Selected innovation possibilities

Reflections on Associative Constraints and Possibilities in an Information society (Part #7)

Here it seems appropriate to focus on 5 quite different possibilities for future innovation

7.1 Global media events

The surprising success of media events such as Live Aid, Band Aid, Hands across America, etc, has led to active exploration of the possibility of future events of this nature. Media contacts have been developed; people and groups are developing the skills to bring about such events at reasonably short notice; formulas for funding such events are becoming clearer. Such events are naturally attractive to the media faced with the need to constantly discover new programme content for an ever-hungry audience.

International organizations, whether governmental or non-governmental, have been slow to respond to this opportunity. They have only associated themselves with such events after the fact. The main initiatives have come from North American national coalitions, although even there the established bodies were not involved in launchinq such projects.

The opportunity and organization of such events engenders much grass roots enthusiasm as a means of focussing on real social problems or on values such as world peace. They become a highly visible celebration of togetherness (which seldom takes an attractive and communicable form in the normal activities of international bodies).

There is therefore clearly an opportunity for international associations, if they can overcome the awkward political and financial issues of negotiating with Western-dominated media. With the considerable development of global satellite links, there will be a great need, on the side of those responsible for them, to demonstrate that there is something of global interest that can be communicated (in addition to the Olympic Games, the World Cup, or the Eurovision song contest, at a regional level).

Such events do of course have quite distinct limitations, which may well discourage the involvement of international bodies. Their impact, in terms of their stated goals, has been questioned. And clearly the planning of such events lends itself to innovative forms of manipulation and exploitation. Nevertheless if international associations do not engage themselves on this front, others will.

7.2 Support negotiation system

The previous innovation focuses mainly on persuasion through the asymmetric communication of images to a largely passive audience over a short period, with little opportunity to build concretely on any pattern of communication or insight which emerges. Clearly there is a need to match such mega-events with a complementary system offering exchange of information between active participants, on a continuing basis, such that every possibility of engendering new initiatives between them is fostered and supported throughout the lifecycle of any resulting project.

Such a system is to be seen in embryonic form, especially in North America, in the emergence of many electronic mail and computer conferencing networks, themselves partially interlinked (to a limited degree). The most recently launched include PEACENET and ECONET, with preoccupations implied by their names. They are open to international association participation, at non-commercial rates.

Since the viability of the technology has been demonstrated. it is worth envisaging what form such a system could take. The most practical guide to such reflection is the recent installation of a world-wide, computerised, share-trading network. This links stock exchanges, brokers, banks and institutional investors. It is composed of a number of comp!ementary components, which can perhaps best be illustrated by Table 5. This is a diagram of the equipment on the office desk of a 'fund manager' in a major financial institution at the present time.

In order to make any valid comparison with the evolution of the ways in which associations could interact through a comparable system, it is necessary to identify the functional similarities. Although associations do not have shareholders, they frequently have fee-paying members. Many also undertake campaigns and projects to which the public is invited to subscribe. Many also undertake specialized projects for which they seek funds from other bodies (especially foundations and major institutions). Many also seek, with such funding bodies, projects in which they could usefully collaborate to further their programme objectives. All these interactions currently take place using the postal, telephone, and telex systems, as well as the media. Such systems are in the process of being integrated, in a quite dramatic way, as communication options within the information society. There is no reason why associations should not also envisage shifting the 'centre of gravity' of their operations into that context.

The key difference between share-trading and support-negotiation, is that in the former the focus is on value in monetary form, for its own sake, whereas in the latter the focus is on values, as expressed in the form of ideas, projects, information and cooperative arrangements. Just as it is claimed by financiers that they are essentially dealing in confidence (expressed in monetary form), so it could be claimed that associations are negotiating degrees of confidence in the interests that they are promoting.

Few would deny that the system whereby the international community negotiates support for a project amongst its constituent bodies is extremely clumsy - many projects take years to be 'approved'. This is to be contrasted with the speed of financial transactions in response to any political situation or opportunity. That support can be negotiated rapidly for non-financial projects is admirably illustrated by such events as Live Aid and Band Aid, in which millions of peopIe were involved.

