Here’s something fun I invite you all to explore and join in with if you are so moved: http://ow.ly/11y6A

These short URLs tell you next to nothing so I’ll offer a little context.

There’s a group of people I know convened together in open space in the cause of the “metacurrency project (MCP)” … their cause is heavily shaped by the question of play. There are technical dimensions to their work, but their work is aimed at making new things possible for humanity. If I could, I’d be with them now. I’m with them in spirit.

One quick point of entry to their world view (and my own) is in the contrast between Scarcity and Abundance as dominant meme. This is about the attitude in which we engage each other more than about how many resources their are in the world at any given moment. (It’s also a question of not being dominated by this contrast of scarcity and abundance.)

Even accepting some finitude, or relative finitude: as human’s in the application of intelligence we are meant to conduct ourselves in a stewardly manner towards life… that is to say, our behavior should be generative.

So, even though this group is in part engaged in a technical question – building software and protocol under the MCP effort – the larger challenges are social and ideational: how we might live together… opening the space not to offer a final answer, but to situate us in generative spaces of inquiry and infinite play… where the burdensome quality of tasks slip away and joy comes to the fore and where we collectively and selectively form responses and rules with a freedom to mutually adapt ourselves and the rules.

On the voicethreads platform you can add your own voice and your own vision.

From the pain come the dream
From the dream come the vision
From the vision come the people
From the people come the power
From this power come the change

Peter Gabriel (Fourteen Black Paintings)

Here’s the description of the session, join us if you can!

Networks of Collaboration and Service: Redesigning Work and Partnership

Tools and Networks abound. Our challenge is in working together effectively. What is missing from the tools and practices of the social benefit sector? What are the opportunities for coordination among and across networks afforded by a shift in perspective towards building for the commons? Catalytic Communities, a pioneer in the solutions ecology will be the starting point for a collaborative design session — building the tools and culture we need to grow a plurality of commons.

That’s the idea. This could be the theme of a conference all it’s own. We’ll see how it goes. We’ve only got one hour, but this is one of the questions that drives me in my work., Even if we just foster a little seriousness on the opportunities this frame evokes, we’ll be taking a step.

Together we can enumerate and provide links to an array of efforts that are disjointed, though worthy. They may have different levels of activity or may be at a relatively inactive state after prior peaks. Enumerating and evaluating these would be a useful task for us, too.

We’ve got an abundance of toolsets and tool providers as well … and so the special challenge to a sustainable effort and a thriving commons becomes more and more probable (it’s not just probable, it’s the situation we have tended towards, and the situation we’re in).

Consider each of these tools and possible community spaces as an attractor. People like us, are seeking community around the practice of community ICT, and if they don’t find it they rightly constitute it for themselves.

A somewhat active space functions as an attractor in these circumstances and from a certain perspective it makes a lot of sense to go with the tool that is present and functioning at some level versus duplicating efforts and dividing the field further.

The issue, as I see it is that the field has multiple attractors none of which are established quite with the field in mind. Someone who finally finds one of these attractors may be quite relieved and may embed themselves in the community (which may or may not satisfy them, or may have fallen into a trough of activity – and there is something valiant in seeking to fulfill the promise of our potential as a wider community in any of these contexts).

But we here, knowing of the many and disparate efforts are a bit weary at maintaining a presence in any number of such sites and communities. Here, even with this conversation we’re making choices where to post, and we have doubts about which is the most effective channel.

We also recognize that as new tools emerge, new community attractors will be constructed by those who either haven’t found the other attractors, or for whom the degree of community there was lacking.

As we make choices based on our history and preferences we’re going to keep fragmenting this field, and reacting to the fragmentation.

Since there are existing sites of community or potential community, which should serve as assets to our movement, we ought to reflect on the perspective of “Movement as Network” (a paper by Gideon Rosenblatt of ONE/NW) – a thought piece for the environmental movement that I read with our field of Community ICT in mind.

What do we do with these assets, these many sites of aggregation, these attractors? Should we establish higher expectations? Should we push them towards collaboration and coordination? Should we disrupt models that don’t align with our own vision of Community ICT? I’ve got my own answer to these, you may all guess.

I’m inviting you to a new mode of practice where we consciously reshape this network of communities and resources. We can take initial steps to get data and information flowing and where it should
not matter which of these sites you come to, you can get the full swath of information you need.

Think for a moment of the WISEREarth Index – could their organizational directory serve as an equivalent of an OpenSocial for the NGO/NPO sector? (Thinking more broadly here than Community ICT – any non-profit monitoring the online world and maintaining any sort of presence there – soon sees a multiple presence effect and has some very partial representation of themselves in many many places, some of their own initiative, and some a result of scraping and some as a result of friends propagating their presence. None of this is sustainable under the current regime of information flow.)

All of this sounds a bit extreme and ambitious … plenty of big ideas litter our sector and have diverted us from more humble work (and some have inspired us to achieve great things, no doubt).

Yet, we can start humbly in this, and we have. Enumerating these spaces, evaluating them and engaging them… starting this conversation is perhaps our own way of moving towards the movement as network attitude. It is for me.

MM

While thinking about poverty two points come immediately to mind. First, we live in a world of great abundance. Second, and not unrelated to the first – the impoverishment of our repertoire of ideas and options is something we must take seriously – our symbolic or cultural impoverishment.

