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Fuzzy Signalsextracting the signal from the noise |
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Fuzzy Signalsextracting the signal from the noise |
The Financial Times "Digital Business" has a special report on a favourite theme: open source and how it is impacting innovation, collaboration, and product development within the corporate sector. (Sept 21, 2005 -- short term access only so read now.) With the FT riding high as the world's best daily for the business intelligentsia, take heed large organization types: if you ever needed a piece to put in front your boss's nose and add credibility to some of your open source ideas, this should help.
Highlights include:
Online Revolution by Richard Waters: This covers familiar ground -- namely the growing importance of user generated content and communities of hobby tribes to help co-create value -- but is worth reading for the fresh examples. For instance, we learn that kitesurfers "have taken to using sophisticated computer modelling software to design the most efficient kites. They then share their ideas over the internet, refining their concepts before sending them to a manufacturer." It's the magic of the community process that they love, not just the technology, and the fact that they are more in control of the process. "These are the basic ingredients of a new approach to innovation."
What does this mean for businesses that rely on more traditional “closed” approaches to innovation? The software industry provides some of the first lessons. One is that open innovation, when used successfully, forces established companies to think much harder about where they channel their research and development investments: there’s no point spending heavily in areas where a community approach has produced an acceptable alternative. Deciding where to draw the line between “open” and “closed” development, however, is not easy.Many of the authors cite and highly recommend the new book Democratizing Innovation by MIT Sloan School's Eric von Hippell.
The March of the Web-Enabled Amateurs by Lawerence Lessig: Lessig reminds that many great intellectual projects, like the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary which was started in 1857 have had an open source component but these have been costly and hard to organize. (Also see WC Book Review, In Praise of Amateurs & Passionate Hobbyists.) The internet, however, has overcome these obstacles. Whereas large scale collaborations around complex projects were once a dream, the net can now make them happen. Call it the age of the amateur: one who works for the love of what he does, and not for money. The "work" in this online collaboration is experiences by the "workers" as a kind of play. And this play is producing important value to society, and increasing, to corporations as well." [Is this what we do? I hope so. At the very least, I'm having fun :) ]In all these cases, it is technology that allows the collaboration and communities to flourish. But the technology merely enables a familiar part of human life...
The challenge now, as Yochai Benkler, a Yale law professor, puts it in a forthcoming book, is to understand “under what conditions these many and diverse social actions can turn into an important modality of economic production” – both for the wealth that they might create, and also just for the fun of it.
Indeed, some economic theorists are now dubbing peer-to-peer approaches the third form of production.
Web brings 'us' closer to 'them" by Scott Morrison where similar "prosumer" and "netizen" themes are developed: This collaborative innovation is starting to dissolve the distinction between producers and consumers of content – between “us” and “them”. This new content is challenging the hegemony of traditional businesses and, as with the Katrina bulletin boards, fulfilling needs typically met by the state.The author raises the usual questions: But how can anyone be sure that collaborative content available on the internet is credible? Who owns online content and how can it be used and distributed? And when liability is an issue, who is responsible for it?
Pitting new media and blogging versus traditional media is over, he argues. Both exists in tension, but both need each other now. [No kidding. What am I writing about, an article from the FT, a so-called august publication!] And mainstream media experiments are underway. For instance, the LA Times developed wikitorial an online editorial readers were invited to rewrite. "The aim was to create a 'constantly evolving collaboration among readers in a communal search for truth.'" This didn't work, unfortunately; it was soon shut down after pornography was being posted. But at least they tried.
Morrison worries about the social balkanization and narcissistic behaviour that can occur if we're only reading and writing about the things we care about or agree with, instead being forced to entertain alternative views and information and see the world more broadly. Quoting Cass Sunstein from the University of Chicago Law School “Democracy is undermined when people chose to live in echo chambers of their own design." So far, there is little evidence of this -- rather:
The evidence so far suggests that the collaborative creativity on the internet is a powerful equaliser for the masses, even as it poses serious legal, economic and societal challenges both for “us” in the establishment and “them” (the consumers).
