…a big purge like that you do feel better, if a little more tired. There’s one other thing too. There’s a big mess to clean up.
Welcome to tomorrow everyone. Already, the tough stuff begins.
But it will get done, especially if we keep drawing on some of that good crazy (h/t Ta-Nehisi Coates)
Today, Obama wins. The question isn’t if, it is by how much. It’s how dramatic will the victory be.
To be honest. I’m a little overcome with emotion about it. I don’t think Obama is the saviour some hope he will be, but he will be bring some good, honest change – something we’ve all be hoping and waiting for. Today, the world gets to finally begin the purge of Bush. It will take time, it will be tough, but the process begins.
I can’t wait.
So here is a list of random stuff – some to hopefully look forward to, some to reflect on for laughing or crying:
Goodnight WMDs
And goodnight FoxTV
Goodnight Cheney, goodnight neo-con men
Goodnight homeland security advisory system
Goodnight lies and goodnight fluff
Goodnight Rove, goodnight Bush
And goodnight American public screaming “enough”
Goonight McCain
Goodnight Ayers
Goodnight insanity everywhere…..
Sleep tight everyone. Tomorrow is a brand new day.
Andrew Sullivan pretty much sums up what were all feeling about Bush, Cheney, the election and our collective hopes for America if Obama wins:
The more I think about it the more this election day feels like one giant collective, global puke. That Bush-Cheney thing never quite settled with us, did it? We’ll feel a lot better but a lot more tired once the last heave is over.
Genius.
Those who enjoyed mine and Taylor’s piece on neo-progressives may remember that we claimed both the original progressive and the neo-progressive movements were founded on the pursuit of a few core values:
The rise of industrial capitalism during the 19th century led to a series of tense societal changes. These included the emergence of an urban working class, increasing inequality and the new possibility of total war. In response, three generations of pragmatically driven “progressives” emerged. Opposing both the socialist left and the laissez-faire right, they championed values such as equality of opportunity, meritocracy, government transparency and empirical inquiry.
Andrew Sullivan seems to agree with science/evidence based approaches as being one of them – although the post’s title suggests he doesn’t want to credit earlier progressives with adopting science as well. Andrew’s comments spring from the fact that the science magazine Seed has endorsed Obama:
Science is a way of governing, not just something to be governed. Science offers a methodology and philosophy rooted in evidence, kept in check by persistent inquiry, and bounded by the constraints of a self-critical and rigorous method. Science is a lens through which we can and should visualize and solve complex problems, organize government and multilateral bodies, establish international alliances, inspire national pride, restore positive feelings about America around the globe, embolden democracy, and ultimately, lead the world. More than anything, what this lens offers the next administration is a limitless capacity to handle all that comes its way, no matter how complex or unanticipated.
Sen. Obama’s embrace of transparency and evidence-based decision-making, his intelligence and curiosity echo this new way of looking at the world
This is a battle the original progressives won – it is a sad statement that we are fighting it again. But we will win, again. It does help that we’ve got people like Hitchens on our side and that they are willing to remind us that the GOP really is waging a war on science. The republicans really have which left not only the neo-progressives behind, but also conservative minded progressives (yes, they exist). It’s going to be a tough, ugly, conservative rump that is left.
A number of friends are publishing pieces, appearing on TV and are being interviewed. Here’s a shout out:
First up, Matteo Legrenzi fellow Antonian and now assistant professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Ottawa. Matteo wrote this piece in the Edmonton Journal in which he tries to bring some realism to Canada’s role in the middle east.
You can also catch Matteo on the little screen here where he shares his insights on the impact of oil prices on middle east politics and the canadian economy.
Second up, Erin Baines has teamed up with Stephanie Nolen of the Globe and Mail to write “The Making of a Monster” about the history of Dominic Ongwen – a member of the Lord Resistance Army who has been indicted for seven counts of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. The dilemma is that Ongewn was himself abducted and made a child soldier. So to what degree is Ongewn a product of terrible circumstances beyond his control, and what should that mean for his prosecution?
Finally, in a change of pace, Kate Dugas shares the now legendary story of her divorce on page 116 of the November issue of Flare magazine. Legendary people. Legendary. (I’d link to it… but apparently Flare doesn’t believe in online content – I suggest trying your local dentist office in 2 months).
So reading Emergence sprouted another thought regarding the increasingly bankrupt (literally and figuratively) model of the classic bureaucratic organizations. Again I point to Umair Haque’s post on the recent financial crisis:
The first step in building next-generation businesses is to recognize the real problem boardrooms face – that we’ve moved beyond strategy decay. Building next-gen businesses depends on recognizing that they are not about new business models or even new strategies.
The stunningly total meltdown we just witnessed in the investment banking sector – the end of Wall St as we know it – was something far darker and more remarkable. It wasn’t simple business model obsolescence – an old business model being superseded by a more efficient or productive one. The problem the investment banks had wasn’t at the level of business models – it had little to do with revenue streams, customer segmentation, or value propositions.
And neither was it what Gary Hamel has termed “strategy decay” – imitation and commoditization eroding the returns to a once-defensible strategic position, scarce resource, or painstakingly built core competence.
