on to form a co-operative,
rent a decent working space and deliver two col-
On a more individual level what we have seen is lections of Christmas tree decorations using their
young people making sometimes very difficult original craftwork. Everyone of the ladies and their
choices, such as stepping forward for help with families in the co-operative has benefited greatly.
cases of abuse at home, girls demanding to be Similarly the program imports goods from weavers
allowed to continue school despite being pregnant in Guatemala, cotton producers in Madagascar,
(usually one is expelled), boys re-assessing their ceramic makers in Thailand and toy makers in Sri
role in sexual relationships, young people setting Lanka. The for-profit HEMA has committed itself to
up groups to advocate for their rights. It seems long-term commercial relations with a number of
through creating and practicing solutions to the the producers groups with a percentage of the pro-
problems in their lives young people believe in their fits continually flowing back to the communities.
right to choose what’s good for them.
As much as the importance this program has had
for individual producers, the fact that it has been
possible to turn a profit with goods produced by
such small groups while honoring each contributor
in the value chain, is, we hope, a source of inspira-
tion that social business models can work.
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Needless to say, we are not the only organisation In fact I would be willing to bet that there is a whole
that sees and facilitates the creative resources of new tide of social entrepreneurs out there who are
younger and older people. Groups such as PENYA seeing the creative potential in people and adding
who facilitate budding music artists, Hot Sun Films, some resources to the mix contributing to a bubbling
who work with young film makers, Caramundo, movement of ‘creativity out of poverty’ programs.
One Minute Films, KNN Kids news network, Young
designers and Industry, Voices of Africa, Kwani?,
Storymoja, Creative Cambodia, Theater Embassy,
Music Mayday do too and these are just the ones I
can name off the top of my head.
Photo: butterflyworks
p.p.p.s This is rather urgent, there are
And yes, this is all only a drop in the
ocean of what’s needed, a drop how-millions of young people out there,
ever that means a huge amount to full of energy, revved up to go, yet
stuck in poverty. Every individual who
each of the individuals involved plus
there’s a method here that could ‘gives up’ who bows their head or
apply to every human being. When turns to destructive measures given
the lack of possibility to forward
we tap into the creative resources of
themselves in life, is a huge loss to all
people, you never know where it will
lead. of us. WE, the big WE – that is
everyone on the planet and indeed
p.s Warning: it involves hard work the planet itself – all miss out on the
and plenty of moral dilemmas and unique creative contribution they
a continual reconsideration of the could have made.
chosen path.
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Challenging
Invisible
Boundaries in
War and Peace
Social Media in Georgia
Bijan Kafi
Bijan Kafi is a consultant on communication for civil society initiatives and has worked in international development aid in countries
including Egypt, Central Africa, and Georgia. He currently lives in Berlin.
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During August when the “information war” was raging high in Georgia
people turned to online media to find desperately needed information.
Experience shows that online media may become a way to help bridge the
boundaries between divided peoples.
Zurab Tchiaberashvili may well have expected his To his surprise the mood of a small but growing
job would not be easy when he became the first part of his constituency – the tech-savvy and well-
mayor of post-Shevardnadze era Tbilisi. However, connected – had turned against him. Tchiaberashvili
he almost certainly didn’t anticipate what it would had unknowingly triggered a crisis and the people
mean to adhere to the principles he had chosen to it affected had found a medium, relatively new at
pursue in office: to root out corruption in public the time, to make their voices heard quickly and
administration. efficiently.
When Tchiaberashvili was presented with a valuable
gift by a municipal executive in , he resorted Trackback to Tbilisi
to drastic measures. At a publicly-televised event
only one day later he confronted the colleague with Like Zurab Tchiaberashvili, -year old Sian Davies,
what he considered as an attempt at bribery, thus then a charity worker from Wales, did not antici-
intending to inform the public that he would not pate the crisis she was to witness only months after
tolerate corruption. her arrival in Tbilisi in the summer of .
By his own standards Tchiaberashvili thought he When, following clashes with Georgian forces in
had done well. The public, however, thought dif- Tskhinvali, the Russian army crossed the border of
ferently. Within days after the event the boards of South Ossetia and into Georgia in early August,
Georgia’s most frequented online forum Forum.ge Davies was in Tbilisi. She was working for a local
were flooded with comments, the majority of which NGO to avoid precisely the sort of crisis that was
were critical of the mayor’s publicity stunt. Even unfolding some two hundred kilometers away.
though Tchiaberashvili later chose to limit the da- In what turned out over the following days to be a
mage by engaging the public from within the new full-blown armed conflict, Davies became an invo-
medium, in the eyes of the public his image had luntary citizen war reporter, mainly thanks to the
taken a beating. new media.
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After commenting on a BBC Website and on her announcement. This was online media’s finest hour.
blog that, contrary to CNN reports, Tbilisi had in fact As Giga Paitchadze, a Georgian lawyer working in
not been bombed, international media picked up judicial reform and an avid blogger under the pseu-
on the fact that she seemed to be one of the few donym Dvorsky, believes: “It all started with the war”.
reliable sources in an unusual information vacuum. Blogs may have played a significant role in chan-
“The contrast was startling. In a world of mass in- nelling scarce news during the military crisis, but
formation you suddenly find yourself in the middle Georgians still mostly turned to online forums. This
of an information void and people scrambling for is where they seem to feel most comfortable.
the tiniest bits of information regardless of whet- With , users Forum.ge is the most popular
her they are confirmed or not,” Davies remembers. place for Georgians to discuss topics such as cars,
The extensive local network of contacts she mana- sports, or politics. Some media have gained rele-
ges by mobile phone, SMS, email and blogs enabled vance since the crisis, but places like Forum.ge
Davies to stay abreast of events as they were unfol- are still the preferred means for gathering and
ding, at a time when commercial broadcasting sta- exchanging news because they best meet people’s
tions had left for their August holidays. Not only information needs and preferred mode of conver-
were most embassies closed, but many major TV sation. Forum.ge consistently proves it is an extra-
and radio stations had no reporters on the ground. ordinarily socially powerful institution, as not only
Within hours the media that had picked up her Tbilisi’s former mayor had to learn. Its influence
reports had forwarded the stories to other stations extends to daily life: search for a Georgian term on
and news agencies. These in turn were copied by Google Georgia and an entry on Forum.ge is likely
others. They soon contacted Davies via phone, to spring up, directing ordinary traffic to its boards.
email, and even Skype to quench their thirst for During the crises the forums helped to distinguish
breaking news. In the following days she gave the false from the true in the information quickly
interviews for British national and local radio stati- and effectively disseminated by all parties. Many
ons, answered questions by email, and gave inter- Georgians were familiar with the services, could
views on Skype to Associated Press. She estimates easily identify relevant forum boards and were thus
that about half a dozen articles have been written able to find in one place information from any-
about her, culminating in a radio interview on the where in the country. Forums were efficient tools,
BBC early evening news. as they require little hardware, are fully web-based
The information Davies and her friends received and easy to navigate. Given the suspect relevance
from their friends reached the global public via of social networks like Odnoklassniki.ru in the
blog, email and conventional media. Much of it was recent Moldova crisis, the relevance of technically
further relayed through Twitter, a service then little traditional but socially well-accepted networks
known in Georgia. Foreign media gladly picked up should not be underestimated. During crises they
these bits of information, frequently without que- serve to compensate for the imbalances in infor-
stioning their reliability. Even though the relevance mation generation, distribution, and consumption
of individual reporting diminished as soon as stati- typical of such situations. Traditional media are
ons brought in their own staff, much information notoriously incapable of responding adequately:
continued to be disseminated through the chain of hourly -minute TV shows leave people craving for
individual relationships mostly via mobile phones more news of loved ones, offer no interactivity,
by progressive individuals monitoring sources and and rely on a small number of sources that cannot
redistributing information. be pooled.
The forums enabled people from crisis areas to
In the information age, conflicts are report on their situations in ways conventional
information crises media were unable to deliver. They were also able
to bypass at least some of the fallout the propa-
During the conflict Georgians turned to the Inter- ganda-driven information warfare had unleashed –
net, just as they did when Zurab Tchiaberashvili no wonder that, with such a subversive potential,
chose to publicize incidents of corruption. Infor- Forum.ge was quickly taken down during the hot
mation was either scarce, as it was during the con- days of that August.
flict, or over-abundant e.g. after Tchiaberashvili’s
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No network to attract them all times of crisis, over long distances or where other
limitations would be a hindrance to direct conver-
More resilient than locally managed servers are in- sation, the forums made it possible to overcome
ternational services that are becoming increasingly these obstacles. But it proved to be dangerous,
popular among Georgians. Social networks like too, when it lowered the thresholds for hotheads
Facebook expand on the concept of the forum. to clash.