It was election day in Afghanistan on September 18th, the second time the Afghani people have gone to the polls to select their leaders since 2001. According to the Human Rights Watch blog, the process was mostly free of violence and the logistics went smoothly. Some incidents of fraud were reported, and the pervasive "climate of fear" and intimidation ensured that some people didn't vote. The FT reports that turnout was subdued with less than the 70% that voted in 2004 and less women going to the polls. (That still beats the pants off many jurisdictions, like the US, with voter turnout averaging around 50%). Overall, Human Rights Watch concludes: "the Afghan people, despite their widespread cynicism, showed that they're committed to an electoral process, even if it was flawed. Provisional results will be available October 10, 2005.
The role of women in this election is particularly interesting. By law, 68 seats out of 249 seats in the lower parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, are reserved for women candidates. In a curious case of political leapfrogging, this means there will be a higher proportion of women representation in a legislative body than many western countries. Given that just four years ago the Taliban was strictly controlling women's freedoms, this is also a huge reversal in fortunes. A cause for celebration indeed! Yet that's not even the most important bit. Many women are campaigning not just because of these quotas; they are running for office because "female candidates offer an alternative to the blood-stained hands of the country's warlords and druglords," says Jo Johnson in the Financial Times. With about 10% of the male candidates being implicated in war crimes and corruption -- about 500 in total -- Afghanis are just fed up with these leaders and want better options.
Of course, the road won't be easy for these aspiring women politicians. Afghanistan remains a deeply conservative culture, and this development represents a societal sea-change. A backlash always remains a threat. There are stories of intimidation, social ostracization, and husbands divorcing or punishing their wives for running (often by taking another wife). Still, this is an inspiring example of women finding the courage to stand up and fill the political vacuum. For this country, this is also a positive unintended outcome after years of bloodshed and unrest, not to mention proof of the wisdom in the old saying "what goes around, comes around". You pollute your own political pool with enough maladptive behaviour, and eventually the social ecosystem bites back. Other polities are likely to see similar feedback, sooner or later. For fun, just pick your political fishbowl of choice and play out this scenario. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but the long view evidence is clear on this front. Incredibly surprising things happen rather consistently these days... like the pivotal role women are now playing in Afghanistan.
The Financial Times this weekend reviews papal biographies in "The Power and the Glory" by John Lloyd.
In framing the new pope's future focus, the following stood out for me:Benedict’s enemy is liberalism, and its necessary concomitant - the belief that absolute truth is not likely to be available, and certainly cannot serve as an organising principle for society.
For Benedict, relativism is the belief that there can be no one true belief: that all must have at least the offer of equal respect; and that modern societies reach the highest pitch of civilisation when they attain the most perfect tolerance of diverse faiths, all of which can practise their rites in peace and mutual indifference. This seems to be Benedict’s vision of one of the circles of Hell.
Never mind that Benedict likely misrepresents relativism, or at least its many variations. This theological stance is the maladptive outgrowth of a cancer long seeded by the Enlightenment movement (the intellectual architects of today's modernist assumptions) when they championed reason above all else, and thus failed to understand the basic human psychological need for meaning and purpose. As I write in a previous essay, this is the cost to living in world where boundaries are shifting. A retreat to a simpler, black-and-white, defined world is one consequence. Yet as human history is my evidence, we make big leaps in consciousness only when we embrace complexity and learn to navigate uncertainty -- not pretend it doesn't exist or create elaborate rationales to the same effect. Much theology does this, mainly because it suits the Church's organizational purposes very well. As the author reminds us: "Catholicism’s strength - as against the Protestant churches’ - is its ability to call to heel its sons and even its daughters."
