From Reboot, besides a healhty immersion in the web’s countercultural matrix, I brought back good news: it can be done. The gap between the culture of the European Commission, that designs policy technology in this continent, and that of the producers and advanced users of technology can actually be bridged. I think so because the Reboot community, which kind of stands for the most hacktivist and tech-savvy part of society, showed a clear interest for Wikicrats, the “European” session on technology policy designed by Nadia El-Imam and Bror Salmelin: participation was strong and very diverse. The session produced many interesting comments and at least one good idea, building a resource list of civil servants that share - or at least are friendly to - the Reboot Culture.

For this coming together to really happen we will need time, patience and a radical revision of the narratives. I keep being taken by surprise by how dismissive many civil servants are of their own culture. Tito, for example, keeps saying “We are boring, we use obsolete tools, we don’t get results.” Obsolete tools? Nah. Tito has a PhD at MIT, whereas a lot of people out there can boast little more than a cool Twitter profile. No results? I don’t think so. Public administration gave us free education, water pipes, railways. Even the internet is a project of a government agency! Hacker culture is great, but, with all due respect, it still has to produce any comparable results. For me, public administration is fascinating as a culture: ancient, powerful and mysterious. Its artifacts get me thunderstruck, wondering “How did they do that?”, like for the pryamids in Egypt.

So, what I would like to see is free spaces like Wikicrats, where the hacker culture and the public administration culture can explore each other with mutual respect, and try to do stuff together. At the very minimum it will mean a healthy breaking free from self-referentiality, that cultural poison, as David pointed out. And if a synthesis between them could be achieved… well, then humanity would actually get a chance to tackle its global challenges.

Tra gli eventi tecnologici a cui ho partecipato Reboot è il più vicino alla cultura internet originale. Radicalismo cognitivo, richiami allo yoga e allo zen, Djs, spazio giochi per i bambini, feste interrotte dall’arrivo della polizia (l’anno scorso): si sente benissimo l’origine controculturale della scena hacker. E i grandi vecchi come Dave Winer o David Weinberger (entrambi presenti: il secondo ieri ha affrontato con una passione quasi fisica il tema della moralità e della cyberutopia, nientemeno) hanno uno status simile a quello degli ex partigiani nell’Italia degli anni 60: hanno un prestigio indiscusso, sono circondati di grande affetto e rispetto, e in virtù di questo si possono permettere posizioni più radicali e innovative di chiunque altro. Non so se la mia generazione riuscirà a produrre pensatori altrettanto influenti in questa cultura. Non credo. Meglio tenerci stretti questi.

A proposito di fine della musica. Antonio Incorvaia - Dio ce lo conservi - si è preso la briga di censire oltre 200 remake musicali usciti neilla prima metà del 2009. Sembra veramente un film di zombie: Take on me 2009 (due versioni), Like a prayer 2009, Losing my religion 2009 (due versioni), Tarzan Boy 2009, Footloose 2009, You spin me round 2009, American Pie 2009, What is love 2009 (due versioni) e via rifacendo. il tutto, ovviamente, “senza contare gli album di cover di Luca carboni, Morgan e compagnia bella”.

A questo punto ci sta bene il banner, anche questo segnalato da Antonio. Tiè.

That between Nadia El-Imam and Bror Salmelin is a really unlikely alliance. She’s an Afro-Swedish interaction designer in her 20s, rooted in the hacker culture and suspicious towards large public bureaucracies; he is a Finnish senior officer at the European Commission in his 50s, technology expert (he had an important role in the birth of the Living Lab movement) and with a very institutional role. Despite many language differences, the two managed to understand (somewhat) and respect each other, and together they conceived and deployed Future building for wikicrats, a really innovative initiative: rather than setting up their own Brussels event, the Commission launched a workshop within Reboot - that, for people unfamiliar with it, is an event of the international hacker community started in 1998, where you can rub shoulders with people like Howard Rheingold, Tim O’Reilly and Dave Winer. The workshop’s goal is to share a new way of thinking about technology policy, that takes the best from both the governance culture (accuntability, impartiality, inclusivity, orientation towards the common good) and the hacker culture (sharing. radical transparency, meritocracy, autonomy).