In Georgia, however, the market for social media
is more diverse with specific services seemingly Using networks to change the mood
appealing to specific social groups.
A study by ACT, a Georgian marketing research A group of Georgian students tried to overcome the
firm, identified the major players. Odnoklassniki.ru limitations by using the services in more productive
leads the pack: % of Georgian social network ways. On August Lika Bakuridze and Luiza
users have an account. The service is only available Koridze, journalism students at Batumi Shota
in Russian and is said to appeal mostly to older Rustaveli State University, opened a moderated
Georgians, who experienced the late days of the forum using facilities at a USAID-funded public
Soviet schooling system and so are usually fluent in telecentre. They did so on Odnoklassniki.ru.
Russian, a language less popular among youngs- In the following weeks others began to use the
ters. Odnoklassniki.ru clearly mimics the Soviet forum to express their views, share information
education system through a strict hierarchical order on events taking place around them, and discuss
of clearly identifiable institutions and grades di- the expected consequences of the war. The forum
stinguished by geographical location. To complete extended the individual’s options for disseminating
the winning mixture, it is also very easy to use even images and personal opinion. “I think the aim
for those with little computer experience. of the forum, the spreading of information and
While Hi seems to enjoy a loyal following among evidence of the war (…) is achieved”, Lika thinks.
the -and-below age cohort, Facebook certainly is The students reserved the right to delete posts
the second most popular fish in the pond, although deemed inappropriate. However, the virtual space
its user numbers of only % pale in comparison showed how the Internet is becoming a medium
with Odnoklassniki.ru. It is preferred mainly by pro- that matters for those who take the initiative. -
Western youth, attracted by its progressive image, year-old Zaza Mgaloblishvili from Batumi posted
sophisticated interface, and extensively networked the link of a video documenting the destruction
brand. of ethnic Georgian homes and an interview with a
“Odnoklassniki.ru has successfully tapped into the representative from Human Rights Watch. Nutsa
local cultural features. It is organized along old Mchedlishvili, , contributed a link to a video
Soviet-era lines that everyone who experienced depicting Russian attacks on Georgian military
those days knows by heart,” says Giga Paitchadze, bases. Fellow Ani Tsitlidze created a board named
founder of the Georgian-Estonian joint venture “Blood” where participants posted data on the sup-
Face.ge, which is currently fifth in the ranking. The ply of, and demand for, blood transfusions and their
relatively new service with its comparatively few locations. These data included the profile of a -
users has chosen a different profile by being only year-old with a rare blood type and forwarded her
available in Georgian and thus attractive mostly to contact information. Others contributed addresses
those with little knowledge of a foreign language. where people willing to donate blood would be
Overall % of all Georgian Internet users are mem- welcome. Visitors like students Ilia Dzneladze and
bers of a social network, says ACT, and it is signifi- Goga Kalihava also used the forum to post pictures
cant that % of these reside in Tbilisi. visually documenting Georgian unity.
Politics are among the issues widely discussed on
Forum.ge, as they are on Odnoklassniki.ru and In the following weeks the controversial forum
other sites frequented by both Russians and Geor- logged over posts and the creation of
gians. In the hot days following the August war, subforums. It has directly connected members of
the atmosphere on some service boards became Odnoklassniki.ru with participants and innu-
increasingly tense. Anonymity made it easier for merable passive readers from more than diffe-
Russians and Georgians to communicate. Even in rent countries.
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Georgia’s blogosphere streets, talk about things they like, smoke, or play
football. Public life in Georgia is a fundamentally
While debate was raging high on the forums, the social thing.”
Georgian blogosphere remained relatively silent.
Readers were attracted by some few central blogs Sowing the seeds of love
like that of Sian Davies, US-based Anna Dolidze,
the well-known SOS Georgia mentioned below, That seemed to be confirmed by the partici-
or the occasional Russian-language commentator. pants that joined Paitchadze for the first “Barcamp
Blogs originating from within Georgia sprang up Caucasus” organised with support from the Open
in greater numbers than ever before and many Society Georgia Foundation, a major funder of
remained active after the August events. However, media-related initiatives in the Caucasus and Eura-
it is safe to assume that blogs as individualized sia. Most of the participants in the event in Summer
channels for information distribution and sharing were from other countries, with significant
of opinion were not of major relevance as a means attendance from Armenia and Azerbaijan. Only a
of citizens’ self-empowerment before the conflict. dozen or so bloggers came from Georgia itself,
This certainly has its root in technical reasons, as estimates Paitchadze. “Participation from Georgia
ACT’s finding that % of social network users are was rather weak, and not so much has come out of
concentrated in Tbilisi shows. Internet access in the it,” he adds. “We had done some training even for
countryside is still low. An estimated % of the public agencies before, like the Georgian Institute
population have Internet access in Tbilisi, but out- for Public Administration (GIPA), on blogging and
side Georgia’s largest metropolis the figure drops Web ., but only to little effect. Somebody once
to only %. tried to establish blogging at schools, but that
Other reasons might be economic. Georgian inde- didn’t succeed, either.”
pendent media have found it difficult to realize Nevertheless, the Open Society Georgia Foundation
ambitious projects through advertisement-based funded Barcamps in the entire region and has
business models for professional online publishing. been a staunch supporter of media training for civic
Markets for online ads remain small and little open- engagement. Barcamps have also been organized
ness is exhibited by businesses keen on reaching in Central Asia, for example in Kazakhstan and
the masses to use innovative channels. Ad-genera- Kyrgystan. Additional support by international do-
ted revenue at Georgia’s largest independent poli- nors has been small: the European Union as a major
tical online newspaper, Civil.ge, is still stuck below funder only realized its potential in , again
% of its budget – and that’s after almost years within the framework of an initiative for democra-
of donor-driven funding. tization and human rights.
Cultural issues may play a role, too. Forums allow It is thus difficult to predict if the effects of seminal
for faster, more direct interaction, whereas blogs initiatives like the Georgian Barcamp will last in
require individual authors to write down their times of peace. Forums and social networks came
thoughts without knowing their potential reader- to life during the war because of what was essenti-
ship and in a place where it might never get noti- ally a crisis of information. Partisan propaganda
ced. Forums provide not only a thematic frame for resulted in fake, slow, or no information at all and
the individual statement, but also a usually well- posed real threats to the availability and accuracy
known meeting place with potentially great poten- of news immediately affecting the lives of indivi-
tial for attractiveness among a given interest group duals. Web. tools provided a means to fill the
that is usually still open enough to allow late-co- void and a “pressure valve” for sharing news, whose
mers to the debate. Blogs are essentially more sta- sources had become increasingly individual thanks
tic and less conducive to the directness and speed to technology.
of interactions that forums encourage. “Georgians After the war, life for ordinary Georgians has in
like to discuss”, says Giga Paitchadze who has also many ways become more complicated, especially
written the chapter on the freedom of Internet ac- in the area of inter-ethnic relations, travel and visa
cess in Georgia for Freedom House study “Freedom restrictions, import and export quotas and closed
on the Net”. “Even when they are unemployed and borders between Russia and Georgia. Georgians
have nothing to do, Georgians always gather in the may just find that this situation presents the new
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media with an opportunity in peacetime too. The way. It opened its own Twitter account (@govtof-
anonymity that makes it easy for people to enter georgia) and was able to follow several of the most
flame wars (as hostile interactions on the Internet active commentators from inside and outside the
are called) also enables them to engage with one country.
another in the first place – across many kinds of
boundaries. This need has only increased after the Voice is no guarantee for independence
war and, indeed, Forum.ge is once more as vibrant
as it always was. The various initiatives by individuals that seem to
However, there are signs of lasting momentum. begin to form critical mass show that online media
Since the war blogs, too, have sprung up by the do play a role in encouraging debate among divi-
dozen. Some commentators have been able to keep ded parties and may offer one set of tools to tackle
up activity, build credibility, and act as anchors for one of the key challenges of the st century:
further development. One of these is Anna Dolidze, divided people and diasporas.
a Georgian lawyer who comments on develop- Certainly individual voices “from the field” do
ments on her popular Resistance Georgia blog, not offer automatic protection against the threat of
already a source of independent comment before propaganda. They are themselves frequently too
the war. Recent additions include The Tbilisi Blues uncritical in their reporting or are often accepted
and This is Tbilisi Calling. Even Forum.ge has com- at face value by outside commentators because
petition from such sites as Forumcaucasus.com, official news is either unavailable or unreliable. As
a private initiative aimed at bringing the countries renowned blogger Ethan Zuckerman first noticed,
adjoining the Georgian-Russian border closer to- this was a particular concern with both Russian and
gether, if only virtually. Georgian bloggers reporting from Georgia, Russia,
The Barcamp itself, too, is said to have led to the or even the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
development of more regularly updated blogs. Credibility in online environments can also be at
There are allegedly even plans for a Georgian blog- stake in less confrontational settings, impacting
ging engine. Plus, Barcamp Armenia and Barcamp directly on the legitimacy of elected represent-
Caspian (Azerbaijan) held in Yerevan and Baku in atives. When Tbilisi’s mayor attempted to address
April and March quickly followed due to po- proactively the criticism voiced by the public on
pular demand and in October the Georgia Forum.ge, many initially questioned his identity.
