Sense with me the effervescence of a well fermented kombucha. Alive with microbial action, the yeast within the culture releases CO2 in response to sugars present in the liquid. Just like a healthy kombucha, my response to the Global Challenges Foundation’s open session has left me feeling kinda fizzy with energy and hope for a future where humanity exists in living symbiosis with the earth. This two part post will cover some of the highlights of the event, exploring a handful of the New Shape proposals, then observing some of the emerging patterns from the discussions.
This event was more than just one humble bottle of booch- it was a smörgåsbord of flavours. The forum gave showcase to the 14 finalists of the New Shape Prize, each presenting their well-developed epiphanies for global solutions to the state of emergency we find ourselves deeper in each day. Multiple forums were held during this publicly open ‘Day 0’ of the full event, featuring some real heavyweights of policy and politics, media, economics, climate science and the charity sector. Experts and academics met civilian grassroot activists with understanding and mutual respect; any SJW would be glad to see such important topics handled with professionalism and integrity, by such a diversity of global voices.
Photograph provided by the GCF Facebook page.
The UN: Reforms and New Global Actors
Richard Ponzio, Rama Mani, Maher Nasser, Yang Yao & John Mukum Mbaku
Recognising that our 20th Century systems are crumbling rapidly, last year the Global Challenge Foundation put out a call for “improved frameworks of global governance of global catastrophic risks”. Through the presentations, the suggested themes of co-operation and inter-connectedness were harnessed alongside a firm understanding of our recent history in meddling (or stewardship in the better cases) and industry-led design around new technologies, social systems and economic structures. While there were plenty of apt criticisms of industry and flagging of inequality, the whole day invoked an emergence of dozens of insightful suggestions toward improving our chance of inter-species survival — a few of these ideas echoing our own proposals here at the GRDN. I’m frankly relieved that more attention is being given to the power of cooperation and civilian response-ability.
As an exercise in cooperation from the inside out, I reflect upon this day with an attitude of openness, particularly noticing how compatible these proposals are not only with the theory of the GRDN but also with each other. Whatever prototypes emerge from my participation in the NSF will hopefully reflect the various voices which presented works of genius at yesterday’s event; while it may not have sparked many completely new ideas, it certainly nourished my inner compost of possibility with healthy doses of inspiration and action, providing further depth to many realizations which had been lying on the surface of my theory behind the GRDN.
“Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete”“If there is a single maxim that runs through this book’s arguments, it is that we are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them.”
― Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Part 1: A summary of resonating presentations.
Out of 2,700 entries, 14 submissions were selected to present their global challenge solutions in Stockholm. You can read these here but for the purposes of relative brevity I will only focus on the five of these which I found most useful to my ongoing study of social design. However, there were some great statements made throughout the session which I will weave into part two of this reflection.
Evolutionary Organisations – Morya Short
In this presentation, we explore how global governance could play a supporting role to enable a living system which would “unleash the power of people everywhere”. As Helen Goulden (CEO, The Young Foundation) commented in a panel later in the day, there is a lot of latent energy in the collective human consciousness which grows from a sense “of something not being right” (more on this later). Morya’s proposal, not unlike the GRDN, explores a social system to encourage the expression of this energy by nurturing the potential of the everyday local human being and connecting it through a global platform.
She notes that grassroots work is motivated by the passion of people, the unstoppable forces of nature which humans can be when we step into our own power. The challenge Morya presents is for the UN to tap into this natural desire to contribute. In her design, such visionaries would be supported through mandatory Circle Training– which is the requirement for participation at any level– the use of a collaboration portal & an incubator. Emerging projects could be prototyped using funding from a UN-backed cryptocurrency and/or local currency, though they are also trained by circle incubators in the art of fundraising and may seek the support of charities, foundations and/or their networks rather than relying on government funding at this stage.
Globally, similar projects will assess and peer-review each others’ projects. The strongest prototypes are voted forward to the next stage of substantial funding allocation. Our beloved SDGs are addressed in due dilligence as project leaders are obliged to meet these requirements in order to qualify for funding. Another ripple effect is the impact on members of any community who are affected from the programme, as aspirations are triggered and a clear pathway with support and opportunity beckons new innovation from diverse backgrounds and offering new perspectives from the ground level. This would cultivate a culture of “UN Citizens”, local people connected all over the world addressing global challenges through local action.