Hence the innovation challenge for intellectual and spiritual circles that still believe in the values of liberalism: how do we create a meaning-system that celebrates difference and plurality, and that better reflects the complexity of the world, while taking into deep consideration human nature's need for a solid belief system that includes the unchanging, the transcendent, and a broader narrative from which we all can see our parts in, even if these parts are "relative" to each other, like different fragments of a puzzle.
Blaise Pascal is quoted. His wisdom is worth meditating over: “A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.” Indeed.
Need something to cheer you up? Well, here is something a little different. Let's say this goes in the personal "worldchanging" department. It's a beautiful and inspiring story told by Craig Taylor of the Vancouver Sun about how modern email correspondences and relationships can lead to lasting love. Sigh.
Thanks Toby. We got lucky too.
On a recent long haul flight, I soothed my jet-lagged brain with the National Geographic magazine, specifically, the Special Issue on Africa (September 2005). Like many people, I'm inexplicably attracted to this amazingly large, diverse, and complicated continent. Perhaps it's primal. Trace the human family tree far enough back and we're all Africans in some genealogical sense. Yet with all of the faddish policy noise Africa has received in the wake of the G8 conference -- positive in many respects but annoying in others -- I've found myself tuning out when it comes to Africa. We only have so much psychological space for doom-and-gloom stories.
Fortunately, this National Geographic issue has brought my attention back to this continent in a fresh way. Visually stunning as always, this September issue is a relatively easy entry point into some of the positive, as well as disturbing, themes and developments in parts of Africa. With a tag-line, "whatever you thought, think again" -- if I can be so bold, quite Worldchangingesque in attitude! -- the issue tries to dispel some of the conventional perceptions and assumptions we have about Africa, i.e. it's going to hell in a hurry. While I'm no expert on Africa (we have Ethan Zuckerman in that department), I think they mostly succeed.
Biogeographer Jared Diamond sets the tone in his essay on the Shape of Africa. "Is the African continent doomed externally to wars, poverty, and devastating diseases? Absolutely not." Even for Diamond, geography is not destiny.
On my own visits to Africa, I've been struck by how harmoniously ethnic groups live together in many countries—far better than they do in many other parts of the globe. Tensions arise in Africa, as they do elsewhere, when people see no other way out of poverty except to fight their neighbors for dwindling resources. But many areas of Africa have an abundance of resources: The rivers of central Africa are great generators of hydroelectric power; the big animals are a major source of ecotourism revenue in eastern and southern Africa; and the forests in the wetter regions, if managed and logged sustainably, would be renewable and lucrative sources of income.
There are also nicely crafted, slightly quirky and personal pieces on: the Congo's Mbuti Pygmies, a balanced piece on Chad's experiment in overcoming the "curse of oil" that has plagued other African countries, and a touching Nairobi native's meditation on his megacity. So if you see a copy lying around the Frequent Flyer lounge you happen to be in, pick it up! Or a local library would do, just leave that one behind.
Oh, one more thing: this venerable publication has pioneered what it means to be a socially responsible organization long before CSR became a term. Most recently, they have launched Good Companies Good Works , a " marketing platform designed to recognize and celebrate our advertising partners whose philanthropic efforts effect community at large." Looks like National Geographic is trying to use its brand and publication platform to create a seal of good corporate citizenship with its patrons. Keep a look out for this logo, and we'll watch closely if this innovative campaign has an impact on the actions of their sponsors. This could be an important symbiotic relationship that makes a difference.
(Thanks Dad for always ensuring we had this subscription around the house growing up, and putting this one in my path on a recent visit.)