New Media Forum still saw strong interest from “People simply didn’t believe him; they thought he
bloggers, social media activists, and journalists was a fake, that it was not the mayor speaking to
alike. Guests included renowned personalities them,” says Givi Ordenidze. “He tried to address
from the US, Europe, and the Caucasus like Onnik that issue, but what options do you have in a world
Krikorian (Armenia) or Emin Huseynzade (Azerbai- that is entirely virtual?”
jan). The forum also featured the launch of the Some issues, however, may be peculiar to crisis
Georgian blog catalog blogroll.ge. Another event, situations resulting in repressive rule under martial
the Social Innovation Camp Caucasus, will be held law and deliberate propaganda or other limitations
in Tbilisi in April . to civil liberties. They also pose challenging questi-
The political crisis following the demonstrations of ons for further research. During the war the then
April showed how much creativity and expe- famous blogging platform SOSGeorgia.org, initially
rience in media usage had developed within just founded by two European media professionals
months. Students of the Georgian School of Public working in the country, got financial support and
Affairs set up blogs with the support of US media was quickly “improved” by a European PR firm also
trainers. They covered events as they unfolded and serving the government. With professional help its
received widespread international acclaim. Twitter team was able to spend thousands of donated
usage exploded too: international commentators, dollars on offline activities such as the production
citizens and media professionals experimented with of “SOS Georgia” T-Shirts and the organization of
mobile technologies and collaborated with greater protest marches. However, the growing influence
ease and more effectively than before. Eventually, of the private consultants meant that what began
even the Georgian government realized the need as a well-intentioned technical upgrade resulted in
to monitor the Twittersphere in a more proactive the eventual disillusionment of its founders.
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The
Urban
Revolution
Niels Boeing
Niels Boeing is a journalist in Hamburg. Travels through Asia and Africa spawned his interest in globalization but also convinced him
that every change for the better has to start locally. He is a member of the group “LOMU – local organized multitude” (www.lomu.net)
that organises social experiments in public space and is also active in Hamburg’s network “Recht auf Stadt” (www.rechtaufstadt.net).
He fully agrees with John Holloway that the new challenge is to “change the world without taking power”.
Photo: Franziska Holz / RAS_parade
The big city has always been both
dream and nightmare. The dream:
if you can make it there, you’ll make
it anywhere. The nightmare: if you
don’t make it there, you’re “down and
out” as George Orwell described so
poignantly in his eponymous novel
from . Yet for millions of urban
dwellers the nightmare looms ever
larger as a cohort of trends make
cities increasingly unsustainable in
every sense – socially, economically
and environmentally. Now, for the
first time in history, more than half of
the world’s population lives in cities.
In about percent of them
will spend their lives in urban agglo-
merations, according to a UN forecast.
What kind of lives will they lead if
things go on repeating the pattern of
the past?
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When
Media and
Citizen Media
Meet
Solana Larsen
Solana Larsen is the managing editor of Global Voices Online. Before that she was an editor with the global politics Website
openDemocracy.net for nearly five years. She has an MA in international journalism from City University in London, and taught
a postgraduate journalism class about illegal immigration at New York University in . She is Danish-Puerto Rican and lives
in New York.
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Anyone who still doubts whether the mainstream media is in crisis, has never
been to a media industry conference. Participants always flock in droves to
sessions on how new media might help mainstream media regain trust and
audience and develop new revenue streams. I’m the managing editor of a
Website named Global Voices that tracks what bloggers are talking about
worldwide. My colleagues and I are often invited to these conferences to share
our perspectives on what lies beyond the land of ‘old media’.
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Perhaps the fact that mainstream media corpora- Over the years, we’ve created a global community
tions are looking to a non-profit organization with of more than volunteer bloggers and transla-
no physical address for inspiration should give you tors who all work with out part-time editors. We
an indication of how deep the crisis is. But it can’t report on the activities and the topics that concern
all be bad news. I’m one of those people who is bloggers and citizen journalists worldwide – with
optimistic about what might come out of this shake special emphasis on developing countries and
up of the media industry, and I believe mainstream marginalized voices. For instance, what do gay
media is thinking more and more creatively about bloggers in Uganda think about their government’s
how to use the Web because they have finally been stance on homosexuality? Or how are Thai bloggers
convinced that it’s useful and rewarding rather than preparing for a citywide Bangkok protest of citizens
out of some kind of desperation. At least that is dressed in red t-shirts?
what it seems like looking at our own experiences So this is citizen journalism of a kind that begins on
of looking for ways to combine citizen media with the personal Websites of a few individuals, and is
mainstream media. adapted into an article that tells a broader story.
I don’t need to tell you about how Iranian bloggers Over the five years since Global Voices was founded
used Twitter during post-election protests, or how we’ve experimented with numerous approaches
Haitians used the Internet in the aftermath of the to integrating these kind of global citizen perspec-
earthquake. You’ve probably heard it before. But tives into mainstream media.
if you think of all the dramatic events taking place In March I spent two weeks working with BBC News
in the world right now, you might wonder why we Website editors in London. The goal of our project
don’t hear stories like this more often from other was to explore how citizen media could help inform
parts of the world too. Will the balance tip away their foreign news coverage and vice versa. We
from mainstream media when it comes to setting added links to Global Voices directly from BBC news
the agenda? Attracting a mass global audience may stories when it could help add context and we also
soon become less dependent on gaining main- published free standing stories. One example of
stream media coverage first. when this worked well was during an extremely
Global Voices focuses mainly on developing world heated political debate in the upper house of par-
citizen media and one of our goals is to seek ways liament in India about a bill to increase the number
to integrate what bloggers are saying in places like of female lawmakers across the country, spilled
Thailand or Madagascar into international foreign over into online discussion in Indian blogs and on
stories. There is a lot to say about how local citizen Twitter. The straight news story left you with almost
media can impact both national and foreign news a black and white view of the controversy, while
reporting. But the point I’d like to make is that the the Indian bloggers shared perspectives that
success stories in less developed parts of the world showed why even feminists might be against the
should be indicative of what might work for media bill.
in richer parts of the world too. Among our weaknesses were imperfections in arti-
cle format, and relative lack of speed compared to
Mobilizing online citizen media a / news organization like the BBC. The colla-
boration was very useful in pointing out some of
At Global Voices, I help manage a virtual newsroom the things Global Voices could do better, including
of bloggers who report on world events by quoting forward planning. On the other hand it renewed my
and translating from blogs and citizen media world- feeling that what we do is valuable because it’s dif-
wide. Global Voices was created five years ago at ferent from what they do – especially because we
Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet are more inclusive of stories that world citizens
research as a response to the fact that even though themselves tell us are important. We don’t believe
the world wide Web connects almost everyone on that citizen media exists in opposition to main-
the planet, most people still seem prefer to read stream journalism. The two need to work together.
and write about their own local issues. We’re
trying to help foster a global conversation, and
support free speech for all. As our slogan goes,
“The world is talking. Are you listening?”
