b l a s t u l a reblog++

Thursday Club: Rachel Armstrong:Bio Feminism — Move Over Darwin with respondent, Joanna Zylinska :: March 26, 2009; 6 -8 pm :: Seminar Rooms, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, South East London.

A significant change is occurring in the biological sciences with implications for feminist identity politics. This illustrated presentation examines cutting edge developments from pioneering laboratories and invites the audience to engage with the notion that Bio Feminism is set to play a pioneering role in the science of the third millennium. Modern science rests upon philosophical pillars that originate from 19th Century principles of logical analysis, reductionism and machines, particularly with respect to the organism. Feminist writers such as Evelyn Fox Keller and Donna Haraway, both of whom were trained biologists, have raised objection to this hierarchical, traditional view of science and made provocations for change towards a more inclusive feminist model of science whose organizational agenda is ‘cyborg’.

At the start of the 21st Century there is a convergence between feminist and biological scientific agendas, which propose a more complex view of life and cell mechanisms than stated by traditional science and is the basis for a new reading of biological identity that Armstrong has called Bio Feminism. This engages with a mechanism for the evolution of Haraway’s cybernetic entities and also embodies the unique politics of the cyborg. Despite counter arguments that feminist agendas have no contribution to make to scientific practice, feminist scientific thinkers have proven to be prophetic. The emerging disciplines of synthetic biology, Alife and chembiogenesis are more in keeping in their methodologies and rhetoric with modern feminist principles than their 19th Century scientific counterparts and as such, mark the emergence of a mainstream branch of science that could be regarded as inherently sympathetic to the feminist critique. Bio Feminist science promotes the treacherous biology of the cyborg challenging notions of aliveness, performing every transgressive act possible within autopoietic systems at a molecular level and redefining our view of evolution.

RACHEL ARMSTRONG is a medical doctor, author and arts collaborator who has worked at the intersection of art, science, technology and human space habitation. She has appeared regularly in the media and at international conferences speculating on the future of humankind, non-Darwinian techniques of evolution and the challenges of the extra-terrestrial environment. Her work includes collaborations with the artists Stelarc, Helen Chadwick and Orlan in the field of radical body modification and anatomical design. Armstrong is an academic architect working at the intersection of biology and design of autopoietic materials that facilitate the construction of autonomous architecture. She is a member of AVATAR, the advanced virtual and technological architecture research group. Armstrong has also written a number of Science Fiction narratives. Her
current affiliations are with the Bartlett School of Architecture and SMARTlab Digital Media Institute UEL.

JOANNA ZYLINSKA is a Reader in New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths. She is the author of three books: Bioethics in the Age of New Media (MIT Press, 2009), The Ethics of Cultural Studies (Continuum, 2005) and On Spiders, Cyborgs and Being Scared: the Feminine and the Sublime (Manchester University Press, 2001). She is also the editor of The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media Age, a collection of essays on the work of performance artists Stelarc and Orlan (Continuum, 2002) and co-editor of Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). Most recently she has been combining her philosophical writings with photographic art practice.

Originally
from Networked_Performance

by jo


reBlogged

on Mar 25, 2009, 6:26PM

Originally by jo from Networked_Performance on March 25, 2009, 7:26pm

Posted under reblog art, reblog innovation

Radiant Copenhagen is a future version of Copenhagen. Using Google maps and Wiki technologies, the group has created a Copenhagen dressed in dystopian scenery and amusing attire. You will find stories and images about peoples and places, atypical architecture, fictional art projects, suspended gravity, environmental peculiarities and the wonders of future transport, literary permutations and poetic vignettes. Radiant Copenhagen takes the internet project as its base, but spreads into the real city, with enactments of staged reality appearing without warning.

The artists Anders Bojen, Kristoffer Ørum, Kaspar Bonnén and PhD (Comp.Lit.) Rune Graulund have worked with a team of architects, artists, designers, engineers and musicians to create an alternate vision of Copenhagen. All contributors share an interest in alternative realities and how these, through the internet and other media, play an increasing important role in our common understanding of the world.

The internet project as well as the physical interactions with the city are intended as devices to challenge conventional thinking, an assault on the collective imagination of Copenhagen by which new possibilities for change are established. Be there for the opening March 27, check out radiantcopenhagen.net and remember to keep an eye out for a new Copenhagen.