Cross-posting: published also at Worldchanging
"Refugees in America." The first time I read this phrase last week it jammed my mental filters like sand in gears. While America is well used to foreign refugees migrating into its country, the fact that we now have American refugees created on American soil -- not the abstracted "other", strangers from strange lands -- is an entirely different psychology, the implications of which will take a while to comprehend. It matters less that the UN and others are pushing back on the use of this term. (Technically, a refugee is "a person who has been forced to leave his/her home and has crossed an international border.") The point is while many of us automatically associate the word "refugee" as an outcome of developing world problems, the fact is many developing world-like problems are appearing with greater frequency in the developed world. Perhaps Katrina might be the tipping point disaster that grounds this firmly into people's mindsets. At least, this is my hope.So as many commentators get into the nitty gritty of social breakdown and human suffering, I'm interested in the unimaginable: the positive psychological consequences of this terrible event -- shifts in public attitudes and perceptions -- and the pressure this might bring to bear on policy-makers. Seeing the silver lining is hard to do right now; but as the waters recede, it's getting easier for our brains to think ahead. And it's important that we do so: our window is now-- in the next 6 to 18 months -- if we're to influence the conversation and catalyze more sustainable outcomes for New Orleans, the Gulf States, and beyond. Recall that in the wake of 9/11, it wasn't until Bush's January State of the Union speech before the "war on terror" strategy became locked in. We forget this, but people were asking deeper, reflective questions about the causes of the causes. Let's learn from that disaster.
To turn tragedy into something good, it helps to imagine a plausible positive end game, and then work our ways backwards to the present, trying to figure out the capabilities we need and how practically to create them. Already we have Alan AtKisson excellent piece on his vision of a new New Orleans. Like Alan, I'm only looking through one lens here. I don't have any comprehensive scenarios worked out yet, just some ideas and frameworks pointing to the deeper mental and systemic shifts I would like to see. But I encourage us all to brainstorm here about what these scenarios might be. So please tell us your thoughts: five years from now, what would a better Gulf State region look like, and what should we be focusing on now to achieve this?
With so few benchmarks to draw from, it's only natural that people are making comparisons to the South Asian tsunami last year. It's important, however, to note the differences between these two events:
Despite these differences, I hope Katrina shares one important feature of the tsunami: I hope it continues to expand peoples' awareness of bigger picture, cause-and-effect relationships that only disasters like these can magnify for all to see. I also hope this event expands peoples' "circle of empathy", which is arguably the most distinctive legacy of the tsunami. This may be wishful thinking, and the biggest difference between the two disasters, but it's important an wish. It's also worth understanding the dynamics of empathy, because this hard-to-measure and complex emotion will be a key factor in how we address our most important problems on this planet.
Human security requires environmental sustainability
The linkage between a healthy environment and human security is something we've written a lot about, specifically, the connection between healthy coastlines and the ability to weather storms (See Emily Gertz's pieces here and here). I hope this gets hammered home, especially amongst locals. This may be a realistic outcome because there is mounting evidence and institutional support behind this idea in places like the UN, which is a symbolic start. We've long known the problems of building on coastal and flood plains. As the data sets are showing, the 1970s-1990s time frame was a naturally low period of hurricane activity, whereas the 1930s-1960s were much more active -- a key reason why the coastal areas were sparely populated.
So even without the climate change factor, we're entering a new "natural" cycle of higher activity. Clearly, previous generations had learned something important. Add to this more complexity -- climate change -- and even local knowledge is being challenged. For climate change happens on a much larger scale. To simplify, climate change is changing our ocean systems and warming them up. The evidence is solid (e.g. here, here and here) so much so, that Bush at the G8 Summit in Scotland conceded some ground on the climate change issue. As meteorologists and oceanographers will tell you, warm ocean surface temperatures are jet fuel for cyclonic activity. This is why we can't take Katrina in isolation from these broader, global environmental changes. And why foreign "I told you so" politicians can't resist taking the opportunity to rub in these connections.
The good news? As we often point out at Worldchanging, our ability to plan, forecast, and access better data, for decision making has never been better. Two days warning is not bad; just ten years ago this would not have been possible. We're also getting better long view data which puts weather patterns in perspective. For instance, armed with the above hurricane data, would you seriously buy a home on the Gulf Coast? I bet not. Developers may soon find themselves operating in a different context. Buyers will demand more information and more transparency; more sophisticated risk assessments will emerge.
