Shaping Network Society

If you are graduating in these times of crisis, think of the amazing opportunities that the combination of web technologies, collaborative production, and the idea of open access offer. Consider starting something like mySociety for your country.

Hello! We are mySociety – we run most of the UK’s best known democracy websites.
Using our services, 200,000 people have written to their MP for the first time, over 8,000 potholes and other broken things have been fixed, nearly 9,000,000 signatures have been left on petitions to the Prime Minister, and at least 77 tiny hats have been knitted for charity.

They created apps like, theworkforyou, fixmystreet, hearfromyourmp, or groupsnearyou. The code is open source, join them, or start your own projects. It is time for planetary public policy. RT @schellong #gov20 UK activities (Fixmystreet, etc.) http://www.mysociety.org/

We have students from more than 40 countries at the Erfurt School of Public Policy. Sometimes, when asked what is it that differentiates us from other public policy schools, I  refer to our planetary perspective.  But what does that mean?

Planetary thinking is a term introduced by Martin Heidegger, to reflect the role of philosophy (a Greek/Western concept) in comparison to other systems of thought. Planetary public policy balances different approaches to public policy problems, reminds us that problems come in all sizes (local to global), that we can learn from each other, but that solutions need to be “tropicalized” (adapted to the local context). If public policy is about thinking about having a structural impact, then planetary public policy is about “rocking the planet.” Is that what we need in 2009? How does planetary thinking fit into the project of “shaping network society?” Do you buy into it?