Contributors to Radiant Copenhagen includes Kristoffer Ørum, Anders Bojen, Rune Graulund, Maja Zander, Kaspar Bonnén, Stig W. Jørgensen, Palle R Jensen, Ida Marie Hede Bertelsen, Peter Rasmussen, Kasper Hesselbjerg, Ulrik Nørgaard, Daphne Bidstrup, Andreas Pallisgaard and Kristian Haarløv.

Radiant Copenhagen is supported by projektpuljen – City of Copenhagen. Book a seat for the bus tour on March 28 at 12 noon or 3:00 pm by emailing booking [at] radiantcopenhagen.net. Departure is in front of Christiansborg - duration 1 hour. Opening is at 5:30 pm at Gallery Overgaden - Institute of Contemporary Art. Overgaden Neden Vandet 17, DK-1414 Copenhagen K.

Originally
from Networked_Performance

by jo


reBlogged

on Mar 26, 2009, 7:51PM

Originally by jo from Networked_Performance on March 26, 2009, 8:51pm

Posted under reblog art, reblog innovation, reblog wikinomics

Heard this nice buzzphrase: “fifth scenario planning.”

In much conventional scenario planning, two essential questions are turned into axes on a graph, creating four sectors, each of which becomes a world or scenario. By finding strategies which perform well in each of these worlds and comparing them, planners can find the set of strategies which are most robust in all of the worlds, and thus, hopefully, most vigorous in real life.

The idea of fifth scenario planning is to anticipate a realistic event or a series of events which is low-probability but highly disruptive, and then test the assumptions from the other four scenarios against it. By doing so, planners can find strategies which are not only robust but rugged. In theory, it introduces not only vigor, but resilience.

By extension, fifth scenario thinking is being ready for things to change rapidly (not necessarily to collapse: the Fall of the Wall and the collapse of Apartheid were both rapid changes, after all) in previously unbelievable ways. If that isn’t a needed skill these days, I don’t know what is!

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 9:16 PM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by Alex Steffen


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by Alex Steffen from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog innovation

Can we live sustainably while still enjoying our stuff? Buying better stuff (and less of it), and keeping it for longer is one realistic strategy for making that possible. But we know that won’t work with most of the stuff we have now. Whether it’s clothes, computers, appliances or even homes, throwaway culture in the developed world — accompanied by throwaway design — makes for stuff we not only don’t want to keep, but that we often can’t continue to use even if we try.

Enter a new meme: Heirloom Design. At Compostmodern, Saul Griffith proposed the concept, which he describes as design that is intended to last for generations. Griffith said he’s planning to give his soon-to-be-born son a Rolex and Mont Blanc pen … and then tell him that these would be the only watch and pen he could use for the next 100 years.

“It sounds like I’m a pretentious wanker when I say ‘green’ is a Rolex and a Mont Blanc pen, but what I really mean is, you have to design things and experiences that will last a very long time, that have been thoughtfully designed and are very beautiful,” Griffith explained.

Durability is not a new concept for sustainability. In theory, if a product stays around longer, it means that a replacement product doesn’t need to be manufactured and transported to the consumer, and the original product stays out of the landfill. But durability alone doesn’t ensure that something won’t be thrown away. Heirloom design introduces something more: our desire as consumers to keep an object because it has some meaning for us. What makes something worthy of passing down through generations?

Griffith’s examples involve heavy initial investments, which can certainly motivate someone to care for and keep a product longer. But the power of price is relative to the consumer’s disposable income, and it still isn’t everything. The point is to not limit heirloom-quality goods to certain people, but to recover an ideal of making things for everyone that will last for generations. When I spoke with Griffith about this, he suggested that designers really need to figure out how to make something beautiful and well made that isn’t expensive.

That goal may not be as pie-in-the-sky as it sounds. In a book called Antiques of the Future, product designer Lisa Roberts put forth a collection of mass-produced objects that she believes will be valuable in the future, once they are no longer in production. Many of the items are relatively inexpensive, but are well made and attractive: one of her primary criteria in selection was just that the objects have “a strong and immediate visual appeal.” Among her selections were Michael Graves’ tea kettle and Karim Rashid’s Garbino trash can (now, she notes, the trash can is available in biodegradable corn-based plastic).

What other products being designed now have the best chance of becoming future heirlooms? Usefulness wasn’t mentioned among Roberts’ criteria, but could also be a reason something is kept. A classic multifunctional tool like the Swiss Army knife may be likely to be handed from one generation to the next. Sentimental appeal is another reason something may become an heirloom, and designers can aim to create products that inspire emotional responses.

