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No blogging this week due to travel so I have posted some links to recent popular posts:
The Digital Age is Not a Solution
Social Entrepreneurship, Corporate Social Responsibility and Shared Value
In July 2010 I wrote a very popular post titled "A Strategy for LinkedIn". In the post I recommended:
"The second feature I would add to LinkedIn is a Hacker News for business. Hacker News is a very simple site where people post the best posts on technology from a wide range of sources including blogs, corporate media (e.g. NYT) and white papers. The content is not moderated but the users create such rich content that I sometimes think that if I had only one RSS feed to read every day it would be Hacker News. A "Business News" on LinkedIn would bring readers to the website more often to post articles, would over time probably produce a better source of business information for the members than the automated sites such as Google News or Yahoo News and again could be a new revenue source for LinkedIn through ad revenue."
In mid-2011 LinkedIn started LinkedIn Today, member curated business news. I have been a reader every day since it launched and the quality of the articles is very high. I recommend it.
Probably just a coincidence that LinkedIn did what I said in a post, but if anyone needs a consultant to increase web traffic maybe I can help:)
The quote below by Richard Wolin in the May 21, 2012 issue of The Nation explains the relationship between education and social inclusion.
"For the first time, men and women of diverse social backgrounds were afforded the opportunity to cultivate the knowledge and self-understanding necessary to surmount the oppressive constraints of class, race and gender."
The reference is to the GI Bill that paid for WWII veterans to attend college in the U.S.
Paul Romer Français : Paul Romer Deutsch: Paul Romer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In a recent post "The Digital Age is Not a Solution" I argued that perhaps we need to redefine the role of federal government to meet the challenges from increasing population density. An alternative to that approach which I thought about but did not include in the post was to re-establish city-states.
An additional three billion people will move into cities in the next forty years and the percent of urban population will be well in excess of 50%. This trend will bring population density to unheard levels, which should force humans to re-organize in a significant way, such as changing the current form of federal governments.
It should also be noted that the number of large cities, over 30 million population, will increase dramatically and these cities will be larger than many countries. These cities will have significant economic interests to protect, which may not be consistent with the objectives of their countries. Therefore, we could see the emergence once again of city-states.
This might appear to be a perfectly crazy idea, except for economist Paul Romer's idea. Romer has proposed the idea of charter cities, "economic zones founded on the land of poor countries but governed with the legal and political system of, often, rich ones". Romer proposed the idea as a means to create economic growth in poor countries. These charter cities would not be subject to the existing cultural, social and political constraints of many poor countries by establishing independent cities governed by more advanced legal and economic systems. Sounds like city-states to me.
More on Romer's idea of charter cities here.
Saturday I taught a boating safety course for young children (8-13) and adults through the Coast Guard Auxilary. What I always marvel at in these classes is the enthusiasm the children bring to learning about boating. I use a lot of question and answer to develop the themes and the children actively participate. I have noticed that how one handles a wrong answer is critically important. Any negativity in my response and the child shuts down for the rest of the day and stops participating. I think that even at this young age schools have already conditioned the children not to make mistakes.
Talking to one of the parents during the lunch break provided an interesting insight. He talked about how many, many mistakes he had made when he first started boating, but that over time he had become more accomplished. In other words, he had not stopped boating because he had made mistake after mistake. Three observations:
Much of the way one learns boating mirrors Piaget's theory of how children learn. The learning is hands on, self-directed and with little input from a teacher.
I am increasingly coming to enjoy teaching young children. They are like sponges if you do not snuff out their natural enthusiasm. Maybe I should start a charter school using a boat. Wonder how expensive a marine Internet connection is?
Image credit: watersport-insight.com
Daniel Kahneman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Forbes had an interesting article on how to be successful. Citing the research of Nobel Laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the article states that emotional intelligence (EQ), moral intelligence and body intelligence are more important than IQ in predicting individual success. To improve moral intelligence, how one manages "integrity, responsibility, sympathy, and forgiveness", Forbes recommended to make fewer excuses.
I am very fond of lessons from the military (several links here) in teaching individual behavior and management. New soldiers are taught three ways to answer a question:
From the beginning soldiers are taught not to make excuses. You will also save a lot of time by eliminating excuses :)
I have written frequently about the changing role of the individual in the Digital Age (here and here to cite two posts). In Einstein's Ideas and Opinions he describes how the Renaissance was a period where individuals made the significant contributions. As population became more dense, the need arose for organizations, as the means to address society's problems. These organizations developed the technology to make themselves more effective and efficient. In summary, as population density changes humans reorganize to address the new problems and develop supporting technology.
Basically, I think we are at another one of those inflection points based on population density. My reasoning is as follows:
If the choices to address the population density problem are two-- individuals or organizations-- and organizations have reached their point of maximum efficiency and effectiveness with current technology: then we have three choices:
In conclusion, this is not a post about the dangers of population growth. Human beings re-organize when population density changes (Einstein). I think we have exhausted the benefits from the current forms of organization. We have maxed out the benefits of current computing technology. My guess is we need to re-design the effectiveness of the individual or mankind will fail to address a new era of population density. While the Digital Age is getting all the press, I now think that it is not the technology to address a new era but rather the dramatic end to the last era. Opportunities still exist to better use computer technology, e.g. education, but the bigger opportunities may be in recognizing a new era in the history of mankind. Whether existing governments with their bureaucracies focused on the status quo will permit the necessary changes may be the biggest challenge.
Image credit: bangladesh.um.dk