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FOKO Blog Club bloggers in Madagascar celebrating their one year anniversary in . Several were inspired to start blogging to
correct the outside impression that Madagascar is anything like a Disney movie of the same name. Photo: by FOKO Madagascar
their own societies. Rising Voices has created a growth since . New America Media attribute
new Website and research team that is mapping it to the fact that these publications are actively
these projects called Technology for Transparency. serving and representing specific communities,
In Guatemala, representatives from more than have small budgets; and don’t rely on big corpora-
organizations put the spotlight on the selection tions for advertisements. Altogether the ethnic
process of nominees for key public offices. In media reach million citizens in the United States,
Ghana, an online information portal is covering so it’s not an insignificant sector in a population of
and monitoring elections in ten African countries million.
and in three languages. In Israel, citizens have con- Have U.S. newspapers filled with newswire stories
verted the Tel Aviv municipal budget from PDF to a and syndicated columns strayed too far from the
spreadsheet format with visualizations. Is it citizen traditional ‘old media’ pillar of public service? My
journalism? It's certainly powerful public informa- point is of course not that all news media should
tion of a kind that previously required journalists be divided along ethnic or geographic lines, but
to help tell the story. In this regard citizens and jour- that journalists and editors really need to ask them-
nalists can do a lot of good by working together. selves who they are serving for what purpose, and
In seeking solutions to a mainstream media crisis, whether they are delivering true value for their
it would be silly to think that the same solutions will audience or community. One way to identify this is
work for everyone. One thing worth noting in the to engage and reconnect openly with readers in
media landscape of the United States is that there meaningful ways over the Internet. Chances are
is one sector of the media industry that is less that monitoring how citizens are engaging with
affected by the economic crisis and media closures. each other about important public interest issues
A survey of ethnic media in the United States com- on the Web will provide inspiration for what a
missioned by New America Media in (that professional media organization may be able to
means the Chinese, Spanish, African-American help do even better.
newspapers, broadcast etc) showed significant
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tags > Ismael Khateeb, Heart of Jenin, Cinema Jenin, Marcus Vetter,
Normalization, Cultural Intifada
Marcus Vetter
Marcus Vetter is one of the founder of Cinema Jenin. Born in , director and producer. Marcus studied ‘European Business Studies’
in Worms, Buenos Aires and Madrid. After a work placement at ‘Bavaria Film’ he decided to start another degree in ‘Media Sciences’
at the University of Tübingen. Since he has worked as a freelance editor, writer and director mostly for the German SWR TV
channel. He has directed numerous primetime documentaries which show regularly at international festivals.
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
we-magazine >
Marcus Vetter > I’d met some people and I could see by looking in
their eyes that they needed a helping hand. I didn’t
I met a great number of extraordinarily welcoming, want to leave this place without giving them my
warm-hearted people. I was totally astonished at hand.
how “naive” they were – I was astonished that I
could take a taxi without being cheated – unlike in we-magazine >
Tel Aviv or Cairo. It’s a very innocent city because
there isn’t that much tourism. So how do you reach out?
But later on I also discovered some problematic is-
sues in this society caused by the circumstances Marcus Vetter >
which they are forced to live in. It's hard to gain
trust where there isn't much trust at all. And as I see The key point for me was, is and will be Ismael’s de-
it, there’s not much friendship. People are very cision to donate his son’s organs to Israeli children.
quick to use the word “friendship” but true friend- When you see the film you will understand that it
ship is very rare in my experience. They’re also very wasn’t solely his own decision. Many people were
atomised because there is so little money that involved! And that’s key! It was the nurse who
everyone wants what the other person has. If you talked to him so well about what it means to do-
have a good position, you might be blackmailed nate organs. Then he asked Zakaria Zbeidy of the
and replaced. Al Akza brigade, if he accepted, and he did even
Only the people and their way of being, their warm though he is someone who fights with arms.
hearts, I really liked a lot. And I fell in love with Zbeidy said if this is your way you should follow it
Jenin and what I want to make clear with our pro- and go it with God, I will accept it. This was a very
ject Cinema Jenin is that Jenin is not a place you brave decision on his part since other terrorists or
should be scared of. Its people are not terrorists! freedom fighter groups could easily have said
“What are you doing?” Further on he asked the
we-magazine > Mufti of Jenin who interpreted the whole thing in a
favourable light of the Koran.
But that’s what the place is known for, that’s what So the fact that this would never have happened if
the news delivers! everyone involved in this chain hadn’t each taken a
brave decision was also pretty astonishing for me.
This wasn’t a single man’s decision which is the
good thing about it because one single hero is not
enough. We don’t need just one hero. This is a
major problem of our time.
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Photo: www.wired.com
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On a
Mission to
End Oil
Shai Agassi
Shai Agassi is the founder and CEO of Better Place. He is focused on one of this century’s biggest challenges, moving the world from
oil-based to sustainable transportation. Agassi works with government leaders, auto manufacturers, energy companies and others to
make his vision – zero-emission vehicles powered by electricity from renewable sources – a reality in countries around the globe.
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I heard Shai Agassi’s story for the first time in posts scattered around downtown areas and along
January . It was at DLD Conference in Munich. highways. But crucially, Better Place is also building
Since then I’ve wondered about all the people he roadside robotized battery-swap stations that
has already hooked up with: mayors, CEOs, investors, provide fresh, fully charged batteries without
statesmen, car dealers ... incredible carbon foot- having to wait hours for a charge. You drive by and
prints ... At one point, everybody marveled about a robot will change your battery quickly. Agassi
Shai’s ability to convince you that the answers to says: “If we can’t do this in less time than it takes to
the most challenging problems are easy and ob- fill your gasoline tank, we don’t have a company.”
vious. He tells you the story, and it sounds so simple. The robot is designed to reach under the chassis of
Why don’t we have it today? Why isn’t it here an electric car, pluck its battery out and replace it
already? with a new one, in much the same way as you’d put
Three years later, in the beginning of , Agassi’s new batteries in a child’s toy. At a presentation in
vision can show its first results. front of a group of investors and employees the
But let’s start with Shai Agassi, formerly known as robot – a squat platform that moves on four dinner-
the next SAP CEO. The topic: green transportation. plate-size white wheels – scuttled back and forth
Agassi is the founder and CEO of Better Palce PLC, along a -foot long set of metal rails. At one end
a new infrastructure creator and operator for the of the rails, a huge blue battery, the size of a large
management of country-wide electric vehicle fleets. suitcase, sat suspended in a frame. As we watched,
Better Place PLC works with governments, car ma- the robot zipped up to the battery, made a nearly
kers, and financial institutes creating a large scale in-audible click, and pulled the battery downward.
framework for rapid transformation of transport It ferried the battery over to the other end of the
systems away from fossil based energy to non-pol- rails, dropped it off, picked up a new battery, hissed
luting oil free solutions. Green transportation for a back over to the frame and, in one deft movement,
Better Place called earth! Better Place is not in fact snapped the new battery in the place of the old
another VIP going green. No, it is the astonishing one. The total time: seconds.
business model behind the idea and the simple fact
that batteries are not included! The Business Model
Batteries are not included! “If I can give you miles in a more convenient, chea-
per way than gasoline, you will take them,” Agassi
Electric cars have long been a fetish object for says. “If your neighbor is driving an electric car and
environmentalists: electricity can be produced from paying me only $ a week for the electricity, you’re
wind, solar or nuclear sources with little or no CO. going to buy an electric car, too. If I do it without
Yet all these alternatives suffer from a common pro- killing your kids and the planet, then it won’t even
blem: refueling. The most advanced electric car cur- matter if it’s cheaper or not; you will just do it.”
rently for sale, the Tesla Roadster, runs for no more Better Place came up with an astonishing business
than miles on a charge, and others can do only model, a model which is actually borrowed from
miles or so before they need two or more hours the mobile phone industry. In the same way that
of plug-in time to recharge. The problem of refu- wireless operators deploy a network of cell towers
eling looms so large that fans of electric cars have to provide an area of mobile phone coverage,
a phrase for it: range anxiety, the nagging fear that Better Place will establish a network of charging
you’ll run out of juice and be stranded at the side of spots and battery exchange stations to provide
the road before you can find a charge spot. It is the ubiquitous access to electricity to power electric
main reason why most people, even while they vehicles. The company will partner with car makers
cheer on the development of low- or no-emissions and source batteries so that consumers who sub-
vehicles, are leery of actually buying one. And if scribe to the network can get subsidized vehicles
people won’t buy them, carmakers won’t make which are cheaper to buy and operate than today’s
them. fuel-based cars. Consumers will still own their cars
Agassi's solution is a dual system. Better Place aims and will have multiple car models to choose from.
to construct a worldwide network of millions of What does this mean in numbers? Can a company
small-scale “charging spots,” parking-meter-like become profitable based on this model? No doubt
Photo: www.thefutureisawesome.com we_special_/
about that. Powering a car by electricity — even stalled hundreds of its signature blue car-charging
relatively expensive “clean” energy like wind or stations, Agassi is credited with convincing the
solar — costs far less than powering it by gasoline. nation’s jaded political class that they have an
And with the United States market for automobile opportunity to actually wean their country off oil.
