history
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Rare Declaration of Independence Facsimile Found By BetterWorldBooks
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Remembering 9/11 and Fostering a New Era of Citizen Leadership
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Does Google Have the Right to Digitize the Global Library?
EntrepreneurBait: Africa, Awesomeness, Imperialism
Published September 17, 2009 @ 03:46PM PT
After a few months of experimentation, "the daily entrepreneur" is no longer daily. I found that while many people appreciated the links, it was difficult to get people excited and interested day after day. While a feature like this may eventually return, for the time being, I'm going to be experimenting with some other forms of semi-regular links.
With that said, welcome to EntrepreneurBait, a bi-weekly post that features and puts some context around some of the most interesting and provocative posts. Thanks to @tactphil, @socialedge, @beunreasonable, and lots of other folks on Twitter for many of these links.
There have been a lot of great posts about Africa, social media and startups in the last couple days. A blog post on This Magazine makes the argument that the use of Twitter in rural areas - the case in question is the recent riots in Uganda - is not about the immediate availability of news as much as the "personal microphone" effect. African blogging platform Maneno's Director of Technology Miquel Hudin wrote a recap of the Maker Faire Africa event held last month in Ghana for the PopTech blog, and
There has also been a lot of conversation recently about Innovation. Today, the ever provocative Umair Haque wrote "The Awesomeness Manifesto," which is all about how we need to shift our thinking away from "innovation" - a broken, 20th century economic concept that relies on destruction, in Umair's mind - and instead talk about "awesomeness," which includes pillars like love, value, sustainable creation, and being insanely great. Sean over at Tactical Philanthropy also wrote about innovation, connecting articles about Six Sigma (efficiency management practices) with design thinking of the sort practiced by firms like IDEO.
There have also been some just Generally Interesting Things. William Easterly has been writing about the relationship between imperialism and state-led development (an interesting counterpoint to the argument that imperialism is always directly related to free-markets). From the organization side of things, I've been hearing more and more buzz about "Kiva for education" nonprofit startup Vitanna. And the Feast Kitchen has announced their final roster of startup finalists.
The Problem of Politics: Gordon Brown Calls For A New Ethic at TEDGlobal
Published July 26, 2009 @ 10:48AM PT
Perhaps the most talked about talk from the recently concluded TEDGlobal in Oxford, UK is Prime Minister Gordon Brown's speech "Wiring a web for global good." In it, Brown calls for a new sentiment that recognizes the connection between people across borders of nationality and class, and suggests that new global institutions are needed to realize that vision.
There is a lot interesting about the speech. The fact that it happened demonstrates that TED is increasingly reaching a tipping point of global recognition. There are not very many conferences that could put together a suprise visit from an active head of state.
Second, it's one of the first talks I've seen where there are many members of the TED online community feel like the speech (or at least the person giving the speech) betrays the spirit of the event, and are arguing vociferously in the comments to have it removed. This as well demonstrates a certain maturation of the community around the event.
Third, from a completely technological perspective, this is the first time that I've used TED's "Interactive Transcript" tool, where you can click on a line of text from the speech and the video automatically forwards to that portion. This is extremely cool and very useful.
Fourth, the speech is definitely that of a politician. As in, it says a lot of things that we can all agree with without a lot of commitment to doing it or a vision for how it gets done. That's not to say that speeches aren't important, but this is not exactly treading new ground.
Fifth, I love the reference points in history, but there are some interesting asymetries in the analysis. The one that stood out to me was Brown's assertion that the first British Abolitionist movement took 24 years to change public sentiment, and his question about how might it have been different had the organizers had the tools of modern engagement - particularly the ability to convey images as testimony.
Historians such as "Bury the Chains" author Adam Hochschild would probably take a different view, suggesting that British sentiment chained dramatically faster than British policy. Indeed, the abolitionist movement was impeded for years not by a lack of public support, but by the tumultuous global political system and the way the French Revolution made the British power elite nervous about responding to the demands of the proletariate and the way the Napoleonic wars sapped resources and attention.
What's more, those same historians would likely recognize the vital importance that demonstration images - even if they were not the dramatic and constant images we have from modern injustices - had on the movement. One of the most effective instruments for changing sentiment were diagrams of the slave ships that showed how slaves were cramped like sardines into spaces not possibly big enough.
So while Brown's not wrong to say that the tools of modern organizing might have shifted how fast sentiment was changed, I think that it might be even more accurate to recognize that modern tools might have provided a better platform for organizing that collective shift in political pressure that could not be denied for two decades by politicians who wished to focus elsewhere.
