... was seven miles return trip, in gravelly sand, on an incline, in 100 degrees heat, with the youngsters resting next to me on the trail back disturbing a rattler ...
.... but this view of The Colorado River made it all worth while.
The title of this post is quoted from Ivan Illich by John Connell in a great blog post on Scottish education. His post has double relevance for me having just had a board meeting for School Of Everything in which the split between teachers and students came up and it also chimes with my previous lengthy post.
I really like the word conviviality. I am going to use it more often and will rush off to read Illich's book!
Dennis Howlett picks me up on a few things in a recent blog post and although I commented briefly there I wanted to give a more considered, and I am afraid lengthy, response to the points he makes.
I have to say I found the post slightly confusing as Dennis often starts a paragraph saying my arguments are flawed then ends it appearing to agree with me. However, at risk of putting words into is mouth as to some degree he did with me, the main gist of Dennis's concerns appear to be the use of the word social in a business context and the advocacy of social tools spilling into ideology and revolutionary zeal.
To take the social thing first I believe it is a mistake to see social as anti-business. I have said before many times that businesses run on relationships. Relationships between their staff and with their customers. Successful businessmen and successful businesses understand the value of these relationships and the fact that they are built on social interchange of one form or another. If this is true and if you believe, as I do, that social computing enhances and extends the ability to form relationships through social exchange then surely it is intensely business focussed and key to future success.
This leads on to the second point about use of the word "revolutionary" and an inclination to politicize the use of social media in business. The paragraph Dennis quotes from me was, ironically, originally intended to warn against utopian viewpoints and dogmatic intolerance and as I said in the comment on his post I believe that most of the motivation for getting involved in social computing in business is individual, pragmatic and if anything apolitical.
It appears that Dennis assumes that I see social media and its revolutionary impact as being bottom up. This is not the case. Middle and senior managers have as much need as anyone else to be able to communicate effectively, understand and be understood, and establish effective relationships with other managers and their staff. I have held both middle and senior posts at the BBC and fully understand the need to "get things done" and meet business targets. What I am now passionate about is an exciting and more effective way of determining and ultimately achieving those business goals. If I use the word revolutionary it is with the intention of conveying the degree of change in how businesses run rather than any sort of "up the workers" zeal.
However this doesn't mean that that there is no meaning behind what is happening at the moment and this is why I am reading so much about history, politics. philosophy and a whole host of related topics. My current reading Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin is, I believe, relevant to the current discussion. Kropotkin's main point is that our understanding of Darwin's ideas of competition and survival of the fittest are fundamental to many of our assumptions about society and used to justify all sorts of behaviour. Yet they were in fact mistaken. Any competitive advantage species enjoy comes from their ability to help each other and share what works in the face of the considerable adversity nature throws at them rather than some ruthless culling of their own weakest members. Even between species competition is more about the relative ability to survive than it is about killing the opposition.
Dennis asks his readers to notice language and I particularly noticed his use of the phrase "hard nosed business person" as someone to whom my own use of language wouldn't appeal. While I agree with Dennis that business has, mostly, moved on from the extremes of Taylorism and rigid command and control there is a new, shiny, corporate, alpha-male form of "business-like" that is equally unattractive and ineffective. I have seen time and time again "hard nosed" attitudes squandering opportunity or causing expensive mistakes through the unwillingness to listen, a macho assumption of being right, and a callous disregard for customers and their feelings.
Not far below the surface of "hard nosed" business attitudes lurk Darwinian kill or be killed assumptions and yet if you, like me , share Kroptkin's idea that mutual aid is the greatest guarantee of success then some of the words like "love" and "passion" that seem to press Dennis's buttons make a lot more sense. The very next section of Mutual Aid that I read after reading Dennis's post contained the following quote:
Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is in turn, a powerful factor of further evolution.
If any "hard nosed business people" out there don't like talk of revolution try evolution. If by introducing social tools into organisational life we can allow for more robust, more honest and more effective conversations that accelerate our ability to learn from each other and treat each other with a little more compassion then I believe our businesses and institutions will have become more effective and productive.
Off tomorrow early for a longish trip to Vegas, Ljubljana and Norwich - no upward or downward progression implied.
Those missing my dulcet tones in my absence can listen to Hugh and The Rabbi Episode 4 to which I was kindly asked to contribute.
I know I shouldn't use this blog to rant but ....
When I transferred my line and calls to TalkTalk I opted for online billing when I filled in the original online form.