gas at roughly $ billion, Agassi figured that a And now Agassi is targeting China – the largest
company controlling a world network of charging car country in the world – for a very good reason,
stations would become so profitable so quickly that he says: “If China goes electric, the world will go
it could subsidize its customers’ electric cars, much electric! It is as simple as this. The Chinese govern-
the way mobile companies give out free phones to ment is great in executing such ideas, they are very
people who sign two-year contracts ... e.g. USD fast in deploying mass infrastructure. And they have
for miles, USD for miles ... car model the money to do so. They put a USD-incentive
A: USD, car model B USD, model C USD. on every electric car in particular focussed on
government vehicles and taxis, they are creating
Dream on or translate into action? a new city for electric cars between Beijing and
Tiangjing – the new Detroit if you want, they’ve
You can call it extraordinarily bold, requiring car- put down the budgets for all of the major cities
makers to fundamentally rethink the way they build to put the right infrastructure in place, they ban
cars. But the time might be just right! They are gasoline cars from the cities. They are definitely
collapsing anyway ... so Agassi’s solution might be taking these ideas seriously. All of that is driven top-
a huge opportunity in crises for them. down. But they are also creating a car industry bot-
In barely two years, Agassi has persuaded investors tom-up. And when the Chinese have a consumer
to contribute $ million, and several cities, product ... nobody can beat them in price! So once
countries and states – including Israel, Denmark, the Chinese Market goes electric, the US has to go
Australia, Tokyo. The French automaker Renault is electric, Europe has to go electric ... The Chinese
spending $ million over three years to develop today have the ability to be the risk takers and
a car with swappable batteries, to be released in leaders and then the rest of the world will follow
. In Israel, where Better Place has already in- them!”
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We Share.
We Do Not
Censor!
Isaac Mao
Isaac Mao is a blogger from the People’s Republic of China. He is co-founder of CNBlog.org and a co-organizer of the Chinese Blogger
Conference. In , he started the movement for adopting Chinese bloggers on overseas servers. He divides his time between
research, social works, business and technology. He was a Berkman Fellow /.
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China is in many ways a huge future challenge – for open-minded, more knowledgeable, and as your
itself, its people and the world. Take a worldview of social capital increases. Because the more you share
China and the first thing that strikes you is the sheer the more you receive.
magnitude of the new economic super power.
There is no doubt that China is ready to act as a glo- To translate the theory of Sharism into action, free
bal trendsetter and leader (see p. of this issue access to the Internet is of the essence. Sharism
where Shai Agassi makes the same point with refe- itself is critical for overcoming censorship in China.
rence to China’s role in the electric car industry). As Isaac Mao says, “There is a ridiculous race going
The Chinese government well knows how to exe- on about censorship in China. Those in power try
cute sweeping ideas and rapidly mobilise mass to get their hands on the very best technology
infrastructure. All the signs in China are set for rapid available. But those fighting censorship are actually
relentless growth. But what is the price to be paid the ones with this technology and they are the very
for this? And who will pick up the tab? ones who make it available to undermine the Great
Firewall of China. The very ones who share!”
Isaac Mao argues that every Chinese citizen –
regardless of whether they are members of the That Sharism is indeed an effective force can be
Communist Party or not – will pay the price and that seen from the following example: even though
everyone will be called on to make huge sacrifices. Twitter is officially banned in China each Sunday
But the question Isaac asks is whether such sacrifi- afternoon without fail the hash tag #GFW (= Great
ces are really necessary – whether there aren’t any Firewall of China) reaches the No. slot in the
better ways to succeed. And his answer is yes there Chinese Twitter charts – charts that are based on
are – with Sharism! Chinese IP-addresses. The Chinese “twittersphere”
is a vivid demonstration of how “easy” it is to by-
Isaac took an early leadership role in the Chinese pass the system by sharing. A group of people wor-
online community. His simple but far-reaching mis- king on technology tools shares them and their
sion is to make China a better place to live in by sha- ideas to give people uncensored access to the net.
ring worldwide knowledge! For him knowledge is Yet bypassing or helping to do so the Great Firewall
the key to a sustainable future of all the people of of China is actually a very dangerous enterprise
China. In pursuit of this goal, he advocates provi- that can easily land people in prison or seriously
ding people with uncensored access to the Internet restrict the lives they lead. The government is
and he also wants to make them aware that the tightening the screws on this target group. So what
government is censoring the net. His idea of still leads them to combat censorship? Isaac Mao’s
Sharism is thus a critical tool for abolishing the view is that “For China as a whole it is very impor-
Great Firewall of China. tant that all people have access to knowledge.
Knowledge is the key to a better life. If people know
Isaac Mao first introduced the term four years ago and understand, they can start to act! And I am NOT
to describe a way of sharing your work (everything) talking about a revolution; I am NOT talking about
within your social network (or public domain) while overthrowing the government. I am talking about
still retaining all the rights you wish to retain. Sha- access to basic knowledge for the average Chinese
rism can be practiced easily and at any time when citizen. People should know about the environ-
communicating with others – writing blogs, po- mental damage the incredible rate of economic
sting photos or organizing offline meet-ups for growth is bringing with it. They should know how
group discussions, etc. And if you don’t want to to deal with breast cancer. They should know about
practice it, you simply don’t share because Sharism the death of natural resources and the damage
is based on a person’s own individual decision. Sha- done to nature. Chinese people need to become
rism is actually a very simple idea and part of our aware of these problems. They need to know that
human nature. It should be practised on a daily they exist. They need to know that censorship
basis. Sharism is not an assault on other people’s exists. They need to gain awareness. Because if they
rights. It’s a very personalized mindset and practical know they will understand. And if they understand
spirit. When you practise Sharism you can gradually – they will act! And the more people act, the
feel the change operating as you become more greater is the probability that change for the better
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will happen. If they don’t know, nothing will meaning you gain points by sharing. And then
happen.” So how can change really be achieved? people can change their credit points into real cur-
“Look,” Mao points out, “today only % of all rency. PayPal and adverts, to give but two examples,
Chinese people have access to the Internet. And can be embedded in hardware – and this is what
they’re mainly on the east coast, the further you go makes a business application based on an indivi-
inland the rarer Internet access becomes. Even so, dual decision to share or not to share. Imagine that
China still is the world’s premier Internet country – individuals can share via Facebook, Twitter and all
in terms of the absolute numbers of people with the other social media tools. This gives a huge
access. Chinese is the most written language on the potential for increasing the capital of Sharism. And
net. Yet all this is just with a mere % of the this is the sort of pipeline we are now planning ...”
people. So imagine what would happen if the idea
of Sharism reaches just % of our online commu-
nity – it will make them a force to be reckoned with
practically overnight!”
Milagro
Nicolás Tereschuk is an Argentinean political scientist Sebastián Miquel is an Argentinean photographer and
and journalist. He is editor of a personal blog of politi- political scientist. Works as a free-lance photographer.
cal discussion (http://vidabinaria.blogspot.com) and Has developed the series “Abya Yala, Sons of The Land,
co-editor of the collective blog http://artepolitica.com. Documental Photography about Tupac Amaru”, expo-
sed at the Palais de Glace, in Buenos Aires.
All photographs copyrigt by Sebastián Miquel.