Such a support negotiation system would help bring the international community out of the bureaucratic dark ages in which token projects, approved in response to yesterday's problems. are vainly applied (and acclaimed) as significant responses to today's problems and to those of the future. Such a system would constitute an appropriate context for emergency preparedness and for the look-out function repeatedly called for by policy makers. Of greatest significance, such a system would provide a visibly coherent means whereby individuals and groups could rapidly formulate collaborative projects and mobilize support for them - thus drawing on the vast reservoir of goodwill which is alienated by the non-participative initiatives characteristic of the present.

As noted above, the elements of such a system are already evident in operational form, however embryonic. It is more than likely than coalitions of national, governmental, commercial or association interests will make ambitious proposals along such lines in the coming years. The challenge will be to filter out or contain those with hidden agendas and 'empire-building' intentions. Clearly there is little hope that the United Nations system will prove helpful in this connection, given its selective and highly politicized track record in dealing with nongovernmental initiatives and those responsible for them.

7.3 Transformative conferencing (6)

The clumsiness of the international community of organizations in formulating an initiative and negotiating support for it is reflected, to a large degree, in the procedural clumsiness of international meeting organization. It is fair to say that international meetings hinder, rather than facilitate, the emergence of new initiatives. In many ways they can be considered as laboratory models of the problems of the structural and procedural inadequacies of the international community.

The emerging information society is already affecting meeting organization in a number of ways: use of telex, reservation systems, media involvement, communications devices, messaging systems, satellite links (video-conferencing). These may be said to have contributed to the increase in the logistic efficiency of such events (Arenas I to V). They cannot be claimed to have increased the effectiveness with which ideas or positions, put forward by different participants, are interrelated in order to bring out the pattern of concepts which could constitute the foundation for a new initiative.

The previous innovation discussed depends on the participation of many bodies in a world-wide network. Whether or not this comes about in a useful form, associations should be able to explore uses of low-cost computer equipment and software as a means of providing 'conceptual scaffolding' to facilitate the emergence and collective recognition of patterns of significance in their own meetings - and the possible transformation into even more significant forms. All the elements are available. Some experiments have already been conducted along these lines (7). Further possibilities are now emerging with the availability of 'do-it-yourself' artificial intelligence (shell) programs. Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz, developers of the EIES computer conferencing system, announced in December 1986 a new initiative: 'awakening technology'. This focuses on tools and technologies to help awaken individual and collective mind emphasizing the use of personal computers and computer networks as electronic extensions of the mind.

7.4 Meta-stable coalitions

The viability of any form of organization is to a large extent dependent on its ability to maintain its coherence. This ability is directly related to the nature of the communication system. Any organization based on the slow exchange of letters by post needs to emphasize the rules for being 'a member' and to make evident who is on the current membership 'list'. When participants in an electronic mail system interact, they effectively bring about the creation of one or more organizations - if the pattern of their interactions causes clusters of participants to emerge around particular fields of interest. Such clusters can be formalized if necessary - membership can then be restricted to participants on a 'list', if desired. The point however is that the transition between the 'nonexistence' and 'existence' of an organization, in such a context, can be both very subtle and highly formalized. The emergence and dissolution of such an organization can be very rapid, with little need to maintain the organization in existence once it is no longer needed - since the participants can reconfigure into that coalition at any time. The information system establishes a continuum out of which coalitions can rapidly emerge, in response to any issue, and into which they can dissolve when no longer immediately relevant (8).

The above process currently occurs in the many computer conferencing systems, usually based in North America. The process exhibits a fundamental weakness to the extent that it is merely a form of 'super-telex' (characteristic of the adaptive group of arenas). In particular such systems have no special means for handling the kind of disagreements which are mediated within the framework of international associations having a politically and culturally diversified membership. In fact no use is made of computer processing power to facilitate (or even provoke) the emergence, maintenance and dissolution of coalitions in terms of the pattern of shared, opposing and complementary interests of participants. If such an innovation were to be made the emergence of a whole new range of meta-stable coalitions would be possible.

