Below you will find an essay outlining the new social contract. In the spirit of networked accountability, we ask for your comments, questions, and criticism. In particular:
- Do you agree with the substance of our argument? What could strengthen it?
- What concrete examples could we add to ground the essay?
- As we work to improve this, in which venues should we consider sharing it? (magazine, blogs, conferences)
Thank you for your input. You can download the file here.
–Jacob Harold and Lee Drutman
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1 comment
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March 2, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Ken White
First, I found it fascinating and well-written. I agree with much of what you lay out, although I am concerned that a progressive march forward into the future may not be inevitable. I suspect many people and organizations do not want to live in the kind of world you envision, and will put up quite a fight if their existing modes of being are threatened. I am with you in hoping that our social order rises to meet the challenges of our time–in fact, all of my work has been predicated on this as well. I just hope we’re right…and also prepared for the difficulty of helping our visions turn into reality.
Second, I wondered if the “ecosystem” that you envision would consist *solely* of institutions who met the four conditions? Although it’s unwise to simply transpose a metaphor, most natural ecosystems have a number of quite different life forms within them. So also do most human political/social/economic systems. Would it be possible that some important niches/roles in the 2.0 ecosystem would be left unfilled (or not filled efficiently) if all institutions had to meet each of those four conditions?
Third, it seems to me there’s an important question left hanging in the definition of Contract 2.0. If 1.0 assumes that citizens give up some rights to large institutions in exchange for security and stability, then in 2.0, who gives up what to whom in exchange for what? For example, what do people and/or communities “own” by “natural right” that they can then exchange with institutions? We know that in 1.0 we give up some liberty for the security of government, and some labor for the security of jobs, etc. What is the nature of the transaction in 2.0? What do people and communities have that institutions want (beyond the 1.0 bargains), and what do those institutions want in return (in exchange for following the four conditions?). There might be some clues about this in the world already in the way many of us give away privacy and information (through commercial transactions, social networking, etc.) in exchange for cool products and services. But I wonder how deeply any of us have really thought about the kind of grand bargain we want to make…or are making already unwittingly. This seems like an area deserving of more thought.
Fourth, as I read your paper, I heard a lot of echoes of the work of Dee Hock, the founder (for better or worse!) of the VISA credit card network. Although VISA has since gone very far away from the model, Dee’s original (successful) model was based on the ability to exchange value (in the form of information) among any party, any where. To do that required (in a slightly different form) 3 of the 4 conditions you outline in your paper, as well “low cost of information,” low cost of collaboration,” and “low barriers to entry.”
Three disclaimers:
1. VISA is no longer anything like this.
2. Dee’s vision was mostly about governance forms, not necessarily how to implement them. VISA might have succeeded (or not) using a very different model.
3. I was the Managing Director of the Chaordic Commons (www.chaordic.org),which promoted Dee’s ideas (it has basically devolved, having accomplished as much of its purpose as it could).
Anyway, here’s what Dee said way back in 1998:
We have since structured society in accordance with that belief, thinking that with ever more reductionist scientific knowledge, ever more specialization, ever more technology, ever more law and regulation, ever more hierarchical command and control, we could engineer organizations in which to pull levers at one place and get a precise results at another and know with certainty which lever to pull for which result — never mind that human beings must be made to behave as cogs and wheels in the process.
For more than two centuries, we have been engineering those institutions and pulling the levers. Rarely, very rarely, have we gotten the expected result. What we have gotten is painfully apparent; obscene maldistribution of wealth and power, collapsing societies and a crumbling biosphere.
To understand fully what is happening requires deeper diagnosis. Consider the brief history of a single capacity: The capacity to receive, store, utilize, transform and transmit information (CRUSTTI). Not from the misconception of information as data, but from Gregory Bateson’s reflection that, “information is a difference that makes a difference.” If you can’t differentiate something, or if you do differentiate it and it makes no difference, it’s just noise. As we do so, keep in mind three characteristics of information: First: it is unbounded–it cannot be contained. Second: it propagates–when transmitted, it is no loss to the source, yet is gain to the recipient. Third: it breeds–when impregnated with other information it creates new information….The fascinating thing is that the greater the capacity to receive, store, utilize, transform and transmit information, the more diverse and complex the entity.
And finally, fifth, your reference at the end to Yeats and widening gyres reminded me of a Rilke poem….
I live my life in widening gyres
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last
but that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.
Can’t help it–I was an English major!