An Infrastructure of Consent?

The following was also written at 30000 ft on 12 November, then eaten by my iPhone.  Let this be the last time I say "Itunes to the rescue..."


Yesterday, pondering again on Community and Sustainability, this phrase blossomed into mind:

Society is Community without consent.

Which probably goes some way toward explaining what I see is wrong with Society: here in Australia, at home in the UK, and across the US. Further, the UK is on a governmental abdication path called Big Society. At its best Big Society recognises the value of Communities; at its worst it casts the infrastructure of Society from the paths of strategy and resource into chance and the motivation of individuals.

There is a theory that it could hardly be worse.

Perhaps. Certainly with any transformation, the possibilities for better and worse exist in the change itself. Communities can build better schools. Communities may be able to build better hospitals, better roads, better telecommunications, maybe even better policing.

But what incumbent institutions will stand idly by and see these things slip from their grasp and their reason for continuing to be?

No, the businesses, and most of the rest of the Hydra of Government will fight individuals and communities for their turf. And barring accidents, the current regimes will win.

Because Transformation requires more than a "Make It So" from the top. It needs an infrastructure of consent.

Building an infrastructure of consent is what faces the communities of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia.

They have some hope in the changes they face.

I give Italy, Greece and the UK longer odds on their capacities to transform.

Sustainability

Fashionable in Local Government and Large Multinational Corporations alike is the notion that sustaining your environment, your community and your supply chain is ultimately good for business.

As part of a rising tide, boat lifting ethos it is well placed.

But in the same way it is always a good idea if you must worry to worry about things you can control, sustainability is self defeating if you don't look after your people and your customers.

Excuses for doing neither usually boil down to some variant of "commercial reality", which have as much to do with reality as Reality television, and are less about actual commerce than that bane of organisational complexity: Administration.

Administration does not lead the enterprise, other than on a course of self-serving decline and extinction. Logistics are important; administration is not.

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Location:38000 ft

My 911

It is 9/11 2011. Yes, the other 9/11 - the one in November outside the US, while inside the US the turkeys are nervous.
The other 9/11 may have happened in 2001, but 2001 is happening now.
I'm sitting in a Boeing 777-300ER. Gleaming white interior, watching 2001 streaming from my phone into a seatback personal video screen. While it's playing, I'm typing this into a perfectly flat touchscreen computer. Outside my frame of reference, an observer would see that I'm flying from the northern hemisphere to the south - where I'll end up upside down relative to my origin.
Weightlessness is obstinately absent. My pens are not floating out of my pocket and the magnificent dessert I just ate will not float from my waistline, but at least I didn't have to suck it through a straw. It was, nonetheless only last month that Virgin Galactic opened a commercial spaceport. My flight today, and another next month, will renew my Virgin Australia Platinum status. I'd be more than happy to redeem my frequent flyer miles for a sub-orbital view and a bit of pen chasing.
William Gibson said the future is already here. I am ever grateful it is distributed my way. I've seen the future, and my god, it's full of stars.

Flying for Pleisure

On my way to San Francisco. No hair to speak of in which to wear flowers.

Some people mistakenly think a light year is a unit of time. It isn't, of course, it measures distance: that which light travels in a year.

Most people, at least those untouched by the metric system, think of a mile as a unit of distance. They're right. But a mile is also a unit of currency. A commodity with fluctuating buy and sell prices, and increasingly open trade.

I'm currently in seat 64K on a British Airways Boeing 747. Those clued up know that this is the most spacious, the most comfortable, and the most private seat in Business Class. The smoked salmon, champagne, and warm bread before me complement it nicely. All this is mine for 25,000 miles there and back again. Yet, on this trip I will earn 25,700 miles. This is not counting the bonus 5000 miles that rolled in this morning thanks to using a particular credit card at a certain supermarket in December for regular groceries.

Airlines think miles are about Loyalty. They're right. They think they have no cash value and that they control the programmes. They're wrong. Like stock, commodities have value that flows with information and demand. Information and demand in this enlightened age are squarely in the hands of the individual. That creative individual sorely mistakenly called the consumer.

Miles haven't taken me as far as light this year, but it is only January...


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Location:30,000 ft