....a live, uncut and subjective take on the session

participants: Howard Rheingold and Paul Saffo

immoderator: Lucy Bernholz

Lucy: Howard - you've written a lot about the effect of technologies on human behavior and social change - and we just heard Angela Blackwel talk about the Covenant with Black America - what does this have to do with technology?

Howard: Technology is the enabler.  Combination of networks, cooperation, emergent strategies has given people the ability to move laterally throughout the world.

Lucy: Paul - what are your thoughts about rleationships and changing technologies?

Paul: We invent our technologies and use our technolgies to reinvent ourselves.

Lucy: What's changing next - big areas of likely disruption?

Howard:

    * Youth demonstrations around immigration that were organized through MySpace.  A good example that the medium is there and becomes a conduit for social action.

    * SARS epidemic - text messaging kept the Chinese government from keeping a lid on it

    * The gist - we're in the early stages of a variety of technologies enabling quick and productive action and change

Paul - take "information" and "IT" out of your vocabulary.  This is about media.  It parallels a moment when the advent of television triggered an explosion in mass media.  This time it's personal media.  Profoundly different from mass media.  Personal media - you get to answer back - you're required to answer back.  This is a huge, profound shift.

The big companies have figured this out.

Crowds may move fast, but the establishment moves faster.

The MySpace organized demos didn't have an impact on the immigration bills coming out of congress.

Lucy: What are the lessons that come out of the Los Angeles immigration/youth demonstrations?

Howard: Kids teach each other how to use technologies - but they're not going to teach each other about the history of democracy and the nature/potential of their ability to participate.  The next step is to connect young people with the history of social action. 

Lucy: How do we make a sustainable, long term approach to catch up with the establishment.

Paul:  This is a time to think about the world you want your kids to live in 20 years from now.  We all have to become policy wonks because the biggest wonk is going to win.  We've got to be involved.

Howard:  I have to echo that.  The potiential of networked tech that is in people's hands is not necessarily going to be realized.  Who's going to control access to the technology and the intellectual property around it.  No one invented this opportunity - it's an intersection of the inventions created for different reasons.  An opportunity to connect young people with the possibilities for their future.  They know what fun they're having  on YouTube, MySpace, etc. - but they don't know that it's threatened.  We need to educate them.  Especially the ones who are under 25.  It's a great opportunity to awaken their political activism.  They have the impression that they don't have the power to enact change - and this doesn't have to be the case.

Paul: I'm a big believer in grassroots, people power - this is the time when we need something else.  The technology is important - and this means elites.  We don't have revolution without a small number of thought-leaders who are charismatic, political heroes - who can articulate vision.  We're fighting against attention span.  Unless you have articulate elites to help hold people's attention, it  will go nowhere.

(this seems to be counter to Angela Glover Blackwell's thoughts about the constiencies/communities leading the way and making their own voices heard without the mediation of leaders such as MLK)

We've heard the call for the essential need for education - but how and who? 

Lucy: Leadership - who are the new kinds of leaders - where will they emerge? 

Howard: Maybe they're not the charismatic leaders.  They're the quiet ones like Linus Torvald and Jimmy Wales.  Who empower other people to do the work/make the change - acknowledging that they can't do this.  Jimmy Wales spends most of his time on the road meeting with local groups of Wikipedians - and totally puts his trust in that community.  The ability to identify a community that can take advantage of these platforms is key.  What other platforms are there?  Can you go out and empower theses communities.  You can't have completely collective decision-making - but the residue of hierarchy can be small. 

[this is taking us back to the history of grassroots organizing that started with the wobblies, the labor movement, continuing with the anti-war protests of the 60's and then the Christian Right]

Paul:  Listen to the medium carefully and think about what it wants to be. 

[most of us don't listen - it's hard to find time - we act, we do, we make and react]

Lucy: "the power of the whisperer" and "residual hierarchy" - we'll see if these terms last through the conference.

Paul: Based on the history of revolutionary technologies - from airplanes to television - it's not a safe bet that in the long run this is going to serve the higher causes.  Is the wasteland going to expand?

Howard:  I'm not really an optimist - how can you look at history and be an optimist - but you have to move beyond the nihilism.  There is a huge potential in the power of these tools - it' pays to be skeptical but it's important to be hopeful and mobilize that hope before it's too late.

[read Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8096) for a counter perspective - and kind of relief.  I'm thinking about sustaining and expanding our communities' ability to imagine the possibility of change.]

I'm thinkinging about the fundamental power of storytelling - and the opportunities for the more people to tell their stories and for tremendous distribution of these stories.  Along with the contextualization and juxtaposition of these stories.  And, with mashups and interactivity - the potential to participate in the continuation of the stories.  The challenge to all of this is who has access to the tools.  The more inclusive the more diverse the stories and then the power for change If three people read/watch/participate in a story.  Again, going back to censorship, intellectual property and access as the core

General comments from audience questions:

Paul: The watchword here is constant vigilance.  Don't drop your guard......Corporate execs and beauracrats are not faceless - they're people with families and

Howard:

The panopticon - in general there are no technologies that spread a large amount of light that don't also have very large shadows.

Somehow we have to elect political leaders who go back to the initial ideas that this country was founded on - the fear of authority/tyranny and the mistrust of government.

Not all the emerging technolgies are connected to the internet - e.g. face recognition.  It's going to happen - but it's not too late to do something about this.

Paul:  We're at war.  When Americans are at war our collective IQ drops about 30 points......I don't think you're going to be able to slow, much less reverse, this until the war ends.

Howard: The mobile phone is the real means of access for the developing world.  SMS is a deceptively powerful tool...... Subsistence farmers throughout histories have been screwed by the middlemen who have access to information.  This simple technology give them the direct access to information.

If we need any kind of leadership, we need someone who can start turning away from the polarizing arguments.

We need a neutral point of view - wikipedia is an example - can we do it locally - to have real discussion across ideology. 

[could the presenation/representation of a multiplicity of compelling views and stories undercuts the polarization?]

Something about the tone of this conversation is bringing out my optimistic side, when I typically play the cynic at conferences and public discussions.  Just as I type this, Howard, responding to an audience member, talks about the role of artists - envision the world I new ways and share the vision with people.   Many artists are the vanguard of cross-disciplinarity, community organizing, local/global engagement, civic dialogue, youth education.  The language of these new technolgies has long been the language of community-centered artists - and there are numerous toolkits and case studies to explore. 

[check out Community Arts Network (http://communityarts.net/) and read Nicholas Bourriaud on Relational Aesthetics (http://place.unm.edu/service_relational_art.html.)]

Wrap up comments - looking at the future:

Paul: most technologies take 20 years to become an overnight success.  The things to watch in the next five years  are the projects folks have dismissed in the last 15 years.

Howard:

I'm working on two things

1) catalyzing and understanding collective action across disciplines

2) creating a public resource for thoes who want to educate youth about the ideas/importance of participatory media