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“Milagro” is Spanish for “miracle” which is what she would never meet her biological mother, one
many think Milagro Sala has accomplished. Like of her abiding dreams.
other jobless groups in Argentina her organization,
Tumac Amaru (named after a revolutionary th Since her first active involvement in politics, Sala
century Inca), received money from the government. knew the truth of Juan Peron dictum that “organiza-
But unlike most of them, the organization of this tion beats time”. She organized a protest for better
diminutive Indian woman has gained the love and food and was arrested during a scuffle with local
respect of her people. police. Later on she became a public service official
and became involved in the trade union where she
After the Argentine economy recovered, the govern- fought against neoliberal reforms in Jujuy.
ment channeled money for food and housing to
social groups in poor regions of the country. Tupac The Argentinean crash of – a fall of over
Amaru took a decision which proved to be the right points on GNP – left the poor regions of the coun-
one: to empower all its members and make wise in- try clamoring for food and shelter and strengthened
vestment. They built two factories for bricks and solidarity between people in poor neighborhoods.
steel to reduce the cost of building new housing. In the shanty towns around Buenos Aires and
And their move paid dividends. In the northern the even poorer areas in the north, mothers were
Jujuy province the government spends over $, desperate to feed their children and looked to
to build a family house whereas it costs Tupac Amaru mutual self-help, government hand-outs and other
just $, and their houses are built at four times new ways, making it easier for leaders like Milagro
the speeds of state-contracted construction com- to bring people together. She was “trained” in the
panies. Their logic of autonomy and intelligent s when various sections protested against the
spending also ensures sustainability for the projects. neoliberal reforms – privatization, the open eco-
nomy and the dominance of the financial sector –
Another key aspect of the Tupac Amaru “philosophy” which caused a tripling of unemployment and in a
is the way it seeks to give people true human rights, mere ten years a widening of the gap between the
to make them feel they can do as well in life as richer richest and poorest sections of society from a factor
people. For instance, they decided to build an aqua- of to a factor of . The then president Carlos
tic park in a neighborhood where people never Menem was the “best disciple” of IMF policies and
even dreamed of having a swimming pool. Or a park privatization boosted the fortunes of foreign capital
for kids, with big dinosaurs and cartoon characters companies while thousands of small businesses
figures that seems like Disney World to the boys went broke. Unemployment, inequality and the
and girls of neighborhoods that were shanty towns corruption of public services (education, health,
only a few years back. As they say, “The poor have justice) for the poor peaked in . With the eco-
a right to fun”. nomy in deep recession, that year’s mid-term
elections were a defeat not only for the party of the
Many lives in one former president Fernando de la Rúa but for the
whole of the political class as large swathes of
Who is Milagro Sala? And why does she go against voters protested against traditional political parties
the grain of traditional politics in North Argentina? by voting for Homer Simpson or other cartoon cha-
racters over actual candidates. When the govern-
A native American Kolla, Milagro grew up in a ment fell in the middle of a major financial, political
“white” family until she was . From that time on and social crisis, the streets resounded with the cry
she remembers being segregated from the highly “All of them, go home!!”. The middle classes saw
stratified and traditional Jujuy society where the their savings gobbled by bankers who were bailed
color of her skin was enough to keep her out of the out by the state. Workers suffered as their salaries
public pool where rich white kids played in the hot were weakened by devaluation and inflation. And
northern summers. Her life was played out on the the unemployed could not even make a living by
streets where she quickly developed a familiarity working in the informal “grey” economy.
with drugs, poverty, violence and police harass-
ment. It was also the time when she realized that
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Tupac Amaru rative groups already formed, the skills needed and
the land”. Once the money was secured, a whole
Tupac Amaru took off when Milagro Sala started to organization was set up through the indefatigable
organize her neighbors to feed the children of leadership of this Kolla native woman with buil-
starving families. “When we went on the streets to der groups defined and ready to receive materials
demonstrate, we had good TV coverage but we still to start their job. Things went much better than
had nothing to eat”, she remembers, *_speaking at they would have done under a private contractor.
a local TV show._* Milagro Sala led her people to a better use of public
When the political turmoil of passed, after an funding and also tackled alcohol and drugs – two
economic recovery based on devaluation of the issues which were endemic problems for the people
peso and a boom in exports, the poorest people of the Arid Puna region. One of the obligations for
started to receive government help which came in people joining Tupac Amaru is to avoid addiction
a variety of channels but mainly from the ruling to alcohol and drugs and the best way of doing this,
Justicialista party. This was the time when the idea as Sala says, is to give them stable employment.
of letting people build their own houses was first Delinquency, unemployment and a lack of personal
floated. “We went to Buenos Aires to ask for money. projects were also major issues in the poor neigh-
The government refused because we weren’t able borhoods of San Salvador de Jujuy yet through its
to show them any experience in this field – which activities Tupac Amaru has actually lowered crime
was actually true, we had none! We fought hard for figures in the region. To tackle the high school
the funding though. We told them we had coope- drop-out rate, Tupac Amaru members must not
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only go to school and learn to read and write but their leader, the person who has shown them how
are also encouraged to strive for the higher levels of to cooperate and build a better future for their
the educative system. “We need professionals to children, asks them to. They may be described as
serve in their own neighborhoods”, Milagro says “violent” but are they? As Milagro Sala says, “We
_*in a local documentary about her life*._ And in can show results in terms of houses, and factories.
terms of domestic violence, Tupac Amaru empo- The political leaders who accuse us of being “vio-
wers women in their neighborhoods to seek help lent” simply can’t”. The leader of the old radical
and denounce violence against them. In a traditio- party in Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, called Tupac Amaru
nal society like Jujuy, violence against women goes a “mob”. And the same message is sent out by the
largely unpunished. Even though national laws big media groups. A “mob” is certainly an organi-
do protect children and women, local officials are zation which develops activities independently
frequently unwilling to apply them. Today Tupac from the state. But, does that make Tupac Amaru
Amara is about much more than food and housing. members a mob of gangsters?
It has also set up health and education services and
through its agencies poor Native American boys Milestones
and girls can now play sports like hockey or water
polo which were once the exclusive preserve of the Milagro Sala has founded two schools for ,
rich. students and Tupac Amaru pays the salaries of
Tupac Amaru is different from other social organi- teachers. There’s not much in common here with
zations in Argentina because its main focus is on the gangster activities of a “Cosa Nostra” mob!
concrete achievements like employment, housing, Rights and opportunities for all could well be the
and food. “Some political sectors in Jujuy are very slogan for Tupac Amaru. If they build a neighbor-
upset with us because they also receive money for hood, it won’t look like a “second best” for a shanty
housing, but their money always goes missing”, town but will come complete with parks for chil-
Milagro Sala has repeatedly told the national press. dren, access to schools and a good service infra-
Big media groups in Buenos Aires accuse Sala of structure. If they build a school, it will look like the
using “violent” methods, but she says that what ones in Buenos Aires: with libraries, and science
they really fear is the collective power of the , and computer rooms. In a country where a child
people who make up Tupac Amaru. from a poor background is more likely to do badly
in school exams, projects of this kind are a valuable
Traditional politics contribution towards equality of opportunity.
Imagine a region with a high child mortality rate
How do traditional politicians react to an organiza- like Jujuy. Tupac Amaru has administered govern-
tion like Tupac? Mainly with fear and distrust. Local ment money and its own resources to build two
political parties don’t like an organization which small hospitals staffed by over doctors and
spends less time talking and more doing hard work. nurses. Medication, X-rays and blood tests are free
Milagro Sala does not have to spend money, time for the members of the organization. These poor
and effort in political campaigning, even though people – some of the poorest of Argentina’s poor –
she may be the most powerful woman in the north have grouped together and bought a computer
of Argentina. The kind of power she has is based tomography and mamography system for the pre-
on providing the people with those housing, health vention and cure of a range of lethal diseases. And
and food solutions which the state, in a highly un- they are now planning to build a rehabilitation cen-
equal society, has proved incapable of delivering. ter for the disabled. Medical services in the Alto
These solutions are made possible through the use Comedero neighborhood, once the poorest in San
of public investment which is neither administered Salvador de Jujuy, are so good that Tupac Amaru
by the state nor by the private sector but by the hospitals now offer their help to state hospitals in
third party of an organization with its own set of an effort to shorten their notoriously long waiting
rules to define its own objectives and efficiency lists.
standards. Dental care is the most recent medical service offe-
Milagro is accused of being violent. Is she? Imagine red by the organization. In , Tupac Amaru
, people ready to go on a demonstration if started to educate its members about the impor-
tance of dental care, and develop preventive cam- cias”, the “powerful” of the time, encouraged im-
paigns. A mere two years later and they opened migration as they believed it meant people from
a dental healthcare center. northern Europe. But things did not happen accor-
ding to plan and instead a wave of mostly illiterate
Participation, empowerment and sustainability Spanish and Italian families arrived in Buenos Aires.