TED is an incredibly important institution. There are far too few spaces that place intellect, creativity, and smarts of all stripes at the center of the public conversation. Regardless of how one feels about Brown's speech, it's hard not to be excited about how far TED has come and how much potential there is for the hundreds of millions of people who've watched the TEDTalks to take their inspiration to new realms.
Here's the speech:
Five History Books Every Social Entrepreneur Should Read
Published July 14, 2009 @ 03:43PM PT
One of the most important books during the British Abolitionist Movement, former slave Olaudah Equiano's autobiography.
This morning I got an email from someone who had helped put together this list of the top 100 non-business books that every entrepreneur should read. It's a fun list, with categories that include Communication, Leadership, Success, Personal Development and more. What's conspicuously absent, however, is history.
As a history major (read: nut), this is a major axe I have to grind with activism. We don't teach the history of civil society and social change in high school's and universities the way we should. Sure, in the course of normal history courses, students get the brief view of a few social movements. All too often, however, the brevity with which these topics are covered reduces them to the mythology that a few great men shaped the entire course of human history.
This is particularly damaging when it comes to understanding the history of activism and social change, which is a story of messy, confusing, poorly organized, and largely about the way different people with different types of interests found common ground, much more than the story of a few key actors.
With that in mind, here's a quick list of five history books every social entrepreneur should read, roughly listed in the chronological order of the time periods they cover.
After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405
After Tamerlane is a comparative history of global empire that seeks to understand and explain both how the modern world came to be structured and to help combat a deterministic view of history that see's the rise of the West as inevitable. Instead, author John Darwin demonstrates how many specific differences could have fundamentally reshaped our world. This is an essential part of understanding the current context of activism because the haves and have-nots of our world have a specific lineage that extends back into the last 500 years of colonial expansion. What's more, the philanthropic impulse gained much of it's clout in the context of the European colonial mission of the 19th century.
Bury The Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
Adam Hochschild's seminal Bury The Chains is one of the single best refutations of the "great man of history" theory of change. Telling the story of the motley assortment of former slaves, Quakers, women, pre-industrial laborers and others who changed the sentiment of the British nation against slavery in the late 18th century, this book provides incredible insight into the very first movement in history in which people advocated for the rights of someone other than themselves.
The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991
Just as the colonial era and age of empires inextricably shaped the fabric of our modern world, the major economic, political, and military shifts of the twentieth century structured the nature of philanthropy, activism, and social justice work. Few history's have as sweeping and comprehensive a scope as Eric Hobsbawm's celebrated Age of Extremes.
Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955
The Civil Right's movement is rightly celebrated for the incredibly transformative impact it had on modern American society, but there is more to the story. Carol Anderson's incredible "Eyes Off the Prize," talks about the layers of compromise that inflected the movement, particularly focusing on how the drafting of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights process became a proxy battle between those who sought sustained segregation and those who were pushing for full social, economic, and human rights for all Americans. This fundamental complication of our perspective on a movement we treasure as a nation is particularly healthy for those of us who seek new ways of creating change.
A Bed For The Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis
Not a pure history, David Rieff's "A Bed For The Night," nevertheless discusses the history and origins of the modern humanitarian relief system, from the birth of the International Red Cross in the 19th century to the origins of modern humanitarian action during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. A beautiful, devastating and important book.
Risk, Talent, and Why Some Become Entrepreneurs and Others Don't
Published July 05, 2009 @ 01:35PM PT
Jared Diamond demonstrating how different talents matter in different environments, and showing that despite a world class education, he is no better suited to succeeding in some of those environments than others are in his.
In his best selling treatise "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Jared Diamond advances that the difference in evolution and "success" of human societies is based not on innate differences in capacity but in environmental factors that dictated how groups of early people met their basic needs, and in turn, how those conditions dictated the development of political organization, productive capacity, and more.
The essence of the argument is a total rejection of the notion that one group of people or another was natively smarter. Certain conditions led particularly societies to more quickly develop the capacity for production, politics, and war, and as those societies moved outward, they had advantages that allowed them to dominate others.
This matters because, if we accept this view of the evolution of human societies, what it suggests is that there is not a justifying innate reason that some societies are rich and some are poor. There is not a lack of capacity that preordained that those at the bottom of the ladder should be there. The flip side is that there is no special intellectual uniqueness that makes those societies that have succeeded (at least economically) more deserving of that success than those who have not.
I believe that this reality undermines any sort of deterministic perspective on global inequality, and implicates those with means to be obligated to those without. Perhaps even more as it relates to this blog, I think that this perspective has two big implications for how we think about global development and problem solving.
