Will We Be Smart Enough Soon Enough?

Putting Civic Intelligence into Practice

Research for Action: Networking University and Community for Social ResponsibilityA workshop in conjunction with Making Links 2010Monday, 15 Nov 2010, Perth, Western Australia

Douglas SchulerPublic Sphere Project / SeattleThe Evergreen State College / Olympiadouglas@publicsphereproject.org

• Our global problems are vast and potentially catastrophic.

What kind of world are we living in?

One that needs our help.

• Our local ones aren’t exactly trivial.

• The people in power won’t solve these problems by themselves

• Nor will the free market or other approaches that rely on “side-effects” do it all.

Problems seem to be growing a lot faster than solutions.

We might not be smart enough soon enough

I needed a concept to help me (and others) answer the question (It didn’t have to be new but it did

have to be useful)

I wanted to identify a concept that

• recognized actually existing phenomena

• asserted social goals — at least indirectly; promoted and integrated theory and practice

• incorporated and acknowledged social norms

• could be used a common frame for motivating and coordinating (consciously and unconsciously) a large number of projects

The concept I came up with was civic intelligence

Some Definitions

Informally, civic intelligence refers to how smart collectivities are in relation to their problems.

Civic intelligence is a form of collective intelligence that focuses on shared problems. It

addresses civic ends through civic means.

Although we know that civic intelligence exists, this fact is not explicitly acknowledged and hence not something that we can readily examine or

improve.

Some Assertions

Today more than ever, civic intelligence is needed to address the problems we now face.

Civic intelligence is distributed throughout society — not just among those with money and power

Although we know that civic intelligence exists, the capacity that exists may not be adequate for our pressing needs.

Civic intelligence — its understanding and development — could serve as a paradigm for activists and researchers.

Civic intelligence is necessary — but not sufficient.

Civic Intelligence is not a Brand New Topic

Civic Capacity (Harry Boyte, Xavier Briggs)

Social Intelligence, Community Inquiry (John Dewey)

Public Work Politics (Center for Democracy & Citizenship)

Civic Innovation