Though Roberts’ book demonstrates that heirloom design doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive, her work doesn’t focus on design that promotes sustainability specifically. Griffith’s strategy of choosing investment pieces isn’t necessarily foolproof in this regard, either: a report by the World Wildlife Fund gave the world’s largest luxury companies abysmal sustainability ratings. Even if an item is durable and provides heirloom appeal, limited raw resources and a growing awareness of the impacts of waste mean manufacturers will need to consider lifecycle sustainability from the beginning. A few designers, however, are already using the concept of heirloom design as a way to consciously improve their sustainability, like the clothing company Howie’s, in the UK, and Entermodal in Portland, Oregon.

It’s worth noting that durability/heirloom quality isn’t always the best solution for every product. In some cases, it might make sense to design something to adapt to a radically shorter lifespan, like packaging that instantly biodegrades. In other instances, if a particular product is currently harmful to the environment, a short lifespan would be useful so that the product can be replaced as soon as sustainable technology is available.

At the other end of the spectrum, in some types of products — like rapidly changing technology — the idea of heirloom design can be taken to creative new heights. It could take the form of long-lasting hardware that accepts software upgrades: perhaps, for example, a permanent computer or cell phone case, with replaceable insides (more on this topic in John Hockenberry’s terrific article for Metropolis magazine). Taking that idea to its furthest extension is a future of closed-loop manufacturing, where you could purchase only the service an item provides, relying on the manufacturer to offer you both regular upgrade opportunities and a place to return physical materials to the industrial nutrient stream.

Overall, the idea that products should last — and that consumers should want to keep them — is an important part of designing a sustainable future. Where do you see opportunities for heirloom items that don’t yet exist? Please answer in the comments!

Adele Peters is currently earning her Master’s in Sustainability at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden.

Photo credit: flickr/Lid-Licker!, Creative Commons license.

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(Posted by Adele Peters in Columns at 11:05 AM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by Adele Peters


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by Adele Peters from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation

A green design competition turns up some great new ideas

by Pete Davies

I love gadgets, and I’m obsessed with things that help to increase energy efficiency. So when the two come together, I’m a very happy camper.

This will explain why I’m so excited about the second Greener Gadgets Design Competition that is currently running online. You can view the shortlist and vote for your favorites to make the shortlist that will appear for live judging at the Greener Gadgets Conference later this month.

My favorites:

• 

  The Power-Hog

  is basically a mini coin-operated meter that needs feeding before you can turn on the TV or the Wii. A great idea for teaching kids (and adults) to think about the costs of using appliances and gadgets.

Check out the rest of the shortlist and don’t forget to vote!

This piece originally appeared on The TerraPass Footprint

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Emerging Technologies at 12:50 PM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by WorldChanging Team


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by WorldChanging Team from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation

Earlier this week, Google.org announced plans to develop a personal energy metering tool that will allow users to monitor their home energy consumption. The PowerMeter “will show consumers their electricity consumption in near real-time in a secure iGoogle Gadget,” according to the organization’s website.

Google believes consumers have a right to detailed information about their home energy use, and that real-time energy information could help people make smarter choices that will save them energy and money:

Our lack of knowledge about our own energy usage is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity for us all to save money and fight global warming by reducing our power usage. Studies show that people save 5-15% of their energy costs when they have access to information about their energy consumption.

Over the next three years, with support from the Obama Administration’s proposed stimulus package, more than 40 million U.S. homes are set to receive smart meters. But many currently available smart meters do not display information to the consumer, which Google states is “unacceptable:”

We believe that detailed data on your personal energy use belongs to you, and should be available in a standard, non-proprietary format. You should control who gets to see it, and you should be free to choose from a wide range of services to help you understand it and benefit from it.

The organization is currently testing the software with Google employees and seeking out utilities and smart energy device makers to partner with. When PowerMeter is released, the tool will be free and is rumored to be based on an open source model.

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Emerging Technologies at 12:41 PM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by Sarah Kuck


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by Sarah Kuck from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation

Pattie Maes of MIT’s Media Lab wants to give you a sixth sense. You probably want it… but it’s still a little clunky right now. And requires you to wear plastic market caps on your finger. But it’s really cool.

Maes reminds us that we pull in information about the world with our five senses, and make decisions based on this sensory input. These days, we often have an additional sense - our ability to use networked information to add to our knowledge. At TED, we’d really like the ability to meet someone and immediately Google to figure out who they are. Or at the supermarket, we’d like to overlay data about environmental and corporate responsibility on top of the products we buy. We can access this information, but it’s inconvenient and socially awkward to do so.