They invited people that, with a few exceptions, are not technology policy experts. They are people just like you and me, who create or use technology; they are very diverse for culture, personal history, profession and interests. They are also interesting people. Gianluca Dettori is a venture capitalist; Robin Chase is an entrepreneur interested in transport; Amelia Andersdotter is a key figure in the Swedish Pirate Party; Elvira Berlingieri is a digital law expert; I should be speaking for the creative world (pretty tall assignment); Freek van Krevel works at the Commission, and together with David Osimo he is only professional technology policy expert.

I expect that, interacting within a context of shared values, these people acquire new metaphors to think about tech policy through the people who do it and who are impacted by it. Civil servants say “hi-tech firms”, and they think of Economics 101 models mashed with neoliberal rhethoric; well, these models are light-years distant from the people who actually build companies, and interacting with Robin and Gianluca might help amending, deepening or downright discarding them. Similiarly, many hackers think of “Eurocrats” as some kind of grey trolls obsessed with the shapes of bananas; and they have no idea of the real interest and - yes - ideals of people like Bror and Freek. Participants to FBFW can act as personae for each other. Its personal approach should help this, and I really hope it could enhance mutual understanding across tech policy stakeholders.

Knowing a little the stiff-upper-lip style favoured oy the European Commission, this is really a giant cultural leap. We’ll see how it goes. For now: kudos Nadia and Bror. We need more stuff like this IMHO.

Tag: wikicrats
Twitter hashtag: #wikicrats
Livestream URL: www.ustream.tv/channel/wikicrats-at-reboot11

Non sono un fan di Twitter, ma il suo ruolo nella vicenda iraniana va riconosciuto e premiato. Mi chiedo se Twitter si accorgerà mai anche dei problemi del mio povero paese.

Finalmente su Vimeo la versione completa di Us Now, il film di Ivo Gormley sulla collaborazione di massa mediata da internet. L’avevo visto in anteprima in marzo a Public Services 2.0, e ve lo stra- straconsiglio. Tra l’altro, vi compare (più volte) Clay Shirky in tutto il suo splendore.

(hat tip: Liz Azyan)

Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

Giovedì 18 giugno proviamo a fare una roba carina, ancorché un po’ geek. Ci troviamo alle 19.30 per un aperitivo più o meno legato alla colonna milanese di Kublai, e fin qua siamo nella normalità meneghina. Ma alle 21.30 comincia la conferenza di Ruggero Rossi sulla network analysis come strumento per studiare i social network, e parte un film completamente diverso. Ruggero parlerà dal Porto dei creativi in Second Life, e il suggestivo spazio di Creaticity Gate (via Pasubio 14, zona Garibaldi) si trasformerà in un gateway tra la Seconda Vita e la prima. Per carità, niente in tutto: un buon collegamento in fibra, un wi-fi, un proiettore, un impianto di amplificazione. Però potremo vedere e sentire Ruggero e gli altri amici che intervengono dalla seconda vita a grandezza naturale o quasi: l’ubergeek Stex Auer sostiene che il lumen del proiettore è abbastanza alto per consentirci di vedere sullo schermo avatar grandi come le persone vere mantenendo la qualità del colore. Il teletrasporto di Star Trek ci fa una pippa.

Io tenterò di sdoppiarmi: sarò al Porto come Mr Volare, e a Creaticity Gate con la mia carcassa analogica. Se volete fare lo stesso venite con portatile e cuffia, ma controllate con Stex prima di iniziare, perché possiamo loggare un numero limitato di avatar prima di saturare la banda.

La conferenza, tra l’altro, sarà super interessante. Ruggero ha usato un crawler per ricostruire il grafo delle interazioni progettuali su Kublai, e su quel grafo ha fatto una serie di analisi matematiche. Io ho poi provato a prendere decisioni di gestione di Kublai sulla base di quella analisi.

Se vi interessa venire - in qualunque delle due vite - fatecelo sapere su Facebook o Kublai. Chi preferisce il buon vecchio web può seguire lo streaming.

I may be too optimistic, but I see some signals that a new kind of conversation is opening between (some) public administrations and (some) citizens. Here they are:

1. The OECD workshop I took part in last week, in London. We talked of co-design and co-delivery in public services, public administrations and citizens together; and we went about it in a free flowing, informal style, basing the discussion on detailed case studies. Interestingly, it was not a one-off, but part of a series (Innovative Delivery Workshop Series), so it seems that the OECD has some intention of carrying this stuff forwards.