But a lack of knowledge usually isn't the biggest barrier to change these days. Rather, it's a lack of political will. So perhaps the best news is how this event might change the political agenda and process in Washington and the Gulf State regions. As the NYT reports, already Bush has cancelled a high profile meeting with China's President Hu and his schedule has been entirely reworked in the weeks ahead. His advisors are clearly trying to mitigate the political fallout for failing to react with the requisite speed and empathy. As another NYT editorial put it:
If the Homeland Security Department was so ill prepared for a natural disaster that everyone knew was coming, how is it equipped to handle other kinds of crises? Has the war in Iraq drained the nation of resources that it needs for things like flood prevention? Is the National Guard ready to handle a disaster that might be even worse, like a biological or nuclear attack?
Indeed. We should also have a conversation about what, exactly, constitutes a natural disaster, a term that's increasingly blurred and hard to define these days. The choice of terms matters because this directs actions and frames mindsets. As I've written before, many of these disasters are exacerbated and even caused by "unnatural" (read: human) factors. But if disasters are perceived as "acts of God", our institutional and emotional response is passive, reactive, and not focused on dealing with the causes. I won't bore you with the bureaucratic division of labor, but natural disasters usually get different institutional responses than say civil strife or a oil spill. Let's call them for what they are unnatural natural disasters. (Okay, wordsmiths, work with me here.)
We are all third worlders now
Let's pause again on the use of the word "refugee" in a first world context. Katrina shows us how distinctions between the developing and developed world are becoming increasingly meaningless and problematic. In Europe, it has been another biblical summer with fires and floods dominating the headlines. And in the US, elements of the "developing" world have always been present, whether it be urban ghettoes or rural poverty -- failed states with the States that are systematically ignored, abstracted, or mythologized in film and music. However, watching the images on TV, it's hard not to see that New Orleans looks a lot like Bangladesh after a flood or parts of Honduras after Hurricane Mitch (October 1998). African American refugees, huddled together in squalid conditions, look not much different from the people we see in Darfur or East Timor, Palestine or Afghanistan. Let's hope that they don't stay this way, as they do in the developing world. The larger point is this: will people see these similarities? Will this help link America psychologically at a deeper level to the problems and concerns of the rest of the world? And will Katrina trigger the same kind of empathy and response that the tsunami created? These are big questions. The cynical, history-facing side of me says no: this is all too idealistic, the current status quo would forbid this. But we may be entering new territory where history and precedent are becoming less reliable guides to the future.
In many respects, the future is already present in the developing South, making this a rich source of learning and insight, something many first worlders don't intuitively take to very easily. For instance, a key lesson in studying natural disasters in the developing world is that weak states and poor people get disproportionately hit by them. While more natural disasters appear to happen in the so-called Third World, this is not just a function of unlucky geography, or more insidiously, the mistaken assumption that this is just "natural" in these parts of the world. Disasters hit these places with more devastating results because their environments have been made brittle by overuse and competition for resources. On top of this they have poor infrastructure, poor planning and forecasting tools, and poor building practices. Also missing are things we take for granted which cushion and mitigate the blow of disasters: things like insurance, government assistance, relief agencies, and functioning social networks and communities. This is why the tsunami effort required such fund-raising because many of these support systems were absent.
This pattern is now showing itself with Katrina. The fact that it was the poor people in New Orleans who struggled to evacuate the area because they didn't have access to mass transportation speaks volumes about the social tradeoffs these communities have made. The positive flip: disasters like these can provide a special space, however temporarily, to talk about the "undiscussables". The unacceptable levels of poverty in the world's richest country certainly seems to be one of those taboos in some American political circles. Let's hope this catastrophe starts a productive conversation about the causes and consequences of the third world in America.