A key message in Morya’s concept is enabling people to overcome the fear which paralyzes so many of us, inhibiting action even at a local level. Her trans-scale approach in uniting a global body with the need for empowerment of everyday citizens would liberate this dormant resource of human love-labour by including anybody with the will into the ideation chambers.
I wonder whether a structure which is governed by the UN could become aggressively competitive due to spaces in the programme being limited, yet this can be diffused if there are local or regional bodies who have the task of welcoming viable candidates within their area (and competition is kept as a competency-building tool rather than a desire for opposition defeat). It appears that LACs are trained by local ‘circle incubators’ which will help to keep the scale manageable.
I would love to know more about the LACs (Local Action Circles) and to comment that further support could be given by the body in networking these groups, due to increasing isolation in communities which tends to make it difficult for individuals to find and form committed teams. Simply enough, however, the collaboration portal could be used to discover other changemakers in one’s area and I wonder if this is something that Morya has in mind.
Finally, I must give credit to this idea of peer-voted projects as a means to captivate collaborators. One challenge in the age of entrepreneurship is that we don’t give ourselves enough time to tune into similar projects and build a culture around co-operation and the shared exploration of ideas. In this scenario, those in other countries benefit from watching your idea mature, giving them insight into what could or may not work in their own incarnation of any proposed solution. Overall, it should be clear why I resonated with Morya’s submission: offering support through training, a collaboration portal and some kind of incubator could lead to the emergence of local heroes everywhere.
Global Governance by Cooperative Communities – Stephan Bettzieche & Katharina Peter
‘Glocal’, and its accompanying prefix ‘Glo’, is the expression we utilize when discussing structures which connect the global and local world dimensions. It is becoming increasingly useful as a term in this digitalized, shrinking, hyperloop-trialling world. And it’s our capacity for glocal decision-making processes which Stephan, on behalf of the pair of societal engineers, presented yesterday.
The key concept here is better public participation in the current governing system. By expanding on existing structures, a bridge between the authorities and the civilians is built to transform power dynamics. Through a method involving the community-elected roles of guardians and advocates, more space, time and energy can be involved into a decision-making process the pair have named ASK- Agile Socio Konsensing.
“ASK is a procedure specifically designed for decision-making in the 3rd millennium. It combines sociocratic and holocratic methods with the Systemic Consensus principle in an agile and flexible form. ASK is not a conventional majority voting system, it rather measures resistance against available suggestions and promotes constructiveness, creativity and cooperation.”
By giving civil engagement a forum within which to flesh out the best ideas based on a range of direct experiences, skepticism can be transformed into collaborative action.
A phrase in Stephan’s presentation that I particularly liked is, “…listening to and with our hearts”. This combines the inner and outer worlds through deeper engagement with ourselves and each other. Surely this is one of the cultural behaviours that we should design for!
He and Katharina are already hard at work exploring a prototype of this model in Germany. There is a strong emphasis on open source inter-community action, combining the volunteer-led communities globally to support transparent global decisions. Deeper in the CC universe we find a judicial body, cabinet and guardians who act as arbitrators in case of a stalemate.
Another interesting component in this proposal is a group of Advocati who endeavour to promote public discourse around governance related processes, working with the media to promote transparency. The Advocati emerge in groups of three, each electing (in alternating formation depending on the topic) to represent one of three archetypical viewpoints; Advocatus Diaboli (speaks against everything), Advocatus Dei (speaks in favor of everything) and Advocatus Alternationis (offers alternatives to everything).
What I enjoy about this proposal is the thorough restructuring of governance to allow better channels of group decision making to reach a global level. If the prototype led to promising results, this could be a relatively quick process to implement and would fit into the current worldview rather succinctly. However, that’s also a drawback: it could actually be time to evolve this worldview.
Implementing such a procedure, which is effectively yet another academic theory, as another layer on top of an already complicated democratic system could be alienating. I’m concerned that those unable to grasp the functions available to them will greet this innovation as yet another barrier to access, due to a lack of understanding. The proposal doesn’t seem to take into account the uneducated perspective, it simply hopes that the media will serve to communicate the storyline to people across the globe. Because of my time working at the Citizens Advice Bureau, I can appreciate that systemic complexity only burdens the already oppressed by accidentally concealing their rights. For a proposal like this to really be effective, I would like to see the same model developed alongside the stakeholders before anyone glues all the pieces together.