We live in a world of great abundance. In the context of recent global financial news we’re prone to forget this. In the context of the many effects of poverty we are drawn in to the immensity of the gap we must surmount. I return again and again to the work of Amartya Sen – in questioning the distribution of resources. Hunger and want more often than not is about a breakdown in the distribution and exchange of needed resources and rarely a result of insufficient resources for populations. Greed gets in the way. People are unwilling to let their wealth flow. We have the wrong idea of what wealth is.

Material Impoverishment persists largely through a nefarious “Symbolic Impoverishment”. This does not mean that social justice (or injustice) is not an active factor. So much more is possible for us as individuals and collectively as a species than we generally recognize. We accept limited options in the face of difficult circumstances. We reinforce the imagery of limited options for others. We find ourselves goaded by urgency and compelled on tight time-frames. Sometimes we accept external limiting definitions of ourselves, our station, what we deserve. We are distracted from our connectedness and what we ow to each other. (Georg Simmel’s notion of the relative decline Subjective vs. Objective Culture is relevant to this question – and reframes the challenge as acutely modern.)

We must set the highest goals and pursue them diligently, steadily. So much human potential is squandered. Life is squandered. We’re more caught up in maintaining a status quo, or keeping up with the current than growing together.

We must ask what human dignity demands of us when we bear witness to poverty and human suffering.

My call to the world of social and civic entrepreneurs with whom I find myself in common cause: let us each pursuing the social good work ourselves one by one out of a job. That’s my vision for the not-for-profit and social entrepreneurs – successfully closing the books on as many causes as we can so we may turn to higher challenges with the full complement of human creative potential.

This is the great urgency I see. These are two compass points on the map I follow.

By: Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

The Free Geek concept is widespread – Portland Oregon the flagship – and well regarded in the Open Source world.

Free Geek Chicago is perhaps unique among Chicago computer recyclers/refurbishers in their endeavor to maximize the life of discarded computer components. Watch the video, let them speak for themselves. Then think about what you can do to further the causes that align under the Free Geek Chicago mission.

Free Geek Chicago needs your support. They need reliable streams of discarded computer equipment. They need us to get the word out. Bring in your old equipment, yes … but perhaps there is more that can be done – for example, you can inquire as to where and how your company’s equipment is handled. If it is picked up for recycling or refurbishing … look into how hard they work to keep the materials out of the waste stream. You may be surprised. Not all recyclers or refurbishers are equal. There are hidden costs to everything … the best way to keep equipment out of landfills foreign or domestic is to increase their useful lives. Such utility has three aspectswe should keep in mind – the functioning of the equipment, the functional (digital) literacy of the person seeking to make use of that equipment (and the harmony of their purposes) and not least – the community or network of support that bridges the physicality of the hardware and the human. This is Free Geek’s talent and m.o.

There’s so much more that I’d love to say. For the moment I just want to spread the positive media meme with the Free Geek Chicago story. They’ve done a great job with their video. I’d love to see the model expand throughout Chicago – or perhaps a network of practitioners around the Chicago Region who are in alignment with the FG values. With a steady supply of equipment perhaps the product range can be expanded … nodes for a wireless mesh network truly owned and run by the community, and media servers for NPOs or community groups – infrastructure for local community information and communication services – think Community Intranet!

We need to spark our collective imagination and share the vision. This is a path towards digital excellence in Chicago.

I’m pointing you to Sepp’s blog entry, but using that as a spring board to my own musings.

It’s better to give than to receive? We’ve heard that, and we can contemplate its meaning. We’ve also heard that there is nobility in receiving a gift well, with respect, humility, or better: generosity. We’re recipients of the gifts of nature, of life. How well have we received them? Receiving well involves stewardship – it involves valuing the act of generosity and the gift received.

We’ve been gifted a gift economy. Have we received it well? Two aspects of reception here … one is bound in attitude, relation and perception – the other in our stewardship as recipients.

When we hear about the gift economy, do we give it it’s proper due? When we receive from the greater gift economy, are we thankful enough to participate with generosity ourselves.

There are ways to receive with generosity, we should endeavor to live that way.

The metaphor of the mash-up is perfect for our vision. We want to bring together the talents and assets and interests and needs of Chicago — Chicago techies and community activists, NPOs and others ready to give back to the community and grow the network. Fundamentally, our perspective is that while NPOs are addressing deep needs in the communities they serve, our city and the neighborhoods and professions and trades are full of resources and talents that we have but to put together in new and exciting ways. This has been my credo for some time … this perspective informed the efforts of the Chicago Digital Access Alliance and our campaign for Digital Excellence (in the context of the Citywide Wireless Initiative that wound up stalling out).

We started off the evening with an invitation to everyone to step up and join us as co-convenors for this effort going forward… we all introduced ourselves to the group and then we sunk our teeth into our first big question about what Chicago Non-Profit’s really need.

That is an important question, to be sure, but I’ve reached the point where I want to start from our strengths and assets. We need to figure out how to share our skills and talents. We don’t have to start from a scarcity mindset.

More important than the answers to the question we started with, or any alternative positive framing I might offer, is the question of conversation and story, and widening the circle of participants. What questions do we have to ask? What are the big questions that will open some real conversation for Chicago? Who do we address the big questions to? Can we ask ourselves the really hard questions?

For myself – the issue of new social technologies leaves me rather ambivalent. We have to start from our purposes, and not from the faddish new tools. We have to get clear about what we want for our city. Let our technology choices and investments stem from that vision.

I’ve meant to come back to this for some time. Adventitiously, the Upward Spiral has been coming up a lot lately. This piece is a kind of parable on Life and Ecology.