Shaping Network Society

———————

As I am wrapping up my time at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, it is time to write down some of the lessons I learned here at Erfurt University, where Martin Luther developed some of the frameworks for Information Revolution I. The Willy Brandt School is a brave experiment in bringing together students and young professionals from over 40 countries to rethink public policy. It is an experiment that is important in our days, where we are confronted with huge challenges on this planet. One day last year, while walking to my lecture, it hit me that we are working on the project of planetary public policy. I then wrote a short blog-entry that I always wanted to expand:

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.”

Planetary public policy combines (a) an acceptance of global problems (climate change, trafficking of women, drugs, weapons, etc.), with (b) an appreciation for comparative learning in public policy (e.g. issues of birth control, slum dwelling, public transportation, crisis management are similar in kind in very different environments), and (c) a sensibility for inter-civilizational exchange of ideas concerning our planetary publics. It is a simple doctrine, but remember territorial sovereignty, the doctrine that has been guiding our thinking and doing for the last 300 years is just as simple. Simple grammars allow for surprisingly complex frameworks. But in the 21st Century, no public policy school can ignore it.

Looking back…

The doctrine of territorial sovereignty developed as part of the transformation of the medieval system in Europe into the modern state system, a process that is linked to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The emergence of the concept of sovereignty was developed in analogy to the Roman civil law concept of private property.  Both emphasizing exclusive rights concentrated in a single holder, in contrast to the medieval system of diffuse and many-layered political and economic rights. Within the state, sovereignty signified the rise of the monarch to absolute prominence over rival feudal claimants such as the aristocracy, the papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire. Internationally, sovereignty served as the basis for the anarchic nature of the international system and for its ground rules like the exchanges of recognition on the basis of legal equality, diplomacy, and international law. This led to an international system where states were responsible for their own security and self-sufficient in their social and economic needs.

However, with globalization we moved into a world where somehow these two core rules of the international system are broken. we are moving into a world where states are not reliant on themselves in terms of economic production anymore, and neither are they in terms of security. The most basic question we would ask you is, who of you is wearing clothing that’s made in just one country, at this moment. Even Lederhosen, the typical Bavarian dress, all of them, including the Burghausen style are produced in India.

What we are missing is a unifying doctrine that allows us to place our actions in such a world. Territorial sovereignty has lost its grip over us, but planetary thinking is only slowly emerging. Here are the three basic tenets of this emerging doctrine:

Accepting Global Problems

Global problems become global by being referred to as global. Even if the impact of climate change will be different locally, we have firmly constructed it as a global problem. But others less so. Last year, our planet’s population lost $9.3 billion to 419 scams. 419 is a paragraph number in the Nigerian penal code, in the law, which deals with a very specific cyber crime, which is basically have you ever received an email that said,

I am a princess from Nigeria, and my dad left me $80 million in a bank account that I need to transfer out of… Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Texas, or Southern Bavaria. I need your help to do that, and I will be of course very helpful in giving you 50 percent of what is in the bank account if you help me.

Is that a global problem? Should it be constructed as such?

Comparable Local Problems

Planetary public policy assumes that there are local problems that we can compare to each other and learn from each other. For example, squatting on public lands. What is the Malaysian solution to squatting on public lands versus what is the Mexican solution to squatting on public lands versus what is any other country that has that problem? For a long time, we had assumed that local contexts would be so different that learning across continents would not take place.

Inter-civilizational Meaningful Conversations

Inter-civilizational Meaningful Conversations remind us of the question, how can we develop a fair platform on which we can have a conversation? A conversation between different cultures and through space and time. And that, of course, is the challenge we are facing in the Brandt School, with students from more than 40 countries. But it’s also the challenge that we have to face when we are trying to solve this issue of humanity surviving on this planet.

So public policy in the 21st Century needs to focus on global problems, comparative public policy challenges, and inter cultural, inter civilizational meaningful conversations.

It is always good to re-read Kevin Kelly’s Rules for the New Economy (article came out in 1997, the book in 1999). My Tec de Monterrey students will remember that we read it in 2003 as “contemporary political theory.” The following passage is taken from the 1999 book:

A trillion dumb chips connected into a hive mind is the hardware. The software that runs through it is the network economy. A planet covered with hyperlinked chips is shrouded with waves of sensibility. Millions of moisture sensors in the fields of farmers shoot up data, hundreds of weather satellites beam down digitized images, thousands of cash registers spit out bit streams, myriad hospital bedside monitors trickle out signals, millions of web sites tally attention, and tens of millions of vehicles transmit their location code; all of this swirls into the web. That matrix of signals is the net.

The following film done by the IBM a-smarter-planet crowd interprets this idea in 2010:

The net is not just humans typing at one another on AOL, although that is a part of it and will be as long as seduction and flaming are enjoyable. Rather, the net is the total collective interaction of a trillion objects and living beings, linked together through air and glass.

… The network economy is already expanding to include new participants: agents, bots, objects, and servers, as well as several billion more humans. We won’t wait for AI to make intelligent systems; we’ll do it with the swarm power of ubiquitous computing and pervasive connections.

The surest way to smartness is through massive dumbness.

The surest way to advance massive connectionism is to exploit decentralized forces—to link the distributed bottom. How do you build a better bridge? Let the parts talk to one another. How do you improve lettuce farming? Let the soil speak to the farmer’s tractors. How do you make aircraft safe? Let the airplanes communicate among themselves and pick their own flight paths. This decentralized approach, known as “free flight,” is a system the FAA is now trying to institute to increase safety and reduce air-traffic bottlenecks at airports.

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?