When I try to log in the system says it doesn't recognize my e-mail address.
They then keep sending me e-mails, to that very address, nagging me to do online billing.
When I call for the fourth time to try to get it sorted the automated system askes me to input my phone number.
When I eventually get through to a person the first thing he asks for is my phone number.
When I ask, politely, what the point was of keying it in when I now have to repeat it all to him he hangs up on me!
GrrrrThanks to a nudge from Alan Moore I am currently listening to Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich and thoroughly enjoying it. The book traces the history of street festivals, carnivals and other group activities that have been repressed and disapproved of by various regimes through the centuries but which continue to surface in new forms with each generation.
It occurred to me that Facebook, Twitter and all the other tools that people like to disparage as being silly are probably the latest attempt to express collective joy in the face of "grown up" resistance!
... and in his post announcing the news Loic used the memorable phrase
"Given the market price of a tweet" ....
And people worry about the word social!
;-)
Many moons a geek at the BBC used to try to wind me up by calling Macs Fisher Price computing. I used to wind him up by saying that I took that as a compliment as it meant well designed, easy to use and fun.
Several times now women who I barely know have seen me using my iPhone and come up to me saying they have one and how much they love it. Not just like it - LOVE it.
In the same inversion of it's possible sexist use I reckon the normally disparaging epithet "girlie" is high praise indeed for a bit of kit.
Geek & Poke thanks to Dave Snowden
Forester are predicting this huge spend on bringing web 2.0 to the enterprise. I find myself telling people more and more that if they are spending loads of money on this stuff they are almost certainly doing the wrong things.
If any businesses want help making Forester's prediction look silly they know where to find me .....
Shortly after I responded to Dave's comment on my previous post my aggregator pointed me to this very interesting and different take on use of the word social.
Having just come back from The Czech Republic, where I spent a lot of time thinking about its past under communism, and having just finished the section in Modern Times which deals with the various forms of totalitarianism shaping the world at the start of the second world war, I have been thinking a lot more about the risks of revolutionary and utopian thinking.
The ideologies of the thirties filled the vacuum left by the loss of faith in religions triggered by the thinking of Einstein and Freud and the destabilization of the old order speeded up by the impact of the first world war. I am constantly thinking about the similarily major changes happening now in how we see societies and relate to each other, partly brought about by the impact of the web on our ability to connect with and understand each other, and the risk of slipping into utopianism and our own dogmas. It is so important to me to try to learn the lessons of history as I play my own small part in avoiding some of John Gray's ever decreasing circles.
For me the bottom line is that without the web and blogging, sitting here in rural Buckinghamshire I would not have been able to re-publish Hugh's cartoon which would not have been read by two people in totally different parts of the world who also think hard about things that matter and we would not have been able to engage each other in trying to understand our world and make it a better place each in our own ways.
This is soooo why I love blogging.
I get frustrated when people in business turn their noses up at the word social and Hugh, as usual, nails it.
Now 26th and 27th of June not 5th and 6th as previously planned.
My appearance on BBC Breakfast this morning was at a different time from predicted and one or two people asked if there was an online copy so here you go.
And no I am not an "Internet Security Advisor" as the caption says. So much for editorial standards!
I am going to be on the BBC's Breakfast show at 0820 talking about the government's proposals to make social computing safer.
Wish me luck!
Overheard from our living room as we were all rushing to get out the house this morning:
Mother: "Stop mucking about in there"
Daughter: (sounding irritated) "I am not mucking about I am doing a handstand!"
I bet when Tom Reynolds started blogging he never imagined ending up being the inspiration for a radio play!
Congratulations Tom - when is the film deal going to happen then?
... but going to be in Vegas instead.
Walking to school with my daughter this morning I found myself whistling one of the great tunes from Club Penguin. I then envisaged a Life Of Brian moment when all the other parents in the playground might join in on the chorus.
Maybe one day.
Since we moved into our house sixteen years ago we have enjoyed the company of the wonderful old lady, Connie, who lived next door. She was a happy, optimistic, cheerful widow who had lived in her house since the 1940's.
Despite failing health over recent years Connie remained a model of how to maintain a cheerful disposition and proved daily that happiness is something you do rather than something you get. Many's the time we have found ourselves complaining about something or other and been pulled up short when we thought of how little Connie had in comparison and yet how rarely, if ever, she felt sorry for herself.
Sadly Connie passed away in hospital this morning. For such a small and understated person she will leave a remarkably large hole in our lives.
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