The “European” image of Argentina asserted its
Milagro Sala is not the “one and only” leader: she dominance reinforced by an extensive education
asks all members of the organization to participate program guaranteeing access to public and free
and empowers them to make decisions. In ex- schools for most of the population. The education
change, they receive concrete benefits and have the system neglected diversity and inculcated an un-
right to debate and decide in assemblies on how to derstanding of Argentina not as a multi-cultural,
use resources and which plan to follow. A weekly multi-ethnic country but rather as a nation whose
“congress” of delegates makes the final decisi- origins were to be found in a “crucible of races”.
ons. Working within this structure, they have prio- This constructed image, in which racial conflicts
ritized the building of six factories financed with were absent from the public eye, tended to hide the
public resources. reality of discrimination, private violence and ex-
Sustainability is another characteristic of Tupac ploitation that the Native Americans of Argentina
Amaru projects. Factories supply materials to build were subject to.
houses. A textile factory produces aprons for kids The political vision nurtured by Tupac Amaru tends
and doctors. Recently, they have diversified pro- to break this image. Diversity has finally been
duction and are now selling the Ministry of Social recognized, and as Max Quispe, a member of the
Development T-shirts and shorts kit for national- national board of Tupac Amaru puts it, “Every poor
level sports. This forward-looking proactive thinking person has a bad time, but the color of your skin is
is what makes Tupac Amaru different from the an extra mark against you”. Quispe says that “Tupac
“passive” model of organizations for poor or un- has a native American vision by rising the Whipala
employed people. (the flag of the Aymara Quishwa people). You learn
The neo-liberal Argentina of the s saw the that Tupac Amaru exists. You learn more about con-
emergence of / piqueteros / – groups of organized flicts you were only vaguely aware of. You realize
unemployed who demonstrated to gain the go- you are a son of the land. We have a great chal-
vernment’s attention. The first major social plan lenge now which is to come together with, meet
to help the unemployed was put together in . and grow stronger with Mapuches, Quom, Kollas,
It provided most poor families with dollars a Guaraníes, and every race of people. We must re-
month. By large-scale protests and unrest had cover our identity, our land, our languages. Native
abated by but there were still many/piquete- American have now woken up! Our time has
ros/groups asking the government for money. Even come!”
though some of these groups could show specific The spread of such ideas has been encouraged
advances for their people, most depended on a life- by the Bolivian president Evo Morales who became
line of public support for their survival and some the continent’s first Native American head of state.
found their power ebbing away as members started In a recent meeting with different ethnic groups,
to find jobs. Nothing of this kind has happened to Milagro Sala expressed a feeling that is growing
Tupac Amaru with its close cultural affiliation to across the Andean region, “They wanted to divide
northern Kollas. us, but we are showing them that we are closer
than ever. They could not conquer us. Comrade Evo
Native Americans Morales shows us the strength that lies in us. We
follow his example”.
Until the last major economic crisis in , Argen-
tina had considered itself as the most “European” Avoiding isolation
country in Latin America in a self-understanding
that originated in the th century when hundreds The Tupac Amaru position is not based in a strategy
of thousands of Europeans arrived in the country in of political or social isolation. Milagro Sala is part
search of a better life. The rich owners of the “estan- of one of the two trade unions federations of Ar-
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gentina, the left-leaning Central de los Trabajadores dity exports did governments start to think about
Argentinos (CTA). She has an extremely fluent rela- acting in an autonomous way and introduce speci-
tionship with the most prominent political and fic policies to combat poverty, like the dollar per
social leaders in the country. Recently she appeared child monthly benefit for all unemployed families.
at the National Congress in support of the hetero- Tupac Amaru acts against a further deficiency in
dox economist Mercedes Marcó del Pont as presi- Argentina which is particularly notable in its nort-
dent of the Central Bank of Argentina. hern region – the lack of state investment in infra-
This woman, who was abandoned as a baby in a structure and basic services. “If we exist as a social
cardboard box by her parents, has become a true organization is because the politicians got it
leader by empowering her own people. For her wrong”, says Milagro Sala. Although the organiza-
power isn’t a matter of command and control but of tion flaunts “revolutionary” icons – Tupac Amaru II,
serving people’s needs and of going the extra mile. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and Eva Perón – at all its
For example, a few weeks ago she had a meeting public demonstrations, causing fear and distrust
with Science and Technology Minister, Lino Barañao, among conservative political leaders, its slogans are
to talk about funding a Center of Innovative Tech- far from subversive. “Who are we?” shouts Milagro
nologies in new form of government – Tupac Sala. “Tupac Amaru”, members of the organization
partnership. roar in answer. “What do we want?” “Work, Edu-
Yet all the work of Milagro Sala and the Tupac cation and Health!”. They chant. In Argentina these
Amaru, as spectacular and impressive as it might are constitutional rights for every citizen. Even so,
be, unfolds against the backdrop of a series of deep many poor families have not been able to live
endemic fissures in Argentinean society. First and decent lives for generations now.
foremost there is the pattern of growing inequality
which reached record levels after more than The future
years of democratic governance. In the wake of the
state terrorism of the last dictatorship and follo- What could the right path into the future be for an
wing the break-up of the pseudo welfare state organization like Tupac Amaru? Should it replace
model which had prevailed since the s, politi- state policy-making in certain regions? Will it be
cians did extremely badly in some fields, especially possible to maintain coordinated activities (state
when it came to income distribution policies. Criti- funding and control and Tupac work)? Should
cized for adherence to IMF policies, Radical and Milagro Sala step into politics and open up her pro-
Peronist governments were not able to strengthen posals for the whole of Jujuy society? Is it a right
sovereign policies for the majority of the people. move when “social” organizations become “politi-
Only after the crash and the boom in commo- cal”?
This kind of strategy has been successfully pursued
in Bolivia by Evo Morales. As has Brazilian president
Lula Da Silva, once a local trade union leader but
now the most important politician of one of the
biggest countries in the world. The dilemma is
clear: how can an organization like Tupac Amaru
strengthen its capacities and extend its activities
beyond the northern provinces of Argentina
without becoming “just one of the others”, just
another political party competing among the rest?
As Milagro Sala explains, Tupac “does not compete
with the state, it pitches in where the state has
failed”. But what will happen if its own members
start to act politically, and canvas for votes and sup-
port far beyond Tupac’s present neighborhoods?
These are issues that have already affected president
Evo Morales in Bolivia. The situation is complicated
because these are not simple “non government
organizations”; their strength is based upon the
participation of people who have been neglected
by governments for generations, on the participa-
tion of poor people, Native Americans who only
recently – after the crisis of neo-liberal policies in
the s and with the help of highly talented and
original leaders – have started to feel that their
rights are real. It was with their support that Evo
Morales could take a crucial step and become a
political leader for the majority of Bolivia, leaving
representation of coca-growing farmers behind
him.
Milagro Sala remains a Native American from
Argentina’s northern region, only now she is a well-
known figure in Buenos Aires. While only traditio-
nal and right-wing political leaders feared her, she
could work patiently to counter the “violent” image
in which the big media groups portrayed her.
But can she get her message across to the broad
majority? The next few years may give us an ans-
wer. Until then, Milagro Sala will continue telling
everyone who asks her that she is just “the expres-
sion of the many who dreamt they could live a
better life by organizing themselves”.
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Helping People
to Help
Themselves
Interview by Astrid Ramge
Astrid Ramge was in charge of Corporate Alexander Rausch works as a consultant Ulrike Reinhard, founder of we-magazine.
Communications at MetaDesign in Berlin, and system coach. His motto is to help Trained as an economist. Since she left
Germanys leading Corporate Identiy and people to help themselves no matter if the university, she has been self-employed in
Branding agency, during the last ten years. problems are private or business related. various fields. she had her first
Now she is getting involved in various He serves a wide range of people within e-mail account at The Well. The past ten
projects concerning Web . and political, our society – unemployed poor families as years she has travelled the world extensi-
cultural and business changes. well as succesfull business people. vely, always looking for better ways to
think and act. She is deeply committed to
the network she inhabits.
we_special_/
In when you started your Initiative you spent two weeks in Benin and
you returned there again in . What are conditions of life like there and
what challenges do you meet in Benin?
