Society — Not Just a Few Individuals —Needs to "Get Smarter"

In the a recent Atlantic magazine (July / August, 2009) Jamais Cascio spins an entertaining but ultimately depressing variation on the enduring American myth of unbounded future greatness based on technological achievement.

The core of the idea is that people (some) will get smarter and smarter in the future and because of that, things will get better and better. Seemingly unassailable problems related to fossil fuel depletion global warming may vanish against the people who outsmart them.

I have nothing against smart people. Some of my best friends are smart. But smart people created the latest financial crisis and are probably cooking up the next catastrophe right now. Maybe they're so smart that they'd trick us out of our money (again). And why should these new savants deign to help those with lesser IQs? Orthodox economics assures us that it is rationale to maximize your return on investment. W. C. Fields echoed this sentiment when he advised us to "Never give a sucker an even break."

Research on intelligence doesn't support the claim that the great unsmartened mass of us will benefit from the accelerated smartness of the few. Raymond S. Nickerson in his chapter "Teaching Reasoning" reminds us that "Although high intelligence is an asset for good reasoning, it is not a guarantee of it. It does not, for example, ensure that those who have it will be immune to the foibles, such as a my-side bias in argument production, that afflict less gifted mortals (Perkins, Farady, & Bushey, 1991). More generally, high intelligence does not ensure that those who have it will hold only well-justified beliefs (Sokal & Bricmont, 1998)." And in a recent New Scientist article (October 31, 2009), "It's How You Use it That Counts" by Michael Bond, high IQ doesn't correlate with the ability to avoid "some common traps of intuitive thinking" or the ability to make good decisions. Bond also points out that IQ tells us nothing about what a person chooses to focus his or her sharper intellect on.

Unfortunately Cascio's paean to smartness diverts society's attention from our deepest problems and how to address them effectively. That we can make little headway against shared problems without broad social deliberation and collaboration. Although alleviating our problems may require smart people (probably lots of them), our problems won't be solved solely by them. Societal problems must be acknowledged by all of society or at least big portions of it. This is the promise — that we ignore at our own peril — of democracy.

I'd love to see Cascio turn his attention to the more interesting, more challenging, and more useful task, of building collective intelligence. To continue to celebrate and focus our attention on building the resources and capabilities of the privileged few at the expense of the many is folly.

Liberating Voices at Not a Number

There was a smallish reading and reception for Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revoltion at Not a Number in Wallingford. Their motto is "Disturbing the Comfortable and Comforting the Disturbed." Although it was raining cats and dogs (literally!) there was a good turnout. Pattern authors Ken Gillgren and Alan Borning were there and we expect a few more at the next event — which is planned for September 24.
(out of focus photograph by Zoe Schuler)

The Public Sphere Guide

Andy Oram has suggested what looks like a very promising effort: The Public Sphere Guide.

From their website: Facilitating and advancing the study of the transformations of the public sphere to enable its renewal – this is the purpose of this Public Sphere Guide, seeking to create a map of this fragmented interdisciplinary field of study. Co-sponsored by NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, this beta version is intended to expand incrementally over time. The Public Sphere Guide serves as a research guide and as a teaching guide as well as a resource for the renewal of the public sphere. At the same time, it also serves as a guide to the SSRC’s public sphere program area. The guide is linked to and receives input from the online essay forum Transformations of the Public Sphere. For more information, see the About page.

Comments and suggestions are welcome at publicsphereguide@ssrc.org. Sign up for e-mail updates here in the sidebar of the related essay forum. The past and current SSRC programs in the public sphere program area are listed here.

National Initiative for Social Participation

Aldo de Moor reminded the community informatics research list that, "An important development in the U.S. is the National Initiative for Social Participation. A group of ICT/IS/... researchers is outlining a policy agenda and are in touch with the Obama administration. Who knows where this will lead? I would urge members of this list to get involved, we cannot afford to lose this window of opportunity as a community informatics-community!"

http://iparticipate.wikispaces.com/

>From the motivating statement:

"The benefits of social media participation are well understood by Obama's staff -- during the campaign they engaged four million donors and volunteers. Replicating their success a thousand times might promote many of President Obama's goals. To accomplish that a National Initiative for Social Participation could stimulate effective collaborations in many professions, restore community social capital, and coordinate national service projects. The challenge is to understand what motivates participants, such as altruism, reputation, or community service. Researchers would have to develop fresh strategies that increased the conversion rates from readers to contributors from the currently typical 100 to 1 to much higher rates. Getting contributors to collaborate for ambitious efforts and become leaders or mentors are further challenges. Coping with legitimate dangers such as privacy violations, misguided rumors, malicious vandalism, and infrastructure destruction or overload all demand careful planning and testing of potential solutions."