It’s like applying the model to itself… #dejavu #makingpermaculturestronger
A (Simplified) Blockchain Approach to Non-Coercive, Decentralized Government
– John R. Bowley
The titles of these submissions could fill a novel of their own, and I for one love what that novel is discussing. We can observe coersion as one of the most prominent side-effects of a hierarchical power structure that was invented by slave owners and then adapted to a classist consumerism. Decentralization is a big theme right now and John presents a case for effective power distribution by combining political, business and civic components.
He makes a distinction between cryptocurrency and broader blockchain capabilities, though naturally cryptocurrency is also utilized. Blockchain tech, he argues, is an efficiency mechanism that could outcompete the current ‘Nation State’ mechanisms of military and currency. A promising start.
“The blockchain model lacks a standard hierarchy, with all decision making the de facto result of collective action, conducted openly. Financing is provided through a connected cryptocurrency. Once a smart contract seeking a particular action is placed on the blockchain, the request is instantly visible to any other NGO, private individual, government entity or commercial contractor, which may then undertake to fulfill some or all of the contract.”
Alongside this, rapid response to global issues and equal accessibility promote a culture of willing participation as participants are able to watch their voice take effect through the system and would therefore be more willing to engage.
The marketplace-based approach in John’s proposal seems strategic; the commercial world has proven an ability to get things done. Therefore an idea-to-action marketplace could really promote quick implementation of solutions. The economy we are expecting to emerge from this is driven by the purpose of solving problems… something I have operations-related suggestions around, to be discussed later.
One clear benefit to this system is that wealth is created within the economy with relatively low start-up cost. I’m unclear how intellectual property works within this system, or if it’s purposely abandoned, in any case some further thought around patency could be useful (perhaps even connecting to Thomas Höhne-Sparborth’s proposal). I suspect such a system would promote the engagement of many people who have good ideas but lack the will to capitalise on them. In which case, a free distribution of IP through some hybrid of open source could be expected, at least as one option in the submission process.
Treating ideas as a Global Public Good is sounds like a promising way forward; yet on the other hand there is a formidable task in aligning global interest with individual interest, and I intuit that we still need forms of incentive (that appease the ego) if we want to build a platform which engages everybody.
Leaving the market to do its thing without the centralization of global governance must come across as quite appetizing to someone who has sat through 25 years of all-talk-no-action such as the Director General of the UN Office in Geneva, Michael Møller. In his keynote address in the beginning of the day, he advocated a polycentric governance operating more as a network, implicating everyone & applying everywhere. Observing the inability for the UN to agree to a reform model, particularly around the Security Council, he admitted that, as we live in an “age of entanglement”, “it’s simply not possible unless we do it together” with better structures for bottom-up ownership and deeper understanding of the root causes. But is any market-driven model capable of providing a solution that we could trust? I believe we should be conscious about the future generations and consider their capability, if or when necessary, to disrupt and evolve the systems we create. Without a global body, even a polycentric one, it could be even harder to make progress when the time inevitably comes to move on.
We must also consider the perspective of varying issues. The recent Palestinian deaths during their protests in Gaza provide an interesting chance to consider this model playing out on the world stage. How could one propose a market solution to international tensions? While John’s model is thorough, applicable and promising I sense that it could not work alone. Fortunately he does not call to eliminate the UN, simply to move toward a decentralized system operated through blockchain tech – and hope that the operating system for accessing the blockchain doesn’t pose a barrier to entry for those with less technological awareness or access.
Emergent Dynamic Governance Ecosystems (EDGE) – Andrew Goldring
Through his time contributing to the Permaculture Association, Andy has had a solid chance to cultivate new ideas for governance involving some of the best tools for ecosystem awareness that we have as a species. He also knows intimately the scale of damage and challenges on earth, which is why his proposal calls for “All hands on deck; on multiple scales”. Resonating with Morya Short’s submission, Andy focuses on supporting new changemakers through an empowering learning process — and for us all to learn how to “be brilliant at governance”. It’s a fair observation that this fine art in itself has a wide scope for reinvention, including the way we teach governance.
Seeking governance variety by combining voices from civil society, local government, social business and academia, the proposed model encourages the growth of a global enquiry so that prototyping becomes a shared endeavour and we collectively become more capable of gauging successful, replicable models as they emerge from the network.
