In the spirit of Jane Jacobs and the “In My Lifetime” meme, I thought I would highlight the issue of education. In the last book she published before her death, the cautionary Dark Age Ahead, Jacobs’ points to modern western civilization’s obsession with credentialing and certification, driven by professional aspirations or systems of qualification, at the expense of education. To Jacobs, the decline of broad-minded education is reducing our civilization’s ability to adapt to change, at the same time that change is accelerating and our problems becoming increasingly complex. We would be wise to heed her warnings, as we would have been to heed her warnings about modern/rationalist urban planning in 1961.
I am interested in educational and lifelong learning alternatives that enhance our human capacity for creativity and integrative thinking, which is so sorely lacking and so crucial to our future. Economists and environmentalists must bridge intellectual and dogmatic divides in order to integrate their perspectives on the world and solve some of our most pressing challenges. In a radically globalized “world is flat” economy, any job can be outsourced, not just manufacturing jobs. Value creation increasingly will become contingent on individuals creating unique jobs and new social roles for themselves, rather than following a predesigned career pattern.
Every individual born into this world needs to develop the tools and and skills to navigate this chaos and complexity in order carve out a meaningful and highly individuated path through life. To find meaning. This calls for creativity to be made a central, not marginalized, element of our education system. This student documentary about an open/participatory/experiential/free school is inspirational. (via Boing Boing)
There are interesting parallels to how Open Space unconference practices provide a platform for creativity and inspiration, as evidenced in a community of practice we call BarCamp. And in how Open-Source software projects govern themselves. Participation versus the lecture method; leadership that can come from anywhere; self-organized and self-governing; the close connections between learning, play and the creative moment. Practices such as these are exciting innovations that are gaining increasing attention and momentum. These practices may yet undo the damage of industrial-age education methods and prepare us for a radically altered future and its rapidly accelerating rate of change.
Technorati Tags: Creativity, credentialing, education, inmylifetime
Leila pinged me on this, and I’m taking a moment out to consider the big questions. Free license for idealism…
In my lifetime, I would like to see 3 things happen:
1. A successful transition from the Age of Oil to the Age of Sustainable Development
2. A social, political and economic culture that invests increasingly in community and the creative potential of every individual in society.
3. Technologies used to enable a truly participatory democracy that is both local and global.
My friend Andrew often claims that I am trying to solve the problem of globalization. Hubris? Maybe. But my answer to the skeptics is, “And why shouldn’t I?” My friend Kim often accuses me of being a dirty Malthusian. Not quite, but I see her argument.
We’ve got a few revolutionaries already in the mix: David, Sutha, Ryan, Rob, Tom,
What say you, Deb, Patrick, Brent, Joey and Bryce?
P.S.: Rest in Peace, Jane Jacobs (May 4, 1916 – April 25, 2006). A boundary-crossing intellectual, a true revolutionary, a Torontonian and an inspiration to community-builders everywhere.
Technorati Tags: cluetrain, Creativity, hughtrain, inmylifetime, politics, sustainability
The best part of DemoCamp? The post demo drinks, of course!
DemoCamp5 happened U of T’s Bahen Centre last night, and it was a really good one. I am impressed how this thing keeps on building, getting better with each iteration. DemoCamp newbie Brian has summarized the demos on his blog.
What grabbed my attention and met the threshold of being remarkable?
Blogmatrix and Dabble DB.
Wow. Really. Pay attention to both of these guys. Blogmatrix is integrating an amazing amount of workflow, microformats and mash-able goodness into a blogging platform. Dabble DB rocked my world and made my head spin from the potential applications and its truly disruptive nature.
Technorati Tags: barcamp, democamp, torcamp, Toronto, Web2.0
Joey warmed himself up good for a skeptical blast at the ICT Toronto initiative. Leave your comments with him.
I have to agree with Joey, Rob Hyndman and others that it is very curious that an initiative intended in large part to promote Toronto as a tech cluster (to foreign investment, in part) did a launch event before making a reasonable attempt at a web site. With the plethora of cheap/free tools and high quality design talent in this city, you would think that ICT Toronto would have at least setup a nice little WordPress site. Unfortunately, government is even worse than large companies at being agile, adaptable and resourceful.
What we need in this city is meta-innovation: innovations that support innovation. How our public and private sector institutions adapt to a rapidly changing environment will to a great extent determine our collective fate. Agile processes and tools, from OpenSpace to eXtreme Programming, from Upcoming.org to wikis, can enable rapid adaptation.
Who is going to lead this? Perhaps instead of BarCamp asking ICT Toronto for support, we should simply offer some help. Could we put together a set of introductory workshops to blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, agile project management, OpenSpace for ICT/innovation/cluster policy people to attend? Probably.
Technorati Tags: barcamp, cluster, creativecluster, democamp, icttoronto, Innovation, torcamp, Toronto
Tom and I had lunch recently, and conversation quickly turned geeky. (surprised?) We discussed the future of BarCamp/TorCamp/DemoCamp, now known simply as “BarCamp Toronto”. While some of these ideas have been floating around for a while, Tom helpfully summarizes them all in one place for us. I will replicate the list and reconfigure it slightly here:
- BarCamp as Talent Well: “Sergey, meet Larry”; “Idea, meet Talent”
- Social Microfinance: sub-VC/Angel seed finance; projects identified and validated by the community
- DemoCamp Workshop: going deep with critique by self-organized expert panels
- X-Prize: awarded for solving a technical problem, or a social/business problem utilizing technology, in a way that creates a public good
- Design SlamCamp: a challenge to solve a real-world design problem utilizing a broad set of skills that will find real-world use
- Entrepreneurial Accountability: single-minded “garage” entrepreneurs can do amazing things; they can also waste a lot of time and resources on a bad idea
- Junior Campers: get ‘em young, train ‘em and then hire ‘em (Bryce would be a great Junior Camp Director)
- Do Nothing: don’t mess with success, and let the rest of the world solve these problems
Sign up to attend DemoCamp5 tomorrow (Tuesday, April 25th) to find out what this is all about. If you have a particular interest in the future of the community, come by early or stick around for drinks and join the conversation. Or just leave your comments.
What I find fascinating is how the norms and methods of open-source software development are migrating from the world of code into meatspace and the traditional technology business. Peer-review, open participation and value exchanges for work that go beyond fee/service or employer/employee are characteristics of open-source software projects, and also of BarCamp. Classical economists have difficulty explaining free/open software. They will have similar difficulty explaining free/open community. How do you solve the free rider problem? Why do people invest their social capital? How do individuals get a return on that investment?
Technorati Tags: barcamp, creativecluster, democamp, Innovation, icttoronto, talent, technology, torcamp, Toronto
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