“This inauguration isn’t about me. It’s about all of us.”
-US President-elect Barack Obama
There’s a deep shift taking place in how we view our political economy. Like the shifting of the tectonic plates that make up the earth’s crust, we cannot directly see this shift but only observe the indirect effects when the tension becomes great enough to cause sudden movements. In geology we feel the shaking and see the flattened buildings caused by earthquakes. In politics we see massive crowds and the and unlikely election of a black man to be president of the United States. In economics we see knockdowns in the credit market and the bankruptcy of revered financial institutions. For people living through these events, they seem like random, unexpected changes in the normal course of life yet the underlying forces are always active, constantly pushing those plates in a particular direction.
For the political economy, by which I mean the western systems of market based exchange and national governments, those forces are pushing us away from the industrial era “Producer / Consumer” viewpoint towards an information era “Provider / Client” understanding of ourselves and our society. In the place of buyers and sellers competing against each other in a marketplace, we see bloggers and readers talking to each other in a blogosphere, or we have people writing software and people using software working together on open source projects.
The rise of microfinance illustrates the importance of social connections relative to individualistic capitalism.
It’s not as if markets are going away or bloggers can live on a daily dose of web links. Instead it’s a recognition that much of what individuals value and consider important cannot be readily produced in factories or measured in markets. While this has always been true, recent changes in information technology have made some of these hidden values visible AND have greatly expanded the opportunities for social interaction thus bringing a dramatic increase in the wealth of social connections.
Yochai Benkler and other economists have been studying this phenomenom for a few years. In “The Wealth of Networks“, Prof. Benkler argues that what he calls, “Peer Production” should be considered on par with other modes of production.
When compared with the dominant capitalist viewpoint, this “connectionist” viewpoint provides some interesting insights into making sense of our world, especially when we look at education and healthcare. From the capitalist point of view, a student “buys” an education (or the state purchases the education on their behalf) produced by a school. Every student has a “right” to the same product.
From a connectionist point of view, students build relationships with teachers, mentors, and other students in the pursuit of shared learning goals. Instead of a school producing an education, we have a team producing an experience in which the student plays a central role. Every student has the opportunity to create a positive experience for themselves AND their team.
A few months ago the potential for a profound impact on education became clear to me when I had the good fortune to meet Gunnar Counselmann, the CEO of the non-profit TeamPlay Foundation. Gunnar and his financial backer, Baron Davis, are passionate about the importance of connections in education - especially in poor, urban school districts in the US.
Starting with schools in Oakland, CA, TeamPlay uses information technology to connect students with a team of mentors and peers – think “Facebook for Mentors.” While TeamPlay has just completed an initial pilot project and is still building out their tool, response has been overwhelming from both students and mentors. Mentors especially like the notion that they are part of a team and are not solely responsible for the student. It also helps that the modern technological tools available allow the students and mentors to build up relationships using email, mobile phones, and other tools that fit into their busy lives.
I’ve been so impressed with Gunnar and his vision that we’ve started discussions on how UnaMesa might help develop the information infrastructure that supports these teams and how it might apply to other services, such as caring for an elderly patient or someone with a critical illness.
President-elect Obama, clearly understands the rising power of social connections. When he says the inauguration “isn’t about me…” he is not just being modest. This election, and his campaign in particular, depended on the actions of people around the country coming together to connect with each other on a local level in their own way and with their own passions. The Obama campaign was able to use information technology to facilitate those connections and create good experiences for the participants.
For everyone’s sake, let’s hope the President-elect and his team are right and that local connections which powered his campaign can also be used to power a fundamental shift for the better in how we view ourselves and how we participate in educating our children, caring for our sick, and creating new economic opportunities.
