Umair Haque has written what some might consider a controversial article on why AOC [US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] short-circuits the conservative mind and why the universal mother is the antidote to the authoritarian father. “The universal mother is the antidote to the authoritarian father. Think about it. Reflect on it. Remember it. Treat the bizarre… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Democracy
citizen sensemaking
Finland has taken a private-sector initiative to introduce people to Artificial Intelligence and turned it into a state-supported program to train 1% of the population. “The idea has a simple, Nordic ring to it: Start by teaching 1 percent of the country’s population, or about 55,000 people, the basic concepts at the root of artificial… Read more »
the democratization of media
“You’re just hearing about it [microaggression] more, because the people who have been suffering it for a long time have decided that they aren’t going to suffer it anymore. The disempowered recognize that it’s time for them to be heard. Social media gives them a platform to broadcast that message for the first real time… Read more »
democracy and equality
Will technology empower or frustrate learning and will established powers control individuals or will something new emerge? These were the questions asked during the The Edinburgh Scenarios in 2004. The resulting scenarios were as follows. Web of Confidence: Technology advances, power shifts to emergent players. U Choose: Technology frustrates, power shifts to emergent players. Virtually… Read more »
saving democracy
Why do younger people generally think it is less essential to live in a democracy? Perhaps it’s because the times are changing. The first democracies (USA, France, and gradually the UK) emerged about 300 years after the invention of the printing press. A free press was a cornerstone of American democracy. All of these are… Read more »
democracy 2.0
How print enabled democracy “The mass societies had many more decisions to make, and no way of making them in the old, egalitarian way. Their huge numbers made any attempt at discussing the question as equals impossible, so the only ones that survived and flourished were the ones that became brutal hierarchies. Tyranny was the… Read more »
toward distributed governance
Last year I wrote a post — cities & the future of work — as an introduction to my session with the Prime Minister’s Office of Finland. I have been invited back to Helsinki this year to further discuss some issues around reforming the government’s operating practices particularly moving toward a more collaborative culture. In… Read more »
complexity & chaos — the new normal
A major challenge I have had in my organizational change work is getting people to understand that complicated environments are different from complex ones, and the latter are almost always the situation when people are involved. Generally it means that in complex situations there is less reliance on pre-planning and analysis and a greater emphasis… Read more »
autonomy, competence, relevance
If we seek diverse or divergent views, will the opinions of others change our minds? A recent study seems to indicate that paying attention to views opposed to our own may actually harden our existing perspectives. “In a study that was published last month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my… Read more »
socially mediated
Social media extend emotion, obsolesce the linearity and logic of print, retrieve orality, and when pushed to their extreme result in constant outrage. A socially networked society could reverse into a popularity contest, where our value is only measured in our mediated reputation, such as numbers of Twitter followers or LinkedIn connections. Our tribal leaders… Read more »
Starts 04 March 2019
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