Change the world

Stephen Collins posting about the weaknesses of industrial-style education in Australia not only puts a strong case about the value of Web 2.0 participation and connection, it is also a great example of social media practice. Written from the perspective of a parent and a consultant in social media/social networking, the posting blends leading knowledge in the field with links to referenced thinkers and facts, and life-sharing content. My focus here is on the positive aspects of the net – like society offline, online content and experience has it’s dark side and content that is offensive. It’s not all good news. But I digress, since it’s the positives from online collaboration & creativity that is driving social and economic change.

Stephen referred to his own daughter’s experiences at school and online as well as those of other students and peers. This video (inserted in Stephen’s posting) was produced by students of Professor Michael Wesch’s digital ethnography program at Kansas State Uni.

One of the most salient points was that kids learn faster in collaborative networks that “foster creativity, innovation, big thinking and independence of viewpoint”. That practice stands in sad contrast to an educational system mired in industrial age thinking that is designed to produce compliant workers where collaboration and creative thinking are discouraged.

However, it was Stephen’s reference to a time prior to the industrial revolution (when people  last engaged in conversation, collaboration and communication of the kind experienced today through the ‘global village’ nature of Web 2.0) that takes me to the second inspiring piece that I experienced over the last week: Douglas Rushkoff’s Don’t change yourself, change the world (HT Tony Walker).

I was really so happy to hear what Douglas said in his 56th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, particularly his description of underlying factors driving social behaviour as “problems of programming’ that date back to the Renaissance. The social rot that came about around 600 years ago, and which evolved over time to be manifest now in the global economic meltdown, stemmed from a centralisation of power, values and idea creation.

The thing that struck me most was that; through the individual becoming the primary economic agent – through division of labour, specialisation, mass production to mass media – the ideology of individualism that evolved actually came from the renaissance. Oh, the blog posts I’ve put up on this subject about the fragmentation of society so evident in suburban life, in working life, in global commerce and in passive one-to-many entertainment & media targeted at the individual! Well, it all came together in Douglas Rushkoff’s speech. Good on ya Doug!

So the way forward – whether it’s transforming education or going the whole hog and transforming the world – is to be connected with others in collaboration, creativity and independence of viewpoint. The networked citizen is the bottom-up approach driving change to overturn the rot that set in so long ago. The Participative Web is reprogramming social action.