It was something bigger and more vital: institutional decay. Investment banks failed not just as businesses, but as financial institutions that were supposedly built to last. It was ultimately how they were organized and managed as economic institutions – poor incentives, near-total opacity, zero responsibility, absolute myopia – that was the problem. The rot was in their DNA, in their institutional makeup, not in their strategies or business models.
I think Umair is on to something and that CEO salaries may make for a great case in point.
For many years the left has decried growing CEO salaries as a sign of the market’s excesses – or worse, of a broader culture of greed. But excessive senior management salaries are, from an investors perspective, are a symptom of a staggeringly flawed institutional model. If your business depends that much on the one person at the top – if the current and future value of the entire organization rests in the hands of one person… then yikes! Shareholders beware.
The idea that a CEO is worth 1000, or even 100 times more than the “average” workers in an organization isn’t just a problem from a morale or ethical perspective (it may or may not be). If your average worker isn’t contributing that much value in relation to their ultimate superior than you have a massively top heavy – and hierarchical – organization. One where, I suspect, Umair would find there are poor incentives, near-total opacity, zero responsibility, absolute myopia. To be sure, ideas are probably not being floated about, and they are almost certainly not successfully emerging from the bottom up.
In short, it isn’t a happy place to be. And it turns out the markets may not think it is so good either.
Finally polished off “Emergence” by Stephen Johnson (another post on it here) – the last 30 pages have been lingering for about 2 weeks.
Johnson’s ideas continue to touch on themes I’ve been explaining to others for two years now. More recently, on why boomers continue to misunderstand their Gen Y cousins. Take for example, Johnson’s conclusions about what video games are doing to all of us (but Yers in particular):
The conventional wisdom about these kids (gen Yers) is that they’re more nimble at puzzle solving and more manually dexterous than the TV generation, and while there’s certainly some truth to that, I think we lose something important in stressing how talented this generation is with their joysticks. I think they have developed another skill, one that almost looks like patience: they are more tolerant of being out of control, more tolerant of that exploratory phase where rules don’t all make sense, and where few goals have been clearly defined. In other words, they are uniquely equipped the more oblique control system of emergence software (and, I might add, emergent systems more generally).
While the boomer vs. gen Y comparison is generally apt, l think even more than being generational this is class based. Emerging creative classers are not only comfortable with this exploratory phase, they actively need it. This is why the large bureaucracies (but not necessarily large organizations) struggle to attract and retain both the demographic and the class. They often force upon their workers too much structure, to much rigidity on the front end, evaporating the creative opportunities where we might imagine something better, bigger or more effective.
A note of caution too for those who think the financial collapse augers a new era of safety in large bureaucracies. Don’t fool yourself. It was the large bureaucracies of the banks and government regulators, working in tandem, that got us into this mess. While some creative classers may attempt to retreat to the safety of a large government or private sector institutions I suspect that many will do just the opposite. As bureaucracies become still more risk averse and controling their capacity to foster to new ideas and approaches will be that much more constrained. The “outside thinkers” will be in still greater demand.
There is an interesting job over at the Canadian Embassy in London that has opened up. Looks quite promising really. Forms must all be in by October 31st so I suggest moving quickly.
Also, sorry for the paucity of posts this week – between travel, talks and other things I’m simply exhausted…
It is really important to recognize that free software and open source spring not just from a set of licenses but from a set of practices and often those practices are embodied in the tools that we use. We think through the tools that we use and if you give people different tools they think differently.
– Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Radar update, OSCON 2007 (min 9:16 of 22:03)
For those coming to the Free Software and Open Source Symposium at Seneca College, and for those who are not, I wanted to riff off of O’Reilly because he is speaking precisely to something that I hope Dan Mosedale and I are going to dive into during our discussion.
The key is that while the four freedoms and the licenses are important they are not the sum total of open source. Open source communities work because of the tools and practices we’ve developed. More importantly – as Tim points out – these tools shape our behaviour. Consequently, we should never treat the tools or practices in open source as assumptions, but rather things that my must be questioned and whose benefits and limitations must be understood. It is also why we must envision and innovate new tools.
This is why I blog and write on community management and collaboration in opens source. I am trying to imagine ways to port over the ideas developed at the Harvard Negotiation practice into the open source space. I see a set of practices and tools that I believe could further enable, grow and foster effective communities. I believe it is a small, but important piece, to enabling the next generation of open source communities.
I know Dan enjoyed the presentation from last year and has some of his own thinking on this subject – with luck some interesting new insights will emerge which I promise to blog about.
If you haven’t seen this clip of Powell endorsing Obama, I highly recommend. It is a great example of the type of statesmanship and class the American political system is capable of (and yet so often does not achieve). I’m wrestling to think of a similar moment when a former Canadian political figure has been as eloquent and purposeful as Powell is in this clip. But then, it seems we generally put our old political figures out to pasture.
Money line – “All villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.” (take that Palin)
In contrast, below is perfect caricature of how McCain wants Americans to see Obama. His sleaze campaign – the one that helped cost him Powell’s endorsement – is working hard to create this image. Black rage? McCain wishes… if anything has defined this election its been McCain’s rage. (clip from Chasing Amy by Kevin Smith, it may not be for everyone).
eaves.ca 