Expanding the Circle of Empathy
In using the phrase "circle of empathy" I'm referring to a theory developed by Jaron Lanier, a virtual reality scientist (amongst many other things). Found in his essay One Half of A Manifesto, the theory, in a nutshell, is that every person draws a circle around them; inside the circle are things that deserve empathy, outside the circle are things that don't deserve this emotional investment. A simple enough concept, intuitively obvious, but how we define the boundaries of this circle are complicated and vary across individuals, cultures and contexts. Nevertheless, this framework is worth understanding better because figuring out how we construct this circle may go a long way to creating a better future and reducing human suffering when disasters strike.
Lanier describes the pros and cons of defining the boundaries of our "circle of empathy". Quoting from a GBN interview:
If you try to make your circle of empathy very large, it takes tremendous energy to maintain your circle of empathy. There is the opposite problem where people make their circle of empathy so small that they cut off a part of themselves. But first let’s talk about the energy required to keep a circle of empathy big.
Right now we have global telecommunications. All of us are aware of how awful it is to be poor in a big city in India and how miserably short life is. We’re aware of how many people die from malaria. We’re aware of what’s happening with AIDS in central Africa. We’re aware of what will be happening in all likelihood with AIDS in central Asia. We know all of that, and yet our capacity for empathy is simply exhausted. We have empathy fatigue.
Yet problems compound when:
..the more partial or one-sided our communication is with people who might be within our circle of empathy, the more vulnerable we are to have our empathy degrade into vanity... It’s a thing we should spend carefully if it’s going to mean anything at all. Narcissism is cheap; real empathy is expensive.
So apply this to politics. Lanier believes that "the Left generally seeks to expand the circle, but occasionally overreaches by including too much. The Right, on the other hand, generally wants to tighten or defend the circle, which gives it an inherent organizational advantage." But this eventually becomes self defeating for the Right. It's only when crises hit (like this one) that people realize the advantage of investing in the "social capital" of a community. All of a sudden, society becomes nasty, brutish and short. The headline is that both the Left and Rich have historically failed to strike the right balance, and this suggests an opportunity to reframe the problem and policy solutions.
Like many serious thinkers, Lanier is skeptical that empathy can scale, especially when it requires transcending cultural, political and social boundaries. Multicultural societies, he argues, don't make the same level social investment in their people as do homogenous cultures. But I think Lanier may be wrong or only partly right. This may explain Japan, but how do you explain Canada? Or eras of the Ottoman Empire? (High social investment, highly diverse.) In fact, I'll go further: he has to be wrong. Because empathy -- putting yourself in another's shoes -- is the key to successful dialogue; and dialogue is a special form of communication, a social technology if you will, that we need to invest in because it's the best way to build shared understanding across different worldviews and beliefs. (For more on these dialogue tools, see Adversarial Politics: Is there another model?)
Granted, empathy is "expensive" as Lanier puts it. It's hard to practice empathy even with your best friend, let alone strangers in strange lands. But the response to the tsunami, however imperfect, challenges this negative view of our ability to scale empathy. Sure, there were real "narcissistic" factors driving the flood of money and sympathy for the tsunami victims. But it was a genuine start. Actions were taken. Babies were adopted, organizations formed, and many American households regardless of political orientation gave money. I think there is tremendous untapped human potential in the form of empathy waiting to find positive outlets. As Lanier alludes to, the solution spaces are better, more authentic, many-to-many (or peer-to-peer) communication channels. The mainstream media is just a one-way broadcast. We also have information overload, and this doesn't help facilitate engagement and participation, which is what I think people really are craving. More and more, people want to get involved, for all kinds of complex psychological reasons. We just haven't figured out the requisite social ingenuity to match the social needs with these individual needs and latent capabilities. The good news is that the blogsphere is an experiment in many-to-many communications, and the blogsphere has triggered decisive actions (for better or worse), so this is evidence of an emerging new pathway forward.