The solution to social awkwardness? Hang some devices around your neck and stick colored caps onto four fingers. The system includes a wearable camera, a mirror and a battery-powered projector. This allows the wearer - currently grad student and hacker Pranav Mistry - to project information onto surfaces. He’s able to manipulate this information by moving his colored fingers - they re tracked by the camera and allow Pranav to manipulate the data, driven by his mobile phone.

The system looks a bit like Jeff Han’s multitouch interface and the Microsoft Surface computing, but points out that this is a solution that works on any surface. You might use it to reframe your shopping experience, projecting a rating from Amazon onto books in books in a bookstore, or adding reviews from a favorite critic. You might enhance a newspaper with a projected video clip, or project a word cloud associated with someone onto their chest as you talked with them. And, of course, it’s trivial to project a watch on your arm.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this is an exceedingly cool hack. Whether anyone will be wearing to wear it outside of the lab probably has something to do with how it’s designed, and how we construct social rules about what’s acceptable and not to enhance with information in a real-world environment. I can’t really imagine having the ability to project information onto people’s chests being socially acceptable - but I would love for it to become true.

More about the ideas behind this interface - which Maes declined to give a catchy name - at her page on “fluid interfaces“.

This post is part of a series from the TED 2009 conference held in Long Beach, California from February 4-8th. You can read other posts in the series here, and the TED site will release video from the talk in the coming weeks or months. You may also want to follow the conference via Twitter or through other blogs tagged as TED2009 on Technorati.

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Originally by Ethan Zuckerman from Worldchanging: Bright Green

Posted under reblog innovation

I’m not usually impressed by people making products or buildings out of trash. Not because it isn’t a good idea — it clearly is — but because most such projects don’t scale well. They’re nice one-offs but can’t be set up for mass manufacturing. There are several exceptions, though, and I recently stumbled upon another one: the Casa Ecologica de Botellas Plasticas in Argentina.

I was on vacation, going to Cataratas Iguazu in northern Argentina to see the amazing waterfalls, and it just happened that next to my hotel out in the countryside was a sign saying “The House of Plastic Bottles! Visit it! Surprise yourself!” Always a sucker for a quirky roadside attraction, I trotted down the little dirt road through the trees to check it out. But when I arrived, I found that Alfredo Alberto Santa Cruz and his family have built a prototype for a modular-assembly, comfortable tropical home that costs next to nothing and diverts hundreds of two-liter plastic bottles from landfills in the process. What’s more, it seems like a design that will scale reasonably well, because it uses cheap common parts, can be built either cheap-and-temporary or sturdy-and-permanent, and can even pack flat and ship in a pickup truck.

Mr. Santa Cruz first got the idea when making his daughter a little playhouse in the front yard. The construction was surprisingly robust, so he thought “hey, I’m on to something!” and built a full-sized bedroom cottage with an actual bed, three chairs, shelves full of toy cars, a broom, an octopus mobile, and even a fake hanging plant … all out of plastic bottles with some wood framing and a few nuts and bolts!

  
bottle joint, and daughter’s playhouse

The walls were made from columns of two-liter bottles, some cut in half to slip over other ones that were screwed into the adjacent bottles, so that all joints were fat-end to fat-end, no necks. This avoided too much empty space and also made all bottles interlock (in addition to the screw connection). These columns were assembled into a wooden frame to form panels, and then the panels were twist-tied together with wire to assemble a house. Windows were made with CD jewel cases in a variety of color tints.

The family showed me how they could make the structure more sturdy if they chose, by filling out the fronts and backs of panels with concrete. Laying the panel flat and pouring concrete into it around the bottles is a cheap way to make concrete walls without forms, and using a fraction as much concrete as slab construction. The air in the bottles also makes the concrete wall insulative, just like Rastra and other pour-in-place insulated concrete forms. In northern Argentina’s mild climate, however, the walls of bare bottles were rather nice, because their translucence admits plenty of natural light, and the small gaps between bottles encourage natural ventilation. For the non-concrete walls, Mr. Santa Cruz also mentioned the idea of filling the bottles partly with earth, for a makeshift kind of fireproofness — a fire will first shrivel a bottle, then melt it enough that it splits and the earth spills out, smothering the fire. Pretty clever.