First, I think the way environment has impacted the success of societies as a whole is analogous to the way particular circumstances impact the way individuals are able to use their innate talents to be successful at whatever it is they happen to be successful at. That is, "Guns, Germs and Steel" is to societies what "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell is to individuals. The point is that in understanding why some succeed and others don't, the environment in which innate capacity is nurtured (or not) is as essential as that capacity itself in determining how it will manifest.
This point was reinforced for me a few days ago. I arrived in San Francisco only to have a sublet that I was supposed to live in for about 6 weeks fall through at the last minute. Suddenly without a home, I realized that I had literally dozens of people who I could stay with for a few days. My safety net was dense. This is one side of a larger network of resources which provide me the capital, connections, expertise, and other things essential to being a successful entrepreneur, social or otherwise.
These resources alone will not guarantee my success, but they fundamentally change the likelihood of that success, as well as significantly decreasing the risk involved with starting my own enterprise. These resources are by no means the norm, in fact they are the exception. As a sector that deeply prizes "risk taking," it's worth remembering that risk looks very different in different environments.
Second, I think that this argument reminds us of just how much opportunity there is to invest in the capacity of individuals and communities who, for whatever combination of reasons, have tended not to have access to the ingredients to let those capacities fully flourish.
Bill Clinton often says something to the effect that ‘around the world, talent and capacity are distributed in equal measure, but resources and opportunity are not.' I think that's dead-on, and I think that is the principle that animates those excited about investing in bottom of the pyramid enterprise.
As social entrepreneurs, I do believe we have an obligation to recognize the gifts around us, and to reinforce, in our actions and speech, that everyone has unique talents to be nurtured and given life.
America and the Belief in Things Better
Published July 04, 2009 @ 10:11AM PT
There is no part of the American mythology so important as the idea that individuals and communities have the power and obligation to close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be. Indeed, there is no element of our conception of democracy so essential as the notion that people are not just the objects of change, but instead have the power to be the agents of personal and societal transformation.
July 4th is a time for connection to our larger narrative. "America" means different things to different people; our experiences and the experiences of those around us inexorably shape what we think and feel about this land.
Few would argue that it is a perfect place. The issues that cover the pages of Change.org are, in many ways, the stories of America's warts, maladies, and imperfections. The stain of homeless veterans; the farce of indefinite incarceration; the individual and collective financial ruin that our heaving health care system can bring; the horror of modern day slavery which still runs rampant in the shadows of our proudest buildings and grandest ideals.
Yet Change.org is also a part of the profound legacy of American civil society and progressive reform. The very first people to advocate in formal ways against slavery were Quakers in the 17th century Pennsylvania colonies. The abolitionists who took their mantle built momentum in the mid 18th century for freedom for those in chains. The progressive reformers around the turn of the century saw the scourge of unchecked urbanization and advanced legislation with fundamental protections against our most unjust practices. Throughout the 20th century, the Civil Rights movement, Women's movement and more have combined with the ground-up work of community organizers to provide a platform for change. And in the last half-century particularly, nonprofits and civil society organizations have exploded to respond to our myriad social challenges.
What's important to remember is that these things are not counter to the popular narrative of America, they are the counter-narrative of what is America. The beliefs animating these activists almost always drew their power from the words and ideals, if not always the actions, of those who came before them and from the very fabric of the idea of America itself.
The freedom of religious expression promised by William Penn's colony allowed the Quakers to advocate against slavery without fear of state reprisal. The protection of free speech enshrined in our constitution allowed Jacob Riis and other muckrakers to expose the exploitation of labor and horror of unjust living conditions during the Gilded Age. The imploring that All Men Are Created Equal has been the constant and inexorable nag for those who would exploit and enslave, and the beacon of hope for those who would liberate.
Democracy is an essential context for our understanding of how to approach social change. For while philanthropy has the potential to promote the "unconscious division of the world into the philanthropists and those to be helped," as Jane Addams put it, Democracy is, at it's core, about the fundamental equality of those who participate in a society. One idea implores us to give back in recognition of our success, the other fundamentally entwines our destiny with the health and well-being of others.
Today is a day for celebrating where we came from, the glory of accomplishments past and the strength of our ideals, it would not be America if it was not also about how we look forward to improving ourselves, our country, and the wider world around us.
I'm proud to be from this place, warts and all, and I believe in our immense potential as a collective force for good. One of the most astute observers of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
Happy Fourth of July.
Photocredit: Respres