The difficulty in conventional organizations based on non-electronic communications lies in the necessarily simplistic nature of any rules which are agreed amongst the members as the basis for the organization they form. If they are too complex, in order to take into account a variety of exceptional cases, the organizational decision-making procedure is perceived as cumbersome or simply incomprehensible. As a result, if the organization cannot be made 'hospitable', some potential members of an exceptional nature simply do not join. This reduces the potential effectiveness of any coalition.

More interesting however is the possibility of coalition formation on topics in which all potential members have reservations that cannot be reconciled in any simplistic set of rules. In such instances, the processing power of the computer can be used to devise sets of rules of a higher order of complexity (cf Ashby's Law) within which the different reservations of the potential members can be reconciled. In effect the 'constitution' of the organization so formed is based on a dynamic set of rules embodied in a computer program, rather than in a static 'legal' text as at present. Representing the organization structure might then be done using a dynamic and/or graphic model, rather than using organization 'charts' as at present.

One merit of such an approach is that it can make use of both patterns of agreement and of disagreement - embodying discontinuity (9) - to ensure the stability of the structure, rather than relying solely on consensus as at present. The art of interweaving agreements with disagreements to bring about an entirely new form of organization is suggested by models of 'tensegrity organization' (10).

A further development, enabling the emergence of even more subtler coalitions, could result from even more dynamic sets of rules to cover cases where the coalition can only effectively 'exist' by alternating between several different (and essentially unstable) forms, each governed by a different set of rules (11). Such 'variable geometry' is a well-developed characteristic of organic molecules basic to life - namely 'resonance hybrids' (9). In a much simpler form it is evident in rules to maintain coherence through rotation of an association secretariat or chairperson.

7.5 Metaphor design (5)

The fundamental challenge for international associations, as noted earlier, does not lie in either the adaptive or the innovative group of arenas, but rather in the transformative group. Innovations in either of the first two groups will tend to be based on existing linear and static paradigms. They will tend to be locked into the prevailing Western paradigm. This has not produced ways of organizing which respond effectively to the complexity of the social system - that the international community is obliged to confront and to reflect through coalitions favouring opposing paradigms.

It is questionable therefore whether innovations like those described above would not simply be coopted to serve vested interests of a traditional kind. Even the possibility of moving beyond the linear, text-oriented information systems which are the core of the information society, using pattern-oriented software and hardware, is subject to such constraints. It is also clear that the information society will severely discriminate against the 'information poor' - whether blatantly, or subtly through depriving them of adequate information of a transformative nature (the information equivalent of 'avitaminosis'). It is also doubtful whether such changes will permeate sufficiently rapidly to assist any but the information elites.

In such a context, an alternative approach would seem to be well worth exploring, namely the design of metaphors offering people a way of re-conceptualizing their relationship to their social and natural environment. Metaphors offer the considerable advantage of requiring few resources for their dissemination. They can even be used to bypass the considerable lags in the education system. They have the special merit of being natural to most cultures and languages - so that it may be more a question of enhancing peoples' own use of metaphors, rather than importing new metaphors for them.

Outside the literary world (with the possible exception of fundamental physics), it is only politicians who make deliberate use of metaphors to communicate. For metaphors are inherently communicable and travel well, in contrast to the sophisticated theories of academe. They have the considerable merit of transcending non-functional conceptual distinctions and remaining comprehensible to many, to whatever degree. And yet this resource has not been explored, at a time when most other communication techniques are recognized as suffering from severe limitations.

The key to collective navigation through complexity may well lie in new ways of using metaphors to clarify policy options, whether or not their use is facilitated by high technology information systems. It may be through the exploration of metaphors that the international community of organizations will finally discover a way to describe itself meaningfully - whether to itself or to those who currentlv question its credibility.

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Selected innovation possibilities