Last night, while having a wonderful conversation with Ruth Kalinka, design geek girl extraordinaire, I realized something significant: We are living in significantly good times.
Ruth, just like myself, just like many of my other friends, have held the same principles for years:
- Cooperation and collaboration
- Transparency and openness
- Empathy, kindness and care towards others
- Sustainability
- Fairness
- Community
- etc.
These are pretty much all of the values underpinning the Web 2.0 era. And it IS an era…not a technology. It just happens to be spread by technology and those of us who share these values are able to connect around the world.
In the 90’s and early 2000’s, I was constantly frustrated…as was Ruth. No matter where we turned, the lesson seemed to be that the only way to success was to be extremely competitive…dog eat dog sort of competitive. In fact, the assholes always seemed to win. The good guys did, in fact, finish last. Now, the tables have turned. Because of the ability for anyone to publish their experiences, the assholes are being called out more often and people are taking them to task…strengthened by the fact that we can gather in great numbers now to fight the 800 lb gorilla.
It sort of feels like one of those happy endings on a movie like Revenge of the Nerds or the like. Only, instead of fighting fire with fire, we’ve risen up because of our values, wielding our social capital. We’re killing the gorilla with kindness….for one another (we’re still not nice to the gorilla, though…and I haven’t figured out whether we should be or not.)
Now, I know it’s not all utopic and the entire world isn’t there yet, but the more I travel, the more I see it growing. Cory Doctorow’s whuffie of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom isn’t science fiction any longer. It’s all around us. A world in which the capital exchanged only grows when given away and others are treated well sounds to me a helluvalot nicer than a world in which people do awful things to one another for the gain of capital.
I do think we are rapidly moving toward that world and some of us are already enjoying the fruits of that world as if it is ubiquitous. There will be downsides, of course. Harder work. Less security. Less hedonism. And with transparency comes a loss of privacy. Of course, many are also facing the troubles of having this epiphany, then discovering their loved ones haven’t quite yet, creating the natural tension that occurs when one person changes and the other doesn’t.
But I do think we are now living in good times. Generous times. And technological as well as political changes in the next couple of years will help catapult more and more people into this brave, new value system…for personal and business life.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Tara: You are so right, this is the same battle that us oldsters fought back in civil rights days and flower power. We only had pop guns alternative papers, broadsheets xeroxed, graffiti scrawled on walls and putting our bodies on the line. I’m not claiming we were batter no we were just ordinary people who had had enough.
The equipment in the form of computers, I.pods, cell phones and so on speed the connection but it is still up to you and I and any who want to join in get up and change their lives and offer the possibility of change to all. Most won’t take it its scary out there free floating but you are alive.
By the way the 800 lb gorilla give him love most people are too scared and he is scared too so he’ll like love’
Love and peace
Roger
September 1st, 2007 at 10:12 pm
When I got to the end – I found myself saying “Amen” out loud – and I’m not particularly religious
September 5th, 2007 at 8:18 am
It’s interesting… you’ve been in San Francisco for a while, and I just moved here about 3 months ago.
Immediately upon my arrival I noticed what you’re describing. People would talk about what they were working on without any hesitation, they were willing to help out others who were clearly their competitors and everybody basically assumed we should work together to make great companies.
This had not been my experience on the East Coast, in general. There are definitely people like that, but it’s not nearly as widespread.
Perhaps we are living in good times, in a good place?
September 6th, 2007 at 9:02 am
I guess what I’m saying is that it USED to only be in San Francisco and what I’m noticing as I travel around the world (and as Ruth is in Philadelphia), that it isn’t only happening in California. It’s happening in hundreds of other growing pockets. That, to me, is what is hopeful.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Aye, I thought Technopian had a certain ring to it as well
But it really was funny as I had recently been thinking about the same thing. This post was a great insight into it. These principles are very much what it is all about. And then there’s more. There are new rules that come along with those principles. Rules that aren’t the kind that go along with law so much as the kind that are set in place by kindness and protection. The kind that say what happened to Kathy Seirra wasn’t okay.
When I was writing the post, for whatever relevance it has to any of this, though, both you and Stowe Boyd immediately came to mind. And I was thinking, if ever there was a mayor in this society, which there wouldn’t be because I don’t think anyone would accept, it would be you or Stowe