But I thought the most clever part was actually the roof, made of tetrapak boxes (the polyethylene and aluminum lined paperboard boxes that you get juice or wine or milk in), flattened into shingles and laid aluminum-side up for high solar reflectance. The resulting roof will keep you cooler than most American roofs! And the re-use of the tetrapaks is a particularly resourceful solution because while PET, the material used to make plastic bottles, is the most commonly recycled plastic, tetrapaks aren’t really recycled even in most of the developed world. (They are technically recyclable, but it’s not cost-effective for the vast majority of municipalities.)

Unfortunately, said Mr. Santa Cruz, the tetrapacks only last four to five years before falling apart from the rain. But he covers them with a layer of plastic bottles cut to look like terra cotta tiles, and guesses the combination should last 20 to 30 years, and still keep the sun’s heat off well. (If you put a second layer of bottles and tetrapak underneath them, it’d be insulated, too. But on the day I was there it didn’t need it.)

  
tetrapak roofing, from inside and from outside (showing both uncovered & covered)

I was pretty impressed with all of the ways plastic bottles were used throughout the house. The platform for the cottage stood on more two-liter bottles filled with earth and stacked horizontally rather than on end. Some bottles were chosen for their color or painted to make little flower patterns in the wall. Even the stairs were made by stacking the earth-filled bottles to different heights. And the Santa Cruz family even turned bottles into furnishings. The chairs and bed were constructed the same way the walls were, but with the stacked bottles placed parallel rather than serial to achieve structural strength across a wide area. (In fact, I found them sturdier than the normal wooden chair back in my hotel room.) Fairly thin cushions on top made the chairs decently comfortable. The family also made decorations and toys out of bottles, many of which were delightful and clever, including toy cars with working wheels. Alfredo’s father showed me how they made a robust broom by making the “straw” strands with slices of plastic bottle (which they made a little jig to cut effortlessly), twisted into tight springlike coils.

chair, curtain, decorations from bottles

There have been many houses made of bottles in the past, but they’ve almost always been glass bottles. The use of two-liter plastic bottles is a novel variation, enabling different constructions and uses. The modularity and transportability open up many possibilities. They system would be easy to load onto a truck for delivery to customers, or even to create a portable demonstration for local schools and towns.

Mr. Santa Cruz hasn’t gotten funding for his project, but he deserves to. Right now, he and his family fund the hobby by selling various knickknacks made of recycled bottles and cans. Even these are creatively done — they made unbreakable bags from the plastic straps used to bind crates, lumber, etc. during shipping; bracelets and purses from can pop-tops; cute little teapots and yerba mate pots made from old aluminum cans. These novelties are fun, but Mr. Santa Cruz’s building system could let a huge number of people all over the world create their own homes for next to nothing, and eliminate a ubiquitous source of waste at the same time.

I suggested he set up an account to receive PayPal donations for his work to take it to the next level, and he did. Donations can be sent to lacasaecologicadebotellas [at] hotmail [dot] com. If you speak Spanish, you can contact Mr. Santa Cruz at the same address. Even if you have no desire to contribute, he’s also interested in sharing ideas with people across the world.

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(Posted by Jeremy Faludi in Columns at 8:06 AM)

Originally
from Worldchanging: Bright Green

by Jeremy Faludi


reBlogged

on Jan 1, 1970, 8:00AM

Originally by Jeremy Faludi from Worldchanging: Bright Green on January 1, 1970, 9:00am

Posted under reblog environment, reblog innovation

The Power of Information Taskforce, which was established to advise the UK government on how to take advantage of new developments in digital media, released it’s report to the Cabinet Office earlier this week in beta. There are 25 recommendations in all. Many themes in the report resonate strongly with the issues I have been discussing on wikinomics.com. I’ve paraphrased what I think are some of the more important recommendations and added my own commentary below:

1. Follow the crowd. Many government have wondered what role they should play in providing support to citizens seeking information and advice online about issues that fall under the domain of the public service (education, health care, etc.). Should governments create their own forums that they monitor and control or should they participate in mutual support communities that already exist such as NetMums and The Student Room. The Task Force correctly observes that in most cases it makes more sense for public servants to become active in pre-existing online peer support communities that already have critical mass than it does to create their own. The task force also recommends that in some cases governments should encourage and assist the development of mutual support communities outside government to enhance public service outcomes. I personally like the idea of a publicly-funded venture fund for non-profit social ventures that can demonstrably improve service outcomes for citizens.
2. Create platforms for innovation. As discussed many times on this site (see here, here, here, and here for example), the Task Force recommends that all public agencies in the UK create online innovation spaces where the general public and staff can co-create information-based public services. They suggest following the BBC’s ???backstage model??? model (referring to the fact that BBC backstage users can build non-commercial services using a vast array of BBC content feeds), starting with a live backstage for the UK’s DirectGov site by June this year. A key ingredient of the “bakcstage” service is accessible public data, unrestrictive licensing regimes, and open APIs (which they discuss in recommendation 10-15). I’ll be watching this one closely.
3. Rethinking public consultations. Many citizens rightly perceive citizen consultations as just broadcast politics as usual–a mere veneer of participation and outreach on a fundamentally broken system. The Task Force suggests that public agencies break out of the traditional “many-to-one” consultation mold by using collaboration tools that enable true “many-to-many” collaboration.
4. Create a public services R&D function. Innovation is notoriously difficult in the public administration, due in large part to cultural inertia, complex legacies, and political wrangling. Many efforts to move government services online amount to little more than paving the cow paths???-the same old inefficient government structures and institutions have remained intact when a much more radical rethinking and restructuring is in order. The TaskForce’s suggestion to create a “modest fund for leading-edge R&D to continue to test ideas and incubate new capabilities” is a good one, but it will be interesting to see how they insolate the R&D function from politically-motivated tinkering.

The full report is worth reading if these issues interest you at all. It’s in beta stage for the next 10 days, so your comments could help shape the future of digital governance in the UK.

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Anthony D. Williams


reBlogged

on Feb 5, 2009, 8:39PM

Originally by Anthony D. Williams from Wikinomics on February 5, 2009, 9:39pm

Posted under reblog innovation

I’m generally disappointed by business books, and for that matter non-fiction books in general. It’s rare to get a fresh idea, let alone one that is argued well. I’ve followed Mathew Bishop’s work (he is New York bureau chief of The Economist) over the years and confess to some skepticism when I saw he had co-authored a book (with Michael Green, an international development expert) entitled: Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World. When I look at the many problems confronting the world today it seems to me that the rich, more than any other group, have messed it up. And what a mess it is.

However, Philanthrocapitalism is a great book, and I can’t think of any category of educated person who should not read it. The authors argue that philanthropists can be critical to helping solve society’s large problems because of their unique perspective.

Philanthrocapitalists are “hyperagents” who have the capacity to do some essential things far better than anyone else. They do not face elections every few years, like politicians, or suffer the tyranny of shareholder demands for ever-increasing quarterly profits, like CEOs of most public companies. Nor do they have to devote vast amounts of time and resources to raising money, like most heads of NGOs. That frees them to think long-term, to go against conventional wisdom, to take up ideas too risky for government, to deploy substantial resources quickly when the situation demands it—above all, to try something new.

The authors clear away much of the mud on the windshield when it comes to social investing, venture philanthropy, philanthropreneurship, social innovation, social entrepreneurship and the like. Every chapter is packed with interesting stories about the players who are making this happen, leveraging their wealth to improve the state of the world. I learned about the ecosystems of social investing, and was stunned to discover how business principles were being transferred so successfully.

[P]hilanthrocapitalists are developing a new (if familiar-sounding) language to describe their business like approach. Their philanthropy is “strategic,” “market conscious,” “impact oriented,” “knowledge based,” often “high engagement,” and always driven by the goal of maximizing leverage of the donor’s money. Seeing themselves as social investors, not traditional donors, some of them engage in “venture philanthropy.” As entrepreneurial “philanthropreneurs,” they love to back social entrepreneurs who offer innovative solutions to society’s problems.

For some time there has been the expression among the Corporate Social Responsibility community “You do well by doing good.” I don’t think this has been true. Many companies have done well by being awful – by having terrible labor practices, bad products bolstered by good advertising, externalizing costs (such as industrial emissions) on society and the like. However increasingly in the age of transparency everyone is being held to higher standards. And a new generation of people with wealth are beginning to understand that you can’t succeed in a world that is failing.

My hope is that wealthy people will read this book and follow the lead of their most progressive peers. How ironic, should the rich actually end up being key to making this smaller world a better and more sustainable one?

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Don Tapscott


reBlogged

on Jan 5, 2009, 10:55PM

Originally by Don Tapscott from Wikinomics on January 5, 2009, 11:55pm

Posted under reblog innovation