Katrina, however, may not generate the same outpouring of empathy as the tsunami for several reasons. As I've mentioned, ironically, the perceived "advantages" of this disaster happening on American soil -- the money, the institutional capabilities, the infrastructure -- may become liabilities, because the average person inside or outside the US won't be as compelled to participate in this event as much as they did with the tsunami. The perception of America in the world as being a "rogue superpower" can't help either. Also, because there was a lack of infrastructure or systems in place to channel money and effort to the tsunami victims, these things were created fresh without the baggage of previous institutional arrangements by social entrepreneurs, many of whom used the Web to directly connect people with places, ideas with money. Worldchanging, for instance, played a small part in this amazing effort, only too happy to facilitate the Architecture for Humanity campaign and promote the Southeast Asian Earthquake and Tsunami Blog. I'm not saying that the tsunami response was without faults; the usual donor-recipient pathologies were present in full. But it was a qualitatively different experience, I think, than previous mass outpourings of sympathy. None have been so global and self-organizing. Fortunately, these innovations are crossing over now to help with Katrina, with examples like Katrinahome by WAP. Again, this is reverse leapfrog of sorts, which we'll see a lot more of in near future.
Another hypothesis why Katrina is different many have to do with the legacy of policies that have encouraged a narrow circle of empathy in these communities and in America as a whole. Social capital and trust matters when it comes to creating the conditions for adaptiveness and resilience, and these things don't get formed overnight. I'm no anthropologist and I know nothing of the community structure in the Gulf States. I can only guess that one of the things people love about New Orleans, and now morn, is its richly diverse culture, old communities, and thus social capital. But somehow this didn't trickle up into helping the city adapt to this event, or this was missing in some quarters. We'll know more later. In any event, local senators are now talking about how this disaster showcases "institutional racism". I have no idea if this is true, but the fact that most of the victims were poor African-American people may have something to do with the delay. If they were white Bostonians or Palm Beach residents, would the reaction be any different? I would like to say no; that what we're seeing is equal opportunity incompetence. Future investigations may tell us the truth of this matter.
Crash and renewal?
I know things seem really bad right now. While this may be small comfort to the victims, many dynamics of systemic change follow a "crash and renewal" cycle where things have to get bad for them to get better. Disasters are a frequent catalyst of this cycle. Whether Katrina will be a catalyst, it's hard to say. It's even harder to predict whether any new norms will emerge, like a broader circle of empathy. We'll likely need more shocks, more disasters, and a whole lot more social ingenuity and activity to make this happen. Our experience coping with disasters will only increase in frequency, so we'll have many more opportunities to test our capacity for empathy. On the other hand, if we are experiencing such a renewal process in the Gulf Coast states, it won't be long before we can test this hypothesis. Tangible things to monitor over the next 18 months include: new legislation, changes in building codes, changes in people and personnel in public office and agencies, and where people elect to live and rebuild. Less tangible changes revolve around these questions: are people retreating to old norms, old behaviours, old ways of doing things? Or are they "reorganizing" in new and different ways? I'd love to have examples of the latter, not being close to this situation in New Orleans.
Lastly, a better future for the Gulf States requires a plausible, positive end-game scenario from which we can measure and test the developments and proposals that will be flying fast and furious in the weeks ahead. This is best created collaboratively. I hope this is happening at many levels, as I write, amongst policy makers and community groups. This can't just happen from the top-down, especially when it's clear how badly a top down strategy and system failed to protect people. In these precious months ahead -- remember, we have a narrow window -- we also need the collective energy of citizens in these communities to put pressure, from the bottom up, on the political forces that may get in the way of better ways of doing things. And above all, we need to do this with empathy, and not lapse in objectifying and distancing ourselves from what's happening on the ground in New Orleans. Because the new reality is that we are all just one or two degrees from being third worlders. A humbling feeling and this is no bad thing.