Openness & Participation

by Pedro Pineda and Habib Lesevic

Looking at the state of the world at the beginning of this new year 2012, it is becoming increasingly clear that our current ways are not sustainable. This message is being widely broadcasted on all channels around the globe as we are writing this.

But the ecological/anthropogenic dimension that tends to be at the heart of the broadcast is not the only area of crisis calling for an impeding change: Another one is found much closer to yourself than keywords such as ‘third world’, ‘Taliban’, ‘rain forest’, and ‘famine’ might have you believe: We are talking about our psychology of passivity.

Since the industrial revolution, our collective minds have grown increasingly methodless, dependent, and passive - more so than brainstorming may have you believe. (Meadows 1955, Fromm 1955)

In modern society, social structures are not only still hierarchical but also remarkably prescriptive. Much of our thinking towards the questions “What should I do and how should I best do it?” has often already been done for us and the questions answered with sometimes authoritatively, sometimes implicitly prescribed answers.

All that is left for modern man to do then, outside of his time turning the cogs in the machine, is to go out and spend his monetary reward on ready-made products for nourishment, clothing, and entertainment. As psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm suggested, this internally passive lifestyle quickly can develop into a pan-systemic psychosis, thus providing the fuel for our neurotic cravings for transformation of resources into consumable ‘goods’ (bads?), which in turn drives the ecological crisis.

What this suggests is that any reform to our ways in response to the impeding tipping point will have to include a strong element of activation of the individual, i.e. a strong element of participation of the individual in systemic processes beyond the transactional prison of our semi-closed systems.

We thus have to enable creative action and interaction of the individual towards his surrounding and encourage him to not only ‘get in & get in line’ with systems that resist outward influences, but to actively, creatively, and positively participate in them.  

However, for participation to be possible and to flourish, participants will have to be allowed to go beyond the mere enactment of prescribed visions and processes. They need to be empowered to affect, change, build upon and shape the dynamics, processes, and very order of the systems they participate in! Thus, to truly activate the individual, we will have to liberate ourselves from the dominant idea of closed, inert systems that are created, owned, and managed by a single entity and built to resist outward influences in an attempt to secure innovation and progress.

Instead, we will have to embrace the concept of open, dynamically administered systems which freely interact and change with the actions, visions, and values of its participants.

While this might sound like a SciFi vision of a ‘morphing thing from the future’, open systems are in fact the most basic, most common forms of systems in the non-man-made world: The very planet that nurtures our all existence is a bona fide example of an open system. Openness, therefore, is the natural order of things.

That said, how can this natural order of openness and participation be transposed to our human systems, our projects, the way we go about doing stuff every day?

Openness
 

Openness in the human context is a way of organising social activities that (as stated by the P2P Foundation ) favours

• universal over restricted access
• universal over restricted participation, and
• collaborative over centralised production.

The term Openness is spreading through numerous disciplines (Open Source,  Open Hardware, Open Design, Open Data,...). While it has become a key term related with innovation, it is often attempted to explain what it -really- means, and what is the -real- effect. That in our opinion goes against the very nature of the process. Rather, we prefer to expand on the living side of openness which is the Open Process.

The Open Process

• is universal over restricted access: everybody can access the knowledge behind each process or product. It means that if you are interested in a topic, you can access it, you can understand it, and you can comment on it in a more informed way. It means sharing knowledge.
• is universal over restricted participation: everybody can build on it. If you want to build something, you do not have to do it from scratch, but upon the works that is done by others, thus speeding up the process of making, and therefore the possible innovations. It means building on others knowledge.
• is collaborative over centralised production: everybody can focus on that specific area that they can do best. You do not have to build the whole thing, but concentrate on those aspects that are relevant for you (local conditions, available skills,...) and take from others what they can do best. It means sharing the work.
• is dynamic and changing vs static and inert: the process is open to transformation by internal and external influences participating in the process.

Enabling an Open and Participative Culture
 

Openness is being approached in many different ways. In such a multifaceted process, we are not trying to identify right or wrong procedures, but just underline challenges that seem to be reoccurring.

1. Pro-activity from individuals

Openness and participation doesn’t mean that everybody have to know about everything or take part in it. It is about letting each participant take his own role and deciding the level of involvement.

Traditional book production time lines are normally measured in months and years. Book Sprints produce comparable content in a much shorter amount of time. Book Sprint : Producing a book

Our role then, isn’t about creating the content (which is now contributed by the participants) but developing structures which facilitate the natural positioning of each participant in that role which suits best him and the whole.

2. Building community & a culture of openness

The complex problems that we now face can be solve just by proactive contributions. The community not only creates but maintains the outcome alive. However, to create longterm relationships, the participants have to practice openness and trust towards the endeavour, its output and its colleagues - thus practicing an open culture.

Open Source Ecology post even their intentions for Organizational Development 2012, With notes on how they are being supported, how are they using the money,...

Allowing a network of individuals and entities that know each other and that can self organize helps to solve complex problems quicker. If we keep the Process open (that is not with a final product in mind) we allow people to contribute and to find out their own benefits, without us having to tell them. And ultimately also help members feel that they belong to something bigger, a Culture.

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Collective blog-post writing.

This post was a prototyping exercise to learn about collective knowledge creation and sharing. We set at time-frame of 3hours to write a two pages text on Openness and Participation.

 The creation process looked as follows:

1. Agree on topic
2. Define overall message
3. Add content titles, And choose what  would you like to contribute in
4. Write parts (research and write) 1’5h
5. Review, each others contribution 30min

Written by Habib Lesevic (Vic Ventures, Kontext) and Pedro Pineda (We Creative People, MakerLab, Enable Berlin) in 4 hours of a snowy Sunday.

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