The collective chooses what to amplify and, on the other hand, what to discourage. Using sociocracy, goals are agreed to by all stakeholders and progress can be measured through collaborative tools. Viewing this collective as a human ecosystem is another way of discussing polycentric governance; rather than replacing public conventions or building new systems, the focus is on providing a framework for these instutitions to better collaborate with each other, as well as researching and promoting emerging models for collaborative governance. This proposal is simple in implementation, making the most of existing structures, organizations and conventions and bringing them to the same table.
A.I.-Supported Global Governance Through Bottom-Up Deliberation – Soushiant Zanganehpour
Although I have natural doubts around certain uses of automation and the heralding of technology as a saviour of the human race, this robust proposal alongside Soushiant’s confident presentation left me hopeful that any emerging strategy for the evolution of our social systems could connect to and play with his idea. The suggestion is to create a platform where every voice on the planet could be assessed and clarified, before competing to ‘gain weight’ in public debate, while simultaneously the AI searches for relevant research to help inform discussion.
Using samples of writing (possibly gathered from internet forums), the AI is taught to recognise sound reasoning, biases and numerous other communication errors or achievements in between – thereby assisting the public to articulate our visions outside of and above our respective echo chambers.
The collaboration platform allows for mobilization of citizen contribution while simultaneously offering us the opportunity to democratize jurisdiction. The proposal suggests building a blockchain-based global identity system, which does sound a little dystopian and could beckon issues around ultimate ownership, demanding the swift emergence of community-led policies along the lines of the GDPR’s Right To Be Forgotten. But this is all the more possible through such infrastructure.
“Real-time implementation and impact trackers also provide greater accountability loops for ideas created and implemented, allowing for quicker course correction.”
For those of us who are skeptical that the current state of society is (or will ever be) ready to face such a power, Soushiant anticipates this phenomenon, offering protection through a decentralized form of justice which uses an “open-source, legally binding system leveraging algorithms that eliminate opportunities for corruption/collusion by allocating the right experts for the right problems globally.”
One particularly appetizing line of thought within Soushiant’s proposal is the eventual dismantling of our generally self-interested nation state ruling system, and in its place we find a global parliament of mayors, “which act as mixed international and internet-based constituencies”. Add this to the algorithmic potential to source nominees for positions of influence and we could be seeing a new era where a lot of bureaucrats are offered an early job termination and in the wake of this transition, the job market would likely become a lot more flexible.
A man who is clearly well schooled in the moral and ethical question marks around AI, Soushiant offers phases of testing and reversal in the slow implementation of such radical technology.
“Only after a period of considerable testing and technological and methodological iterations, will there be plans to build a social and cultural movement to spread these tools and institutions to complement or replace existing governance institutions and decision-making protocols and processes.
“There will be ample opportunities to change aspects of these institutions if real-world results demonstrate a misalignment between what they are producing versus what we had intended them to produce. “
Although the term ‘meritocratic’ was called into question in a later panel, flagged as more of a dystopian system than a great vision for the measurement of quality, I believe Soushiant’s use of this phrase is a semantic inconsistency which could in fact offer us a chance to collectively explore the sociological and psychological shadows of this proposal in advance of any prototype. To dream up the best case scenarios for AI is tempting; however, we must maintain integrity around the phenomenon of programming biases, cautious in what we choose to optimize for.
A WordCloud made from all 61 English submission titles currently in the New Shape library
The emerging trend among visionaries and even within the UN which demands better systems for civic engagement is another way of discussing self sovereignty. Does it then follow that governance is something all humans have a capacity for? If so, then viewing governance (or, written another way, stewardship), as an art form which is taught from early childhood and practiced in incrementally wider systems as one grows up could be a transformative cultural goal that we should consciously aim for.
In some sense a return to our kinship with nature through utilising our unusual talents for management and innovation as our species’ contribution to symbiotic wellbeing, we must also presence ourselves by combining ancestral wisdom with the modern infusion of advanced technology and reasoning capabilites. In the future there could be no need for any authority beyond our accountability to the decisions reached through processes of community culture building. These submissions pave a way forward and I’m curious to see which proposal takes home the New Shape Prize on Tuesday night.
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The participation and reflection around this event is part of a study on social permaculture present in today’s world. This is being operated by Naomi Smith, co-founder of the GRDN.
G.R.D.N 