2. The Public Services 2.0 group is launching today a collective brainstorming that should lead to an open declaration to present to the EU ministerial conference on the European IT strategy (Målmo, November 2009)

3. The European Commission participates an a typical hacker conference like Reboot, and it chooses it as the venue for a workshop on how to help the new European Parliament to make wise decisions on technology policy.

It is not realistic to expect miracle solutions from all this; they are very small initiatives. But they are small wise moves, and they are way better than the current balkanisation of the debate (check out this video). in which the Hon. Gabriella Carlucci (former TV showgirl, presently vice president of the Italian parliamentary commission on childhood) tells dissenting blogger Alessandro Gilioli that she wishes his son would be stalked by a pedophile while on Facebook. Check it out, and then tell me we don’t need to let all sides talk, openly and respectfully.

Ho scritto qualche tempo fa di come la rete stia dando prova di essere un formidabile strumento di generazione di commons. In quanto comuni, queste attività sono difficili da monetizzare e hanno quindi problemi di business model, pur contribuendo al benessere collettivo e alla competitività globale. Il settore pubblico ha l’occasione di intervenire per sostenere questo processo.

La settimana scorsa mi arriva Wired e mi trovo che un titolo di copertina con cui mi sento in sintonia: “The new new economy”. Nel pezzo forte della rivista, Kevin Kelly parla di socialismo riprogettato. C’è qualche forzatura, dovuta - immagino - al dovere di Wired di essere cool, ma il punto è esattamente lo stesso: wiki e web2 hanno una vocazione naturale alla produzione di beni pubblici.

Photo: thornj

A friend of mine, an Italian singer-songwriter, went to Vinylmania to showcase her album, which is beautiful and hard-earned (two years’ work, close to 100% self-financed). It was a Sunday morning. The Giro d’Italia was passing through Milano, so public transport was jammed. She had to take a 30 euro taxi to get there. Of course almost no one turned up, and she ended up performing for the people working in the nearby booths. The showcase was hosted by a journalist, who is a friend of hers and could easily have asked her the same questions on the phone or in front of a drink. She sold one CD and had to give three away for free.

An Italian bias? Hardly. Another friend of mine - she too is a singer-songwriter - lives in Denmark, and her situation is very similar. She too is very talented, she too recently released a beautiful album that incorporates a lot of hard work, and she too finds it extremely hard to find somebody to give her a chance. She’s feeling very low. All of this passion, all of this talent - and no one seems to be interested.

I have many more of these anecdotes. Too many. I find it harder and harder to feel at home in the music scene, where I lived for many years. I find fewer and fewer artists remotely interesting. I can’t stand any more wanking on guitar saturation, or 60s-70s-80s-90s references. The same people who make records refuse to buy them, and gets everything off eMule or BitTorrent. Many people perform, but almost no one is listening. So no one is evolving, and we continue to happily imitate discontinued bands - The Beatles, The Pixies, Nirvana. It’s like an orgy for necrophiliacs.

Maybe I’m just getting old, it happens. Or maybe creativity has moved on. When I was a boy, a bright young man who felt creative would naturally start a band: it was a common language, a way to leapfrog grownups in getting attention. Musicians were cool, setting trends. The most interesting boys and girls today start internet companies, or devise environmentally friendly technologies. Marco, who created the largest Italian online school when he was 14, or the CriticalCity crew are more creative than any musician in their low-waist jeans and Rickenbacker guitars. Makes sense, too: how are bright kids going to find a place in the sun in a gerontophiliac arena like music, where very few big stars are younger than 55-60?

I like to read over the list of Kublai’s creative projects. The notion of creativity employed is intentionally open, leaving it to the creative community itself to define its borders. Here’s what emerges: creativity is not remotely contained in the arts. Much hotter are technology and social ad environmental projects. As for music, it is pretty marginal.

Conclusion with unsolicited advice: don’t play, don’t start bands, stay well clear from music and the music scene. It’s a Night of the Living Dead kind of world, with the dead reaching for the living and consuming their souls. If you have other talents use them, go where you can have more space. And if, like me, you have the bad luck that you like music, and cannot really replace it with anything else, disappear in some basement to play, to listen, to search for some truth. And maybe, if you are patient enough, and loving enough, someday the times will a-change again.

[Grazie a Francesco]