The white paper:

http://iparticipate.wikispaces.com/file/view/NISP+White+Paper+-+6-02-09.pdf

Facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70985741334

Slides finally available

I finally posted my slide show from the International School for Digital Transformation earlier this summer in Porto, Portugal. Although this is pretty long it should be useful in explaining how I'm thinking about the concept.

It's Official! 2009 is the International Year of Civic Intelligence

It's not really official, but isn't it a great idea?

Civic Intelligence and the Election

Although his face-to-face communication skills appear to be in good working order, Barack Obama is likely to become known as America's first "digital president." From a civic intelligence perspective I think the most important question to ask is "What will happen to the substantial electronic networks that were created in support of his campaign?" That would help us ascertain whether there are major long-term changes in democracy as it’s practiced as opposed to changes in how election campaigns are conducted. According to Howard Fineman (Newsweek, October 25, 2008), the president-elect has "3.1 million contributors, 5 million volunteers, 2.2 million supporters on his main Facebook page, 800,000 on his MySpace page and perhaps a million more names on Obama's own campaign Web site." Will these networks (and numerous others) be the fount of new energy and ideas as expressed by Robert Putnam when he stated that, "Networks of civic engagement embody past success at collaboration which can serve as a cultural template for future collaboration?" Alternatively, will they act robotically solely to do Obama's bidding (see below) or will they merely wither away due to inattention, lack of interest, or withdrawal of resources.

Rush Limbaugh, the icon of U.S. talk radio, the foundation of communicative power on the right, in his dismissive retort to Obama's acceptance speech the day after the election, assured his listeners that the robotic possibility was an inevitability. Rather than having any voice (or mind) of their own, the people involved in the networks, would serve exclusively as shock troops obediently pursuing Obama's agenda and disciplining non-cooperative legislators — democratic ones included.

I'd guess that MoveOn and other groups will retain their independence, sometimes in sync and sometimes in defiance to Obama. It's clear that his campaign and his supporters used the Internet and other ICT more effectively than any political campaign in the US, if not the world. His rhetoric of an engaged citizenry, for example, asking Americans "to join in the work of remaking this nation" in his election night acceptance speech, suggests that he will not try to shut these networks down or coerce them to support his actions. But we shall see…

There remains the very important question of what citizens (people of all countries) can do to make sure that the networks are engaged and progressive and inclusive. This, to me, is exactly where rhetoric and reality may or may not come together. It's my belief that if people don't choose to actively shape these networks, then the hope for the abiding civic intelligence that we need for the future will fade.

Although the Internet helped raise standards and increased citizen engagement in many ways in this campaign ("truth squads", access to polling information, issue networks, voting irregularity hotlines, do-it-yourself videos, citizen journalism, etc. etc.), it's worth mentioning that the Internet helped usher in a type of back-alley whispering campaign, a furtive "people power" that was often xenophobic, racist, paranoid, and violent. Ken Silverstein writing in Harpers ("Useful Amateurs — How the smearing of Barack Obama got crowd-sourced," Nov 2008) made the point when he stated that "In the sheer numbers of scurrilous charges leveled and of individuals involved in advancing these charges, it seems safe to describe the current smear campaign against Barack Obama as being unparalleled in scope." While the U.S. has always had its fringe elements, the recent campaign seemed to encourage the degradation of civic intelligence in some corners of the American electorate, and the Internet, certain parts of it at least, helped facilitate that.

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Meanwhile, Obama's technology policy as reflected on his web site (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/) certainly reflects an appreciation for the power of the Internet that other politicians haven't recognized or capitalized on. The policy statement has six main points (below) — most of them I assume would be necessary for an increase in civic intelligence.

* Ensure an open Internet.
* Create a transparent and connected democracy.
* Encourage a modern communications infrastructure.
* Prepare all of our children for a 21st century economy.
* Improve America's competitiveness.
* Employ science and technology to solve our nation's most pressing problems.

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And here just a few days after the election is a civic site that's promoting public tech policy: http://www.obamacto.org/