Alexander >
Benin is one of the poorest countries on earth. The Schools in rural areas are few and far between so
cities are teeming with people who’ve escaped the only children who go to school are those whose
from the countryside in search of a better future. In parents can afford to pay bus fares. Or children who
the rural areas you find those typical African round can walk around km a day to school and back.
huts with straw roofs and village wells. There’s no This means that education is a luxury beyond the
kind of infrastructure. Then you have the smaller reach of most people. The level of education
towns most of which have an Internet Café and a throughout the country is very low and the majo-
power supply. The bigger villages like Aledjo have rity of people can neither read nor write.
at least a rudimentary infrastructure with a few Language is another big problem. A legacy of the
public telephones but electricity only for a number long period of French colonialization is that French
of houses or huts and then only at certain times of is the official language of the country. Yet the rural
day. Water comes in a bucket from a well. And areas and villages have a great number of very dif-
Internet access – when it’s there – is comparable to ferent dialects which often creates major language
the time of the first modems in Europe. barriers.
we_special_/
When you started your WeBenin project in , that this kind of option was a complete no-go. And
your networks here in Europe began collecting it’s for similar sorts of reasons that we’ve had to put
computers, cell phones and money to pass them other international projects which we’d have loved
on to people and initiatives in Benin. All this was to realize with the Internet on ice for the time being
under the slogan “Help people to help themselves”. – like exchanges with people in other poor parts
How has your projected shaped up to present and of the world.
what kind of experiences have you made? But cell phones are common in Benin as they
are throughout the whole of Africa. And with the
Alexander > various different networks operating in the regions,
people in Benin very often have several phones. We
Our vision is to network the people in the country had no difficulty in distributing our cell phones
so they can give one another mutual support and even though our phone campaign was only a drop
assistance and develop their OWN problem-solving in the ocean! But it’s still true that the cell phone in
skills and abilities, and their OWN ideas and pro- Africa does indeed offer a viable – and very often
jects which they can then share and pass on yet the only – alternative for implementing e.g. educa-
further. So that the country can awaken to new life tional projects.
from the inside and under its own steam, and so And we did have our first small successes. In Aledjo
that the people themselves can live autonomous we were able to set up a computer room where
lives of the kind they want, of the kinds that match children, young people and adults too could make
their own reality. their first steps towards computer proficiency. And
Even so, the lack of infrastructure I’ve just talked we could also establish the Internet to a certain
about meant that an Internet-based project of the extent through “mobile sticks”. We’re optimist that
type we’d originally thought about was realizable the Internet problem can be solved – development
only on a very small scale. Another factor we had continues apace and the sticks are only the begin-
to take into account was the very high illiteracy rate ning.
in the country which meant that any Internet work Another milestone was the support we were able
would have to be limited to videos or podcasts. to offer through our donations to the women’s
But videos and podcasts need fairly high data trans- organization ADRIA in Aledjo in setting up a regio-
mission rates – and they’re simply not around!! nal project. We bought a quantity of sacks of ferti-
All this wasn’t what we’d imagined and it certainly lizer which ADRIA then distributed in the regions
wasn’t what we’d been hoping for. It would have using a system of micro-loans. Another idea we had
been great, for instance, to set up some form was to transfer ADRIA’s micro-financing model to
of partnership between schools in Germany and the neighboring locality of Massi. So watch this
classes in Benin. But it was immediately obvious space!
Photo: Alexander Rausch
In line with our guiding principle “Help people to volunteers – which will force us either to become
help themselves” it’s paramount for us to get entangled in bureaucracy and take us association
people in Benin to provide mutual support and status or to strike out in new directions. This is a
assistance for one another. No matter whether it’s rather unfortunate situation for us but it does serve
the women of ADRIA who pass on their knowledge to show once more how thinking on both sides –
to other women, or individual computer experts both people in poor regions and aid volunteers –
like the “village admin” who develop their own still remains deeply colored by the dualism of
skills and abilities and train others, the important “You’re rich and have go to help us” versus “We
thing is to have a multiplication effect in the out- know what’s best for you”. We need to do a great
reach. deal more work to persuade people out of these
Generally speaking, our greatest challenge was and ruts.
still is education and building up networks and the
Internet in a country where the conditions on the Personal relations, personal initiatives and
ground aren’t particularly auspicious. Yet Benin personal relationships are very much at the
does have the great advantage of being a politically forefront of your project. Can’t that sometimes
stable country with a government which is very also be an impediment when you’re trying to
receptive to receiving outside help. In this sense we support people and trying to act in an equitable
see great opportunities for driving our project for- and impartial manner?
wards through continuous development of the
technology and partnerships with other projects Alexander >
which have dealt with similar sets of circumstances.
WE wanted to do something in Africa and we chose
Ulrike > Benin because that was where the father of Ulrike’
son Tim came from. So right from the beginning we
From the word go we didn’t want to adopt any “top had a personal connection with the country. And
down” approach and appear as the clever know-it- we also involved the family in Benin – Tim’s uncle
alls. What we wanted to do was to listen, to identify accompanied us for the most part of our travels.
the actual pressing problems and then motivate Then as now, what we wanted to do embody and
people to use their own steam and their own sense live out our principle “help people to help them-
of personal responsibility to help themselves. selves” through our own personal relations so that
In summer our initiative was able to place two the people on the ground would understand this
volunteers from Germany in Aledjo, two young spirit and carry it forward.
women who after graduating from high school took Obviously justice is a very difficult thing to guaran-
a year off for voluntary social work. I brought the tee but it’s got nothing to do with personal relation-
two of them to Aledjo last summer and helped them ships. The big NGOs can’t guarantee justice either.
get their bearings. They are now supporting Mme But our project had the vision that personal bonds
Abibai on the micro-credits program and working and network building would somehow result in
as German and French teachers at local the school. more justice. Because when a network widens,
Unfortunately it quickly became apparent here that more and more people have the chance to take
it’s not at all easy to familiarize volunteers and part in it so that ultimately everybody can benefit.
Europeans with just what “Help people to help Powered by self-responsibility and people’s own
themselves” actually involves. Even volunteers have actions, it will have an impact over and beyond
a very highly ingrained sense of security and a hier- local boundaries and inspire people to take their
archical way of thinking. So, on their own initiative, own futures in their hands. Established NGOs often
these two young women sought out the local export their own view of things with what they
branch of the German Development Service (DED) believe are the proper courses of action to be taken.
in an effort, as it were, to get the official blessing WE on the other hand want to get to know the per-
and authorization on their current positions. This sonal connections, the individual worlds in which
was a move that we certainly hadn’t planned for people live, and work from inside to motivate them
and which will probably lead to the projects we’ve to autonomous action.
started in Aledjo being staffed in future by DED
What have you learnt about the needs of people
in Benin? In the light of your present experience,
what is the best way to support them?
Ulrike >
And it is important – even if it’s very hard when you ting in the region. The idea is to start with a group
look into the empty faces of the poorest of the poor of about women in Aledjo and to work out a way
as an affluent European – it’s important to say to with them how they can best teach the other inha-
them “We haven’t got any handouts for you. You bitants of their villages to read and write.
have to do it by yourselves – and you can do it!”
That’s the only way we’re going to make a perma- Do you have any connections now to similar
nent change for the better! projects in other countries?
the km to the next village, it’s easy to see what didn’t just ask for donations, they also spread the
kind of benefits such a system would bring with it. news about us and this attracted more and more
Both Winneba and Nigeria too – in places where new “helpers” to swell our ranks. Ulrike too has had
these NICs are now part of everyday life – have seen a lot of instantaneous support and feedback per
a considerable rise in the living standards of the Twitter from Los Angeles and other parts of the
stakeholders in terms of educational level and world. To keep it short, this is the first time that I’ve
income. really understood the network principle on such a
huge scale and I’ve really “caught the bug”. Network
People everywhere are now seizing initiatives communication is ultimately the very best means of
off the beaten track and fighting for a better and helping people and of hopefully creating a better
more livable world. There’s an uprising among world.
the culturally creative. Would you label your- I always used to be aware that I myself bore sole
selves as such? responsibility for the kind of life I wanted to lead.
Webenin has now shown me that we can reach the
And do you see any signs of an emerging new whole world with the Internet and that by working
trend or movement comparable with the environ- together in networks we can slowly but surely take
mental movement? more control over what our lives should look like.
The opportunities it offers are breathtaking! Many
Ulrike > many people are now using them and their num-
bers are continually growing. Since Benin, all my
I don’t like being put in boxes! But I do indeed think thinking is along the “open tracks” of self-organi-
that you can speak of the formation of a movement zation, networks, the global village. So WeBenin
that bypasses the traditional channels of develop- has changed my life as a whole by changing my way
ment aid. In my view it’s exactly the same pheno- of thinking. It’s a wonderful feeling even though it
menon we can see in politics, education or in enter- does give you a very stark view of the degree of
prises: if something can’t make a breakthrough in (personal) responsibility you bear for the whole!
its proper system or just takes an incredibly amount
of time about it, it goes ahead and builds its own
system. And that’s much easier to do nowadays
than it was years ago, thanks in great part to the
advent of the Internet. On the one hand having
access to the Internet means that people can now
clearly see and hear those previously unknown and
“oh-so-remote places”, while on the other new
media also enable the rapid and effective networ-
king of all those who want to get active.
Alexander >