Conches

A dialog with a friend

I am in the process of reading Anathem by NeaI Stephenson recently so I have been itchin' for a socratic dialog. I got one in a long conversation the other day with a friend on my facebook profile.  The topic was radical transparency.  I really enjoy thinking things through this way and I wish there were more opportunities.

 Steve Wright I do not believe that there are situations where information should be withheld. "Should" is the critical word. via Twitter - 11:45am

 Jeannie Pettigrew Whelan at 2:49pm December 30

Hmm. I don't think I believe you.

 Steve Wright at 5:12pm December 30

Really? Why?

 Jeannie Pettigrew Whelan at 9:34pm December 30

Well, I can think of several scenarios when information should be withheld...in order to preserve peace and balance. Maybe it's best to withold, but not make a big deal out of it.

Are you saying you are in favor of transparency?

 Steve Wright at 8:28am December 31

I am definitely in favor of transparency. We have earned the world we are in today by assuming the privilege of withholding information. The assumption that I can create peace and balance by choose what information to withhold is mostly hubris. We can't have balance with transparency. Additionally, the conceit that allows us to withhold information actually stunts our development. We can advance as a world only if we provide the information that will catalyze new insight.

 Jeannie Pettigrew Whelan at 10:04am December 31

Can you/do you apply this in your personal life as well? I have some specific examples in mind that are too personal to post here..If I were to divulge information that I know that others have been "shielded" from, it would cause pain, disappointment, sorrow. And it would all be for "transparency." So what?

Radical Transparency

I used to be a high school teacher.  Nine years in the classroom and in the front office working with disenfranchised youth. There was only one thing nearly universally abhorred by every young person I have ever met, censorship. I spent a lot of my time as an educator making the case for nuance, that there are occasions where censoring or withholding information is necessary. 

In the way of the world, I have come full circle. I am a nearly unyielding advocate for radical transparency. With radical transparency we would not be at war in Iraq.  With radical transparency our economy would not have been floated by imaginary value where investment is more like gambling. 

In 2005 Harold Pinter was given the Nobel Prize for Literature. He just died on Christmas eve, 2008. There are two quotations from that speech that add the nuance that is necessary to this discussion.

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

A misunderstanding that I struggle to overcome is that transparency does not equal truth telling. The assumption that I, or anyone, hold the truth and the hubris to assume that I can calculate with any certainty the conditions under which that truth is to be withheld is absurd.  As Pinter says above, there is no truth, no reality.  I believe the best we can do is to aggregate our collective experience and understanding.  Only with radical transparency can this aggregation divine what may be real or true.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us, the dignity of man.

    - Harold Pinter Dec 7th, 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech

Only with radical transparency can we hope to respond to this challenge.

Change.org Idea: Limit Media Consolidation

At the urging of Arthur Codington, via a post on Facebook, I recently commented on a Change.org idea.

Limit Media Consolidation

We need more voices in the media. Establish policies that limit the number of radio/tv stations one company can own. Create incentives that give voice to perspectives we're not currently hearing in the mainstream media.

My comment is attached here (and on change.org), please go over to the change.org idea to post yours

Possibility

Benjamin Zander and Roz gave me an A. The single condition was that I project myself in to a better future and understand my contribution to that future.  Who am I not to be worthy of that A.  Dare I aspire to be graced with the responsibility to lead, to declare an A for others.  I project myself to be more than an obstacle, not the stick nor the carrot. The greatest difficulty is that I can only be I while owning that it's not about me.  I can only be I and so much more than me is what is needed. 

Benjamin Zander, Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, believes in a world of possibility, possibility as opposed to scarcity, scarcity being the world of winners and losers, a world where judgment oppresses.  In order to understand a world of possibility, to live in the  abundance of potential, Benjamin Zander assigns his students to project themselves in to the future, a future where they have earned the praise that he gave to them the moment they met.  They do this with a letter, a letter from themselves as they stand in the future.  Roz, Benjamin's partner, help him craft this scheme.

So, Benjamin and Roz, here is the future in which I stand....

I have not sacrificed rigor.  I have not sacrificed rigor as evidenced by the reality of a better world. I have engaged deeply with love and wonder (Marian Bantjes) and I have not sacrificed rigor.  I got the answers right to questions that I didn't know we had to problems that I knew we could not solve. 

I found a way to value love.  Not with a cash equivalent but with Love.  As art is distinguishable from skill or artifice, as love is distinguishable from affinity or choice, I found a way to understand Love and its expression, as valuable.  Actually, exchangeably, cognitively valuable.

I had the courage to accept the grace of responsibility.  A responsibility to not claim my space, to not declare a truth, to not decide.  It was not me but I played a role. I can only be I and I was not the answer.  That was difficult to own. I did not know what the answer was.  I only knew that the answer was not found, which is not to say that it was not known, or was not emergent. 

Hearing signal from noise, seeing patterns in chaos, happened at the edges, where the network is new, where connections are being formed.  I only knew that there is great value in solving real problems and worked, with love and wonder, to magnify possibility.  I believed that we had not accounted for the value of  lives at the edges.  I believed that increasing the capitalization of human potential (Malcolm Gladwell) would not occur with winners picking winners.  I understood that the unknown was fertile.  I worked in the unknown. I said out loud what I did not know, what I was trying to understand, what I thought might be.

Something about the Chekovian (heart) string that finds resonance in each of us, regardless of our callouses, is what defined meaning and sourced the future.  And I did not sacrifice rigor.  I played a role.  I am content with my participation, with my contribution.

Media: An Abundance of Money, A Scarcity of Meaning

I have been following the media industry for a while now.  I claim no expertise, just an opinion. First, I think there are two critical reforms necessary for America to find its way: 1) voting reform. 2) campaign finance reform, 3) media reform.

1. Media is not just entertainment.
2. We need to fight the censorship of the center.
3. Youth Media is not paternalism.
4. Participatory and p2p media is the disruptive technology in media. 
5. We need a new infrastructure to support effective information systems.
6. Effective information systems can do more.

Internet Music

I am a music Snob.  I listen to music constantly and almost exclusively I listen to music streaming over the web. So, I thought it might be interesting to others to see what tools and services I use.

Slacker, Rhapsody, Mp3Tunes, Last.fm, Logitech SqueezeBox, MusicBrainz, MusicIP...

Open Everything ?

I just spent three days with 30ish very smart, very dedicated people exploring the concept of openness.  The meeting was held at Hollyhock on Cortez Island in British Columbia.  Hollyhock is very, very beautiful. This meeting/retreat was part of the OpenEverything series.  I was eager to attend in a effort to

1. understand how to build an open development community on top of a proprietary platform (salesforce.com)
2. abstract and apply the methodology of open source development to solving the world's most intractable problems.

An Organization You Should Look Into

"InSTEDD is all about humanitarian collaboration through technology innovation. We are looking carefully at the problems faced by those involved in disease tracking and disaster response, and we're moving forward in focused ways to help them."

more...

InSTEDD was born at the TED conference as part of Larry Brillient's TED Prize in 2006.  It's original mandate was around early detection of disease outbreaks.  They have since built the beginings of a very exciting ecosystem of tools for peer2peer, online/offline, mesh networked, information processing in the most demanding environments. 

Salesforce.com Foundation

I don't blog about my J O B much.  However, we just put on an event in NY that I am very proud of.  (...of which I am very proud.) 

I started at Salesforce.com Foundation in September of 2000.   In that year we donated our first instance of salesforce.com to a nonprofit organization, Business Today.  It wasn't until 2004 that we hit triple digits.  As of today, we have donated licenses to over 3,000 nonprofits in 56+ countries.  It is reasonable to say that our work has increased the efficacy of the global social sector.  (Maybe a very small amount but it is a reasonable thing to say.)

Harvard Business Review - Breakthrough Ideas for 2008

I am settling down to bed at a friend's house in Brooklyn after a flying in from San Francisco.  A flying habit that I have is to read the magazines that I never have the headspace to deal with otherwise.  So, I noticed the latest HBR had an article on their Breakthrough Ideas for 2008.

Of the 21 ideas, 9 were specifically technology related.  Of those, they really focused on the ability of technology to connect people across physical distance, or, networks.  This is not a new or radical idea really, even the virtual-world aspect of this is not particularly novel.  The interesting thing is that it is interesting to the HBR as something that business' should pay attention to.

There goes the neighborhood.