Pierre's Web

Hold the beef, please

This Wall Street Journal article isn't making me happy.

Mad cow disease is thought to spread to cows by feeding them the remains of other mammals. This practice has been banned. Or so I thought. According to the WSJ, feeding the remains of cows, sheep, goats and deers to their living relatives has been banned. But feeding those remains to pigs, chickens, or pets is still permissible.

And then feeding those pigs and chickens back to cows is also permissible. Apparently this has been banned elsewhere, but not in the US. I guess we're not supposed to think more than one move ahead. (And no, the irony of the context of this post and the previous one is not lost on me.)

This is not making me happy. I'm going to hold off on the beef for a while. Which is a shame, because it's just so tasty.

Trust and Government

We take for granted today that people don't trust government. Yet we also take for granted that most Americans are proud to be American. How do those two feelings coexist? Surveys support both views: a majority of Americans don't trust government's ability to solve our society's hardest problems; but a larger majority of Americans believe our democratic system is the best in the world.

I believe the reasons for these two divergent views is simple: trust. Trust is an essential aspect of human relationships. It is an enabler of effective collaboration, and effective communities. Fukuyama's book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity describes the vast impact trust can have on a society's ability to compete globally as well as solve local problems.

In America, we seem to prefer voluntary associations to participation in government. That is one of our strengths. We easily form trusting relationships with our neighbors, coming together to address whatever problem we want to focus on. (See my previous entry on Athens and American Democracy.)

Think how easy it is, one on one, to form a trusting relationship. Think how easy it is to crush a stereotype when you finally meet someone from that "other" group.

Now, how can you trust "government?" It's a huge, faceless institution. Are real people actually a part of it? People trust people, not institutions. Trust in institutions is incredibly difficult -- you have to transfer your trust in a person to the institution that person represents.

I'd venture to guess that people who believe all politicians are corrupt have never met one. Or that all business leaders are driven by only by greed have never met one. I've had the opportunity to meet some of our nation's elected officials, and I have to say that most of them seem genuinely motivated by a desire to do good for our society. Public service is a difficult path, and most choose that path for the right reasons.

I trust our institutions, because I've met some of the people that form those institutions. I find it harder to trust organizations where I haven't met the people there. But I am generally willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I've seen how my perception about an institution changes after spending time with someone who works there.

Most of us are victims of stereotyping, too. Maybe you work for a chemical company. An oil company. The Defense Department. A bank. A large agricultural company. Microsoft. Just think about what other people must think of your industry or company, and the people in it. And how wrong they are. The same thing is true about other industries you know less about.

I suppose fundamentally I'm searching for a way to think about how to build trust. Giving trust involves a real, gut-level risk, and so we are reluctant to give trust where we can't establish a real, gut-level relationship. I think that's totally reasonable. The challenge is, how do we establish those relationships with institutions? Or rather, people within those institutions?

All of this drives me to the same conclusion that I think many have already arrived at: institutions need to be personalized. Access to leaders has to be wider. A commenter on this site has said "blog for the people." I think that's what he's trying to say: give the people more access to leaders, so we can begin to trust you.

I think that's a fine idea.

Earth Attacks Mars

It turns out that Mars and Earth will be closer than they have been in 60,000 years, on August 27, 2003. As a result, three missions will leave Earth in the next five weeks heading to Mars.

Seeing as how this is the first time humans are launching multiple probes at this planet, I hope that if there happens to be any sentient life already on Mars, they don't get the wrong idea.

The obligatory emergence-related mention in this round-up is from this New York Times article. Talking about the Beagle II, the project's lead scientist said:

"We didn't have any money, so we had to think harder," said Dr. Colin T. Pillinger, the project's lead scientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England.

Having fewer resources usually means you are forced to innovate. It also means you can avoid the trap of top-down design, which usually only works if you're solving a well-known problem. Since as far as I know, we haven't been to Mars that often, going to Mars does not qualify as a "well-known problem." That's why I'm most optimistic about these sorts of scrappy, bottom-up approaches (relatively speaking, anyway) than I am about top-down, big-budget bureaucratic approaches.

Blogs in the Workplace

Saw this link on Ross Mayfield's blog: Weblogs and knowledge management.

Seems to me that highly collaborative environments could be enhanced by using web logs as a preferred means of sharing information, rather than mass e-mails.

Here's a quote of an excerpt on that page:

Blogs encourage cross-functional disruptive thinking.

I read a great quote that, like a magnet of meanings, pulled together layers of my thinking into a surprising pattern of possibility. Here it is: "Here is the paradox: You need a great team of people with diverse skills to perform a symphony well, but no team has ever written a great symphony! ... While cross-functional teams are key players in defining and implementing incremental innovation projects, cross-functional disruptive individuals tend to be key players in defining radical innovation projects."

Athens and American Democracy

I had the privilege of sharing a podium this weekend with distinguished scholar Brian O'Connell at Tufts University. With the late John Gardner, he is cofounder of Independent Sector and writes extensively on the importance of our civil society.

I'm struck by how similar our thinking is on issues of democracy and civil society, despite the fact that while Brian marched in his 50th class reunion this year, I marched in my 15th. Though we are separated by a generation, our fundamental faith in a society driven by bottom-up participation is very similar. And here I thought this was a new force in part created by the bottom-up nature of the Internet -- rather, it seems the Internet has given us an outlet to express what has been in our nature for a long time.

As Brian points out in his book Civil Society: The Underpinnings of American Democracy, self-organization and voluntary associations are an incredibly important and fundamental part of our American democracy. He encourages us to do more to understand how to nurture and develop this aspect of our democracy. I highly recommend this book.

During our seminar, we talked about the importance of self-organization and trust in enabling effective communities. We talked about the importance of taking action as individuals, taking the initiative to form associations around a shared interest or passion. We talked about how effective that kind of action can really be.

Though some scholars sound a pessimistic note about the state of our American society, Brian points out how effective voluntary associations have been in the last few decades. He listed several examples of incredible progress, all without government initiative:

• in the past 20 years, we've gone from virtually ignoring the needs of the dying, to widespread availability of community-based hospice care


• awareness of our responsibility to future generations as stewards of our environment is now prevalent


• through great personal risk, the moral courage of volunteers established a new ethic of civil rights in this country, which has spread to every disenfranchised group


• a few mothers thought they could do something about drunk driving, and they did

And there are so many more examples. Yet somehow we are also insecure about our ability to affect change. Much of this seems rooted in a lack of trust in government's ability to solve problems. While we trust our own ability to have a positive impact, we don't trust government's.

This question of trust is something I want to explore more fully in another entry.

Despite this incredible progress, through the actions of individuals getting together to make something happen, we are also at risk. Without a clear focus on how to nurture this civil society, I am inspired by Brian's admonition that we may lose it.

Brian O'Connell quotes historian Edward Gibbon on the fall of Athenian democracy:

In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security.

They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort and freedom...

When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them...

When the freedom they wished for most -- was freedom from responsibility...

Then, Athens ceased to be free.

[emphasis added]

What was true for Athens in its day could be true in ours. Unless we are vigilant; unless we strive to understand and nurture our civil society. And unless we continue to stand up as individuals for what we believe in, establish trust with others, and make things happen.

Brian O'Connell, John Gardner, and many others have worked nearly their entire lives trying to help us understand this. Despite our challenges, today I'm optimistic. The Internet has given us an infrastructure to connect people, to enable the formation of trusting relationships and voluntary associations -- for the first time, even across national borders. As individuals, we now have the potential to make an unprecedented impact.

Let's make the most of it.

I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV

Just as I was getting over the embarassment (and mild annoyance) of having to defend myself for not having posted an entry for a couple of weeks, I saw Ross Mayfield wonder aloud what had happened to me.

It was purely coincidental that my last post tried to explore the difference between institutional and personal speech. But Ross does highlight some of the issues I've found nagging at me over the last few weeks.

Now that I know more people are watching what I post, I'm more hesitant to post informally. I want to, but it seems risky at a personal level. This is interesting to me, because I don't find it risky at an institutional level -- meaning, I find I'm not that worried about the issue I raised in my last post. I'm more worried that I'll post something here that isn't terribly interesting or significant.

Therefore, I want to spend more time thinking about what I post. We're all busy, and it turns out that I haven't had a great deal of time in the last few weeks. Hence, no post.

Ross does identify something of particular and different value in blogging: the exact informal, un-edited, and maybe not terribly-well thought out aspect of what gets posted. It actually reminds me of that peculiar fascination I have with watching live TV news during a developing situation. You sometimes pick up early reports of things that you never hear about later. It could be that those early reports were not based in fact -- or it could be that the evidence was ephemeral and was swept away before it could be more widely verified. It seems a shame that those early reports are effectively lost.

So blogs don't have to be perfect, or even try to be. There is value in their imperfectness. Maybe it's all about wabi-sabi.

I agree that it would be a shame if I were held to be somehow institutionally responsible for statements I make here. A standard disclaimer, in a very easy to understand form like the Creative Commons licenses, would be great.

In the meantime, in case anybody is confused, the statements I make here are my own opinion, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization I'm involved with. And the title of this post is one of my earliest memories of a not-so-convincing disclaimer.

Institutional versus personal speech

Recently I've been having conversations with various people about the difference between institutional and personal speech. There are a couple of recent events that highlight this issue:

• the journalist who was forced to suspend his blog
• questions around Joi's promotion of and investment in Six Apart
• what Esther Dyson had to say about her own new blog

And my own questions about this particular blog, and how it might impact or reflect upon my public activities.

The way I have been thinking about this is that I consider this space to be my personal space, where I'm free to express myself independent of my affiliations. I am obviously very committed professionally to a couple of institutions, both for-profit and non-profit. And I am frequently called upon to make public statements about or on behalf of those institutions.

But it seems to me that the predominant culture around web logs today is that the speech is more personal, and not necessarily intended to be representative of a particular institution or affiliation. Now, that doesn't mean that the speech isn't public -- of course it is. If I say something idiotic here, I'll probably suffer the consequences. But what I say here shouldn't be interpreted as me speaking for any of the institutions I am affiliated with.

This is all new to me, and I'm sure I'm not the first to tackle this question. I wonder how others with dual- or multiple roles have dealt with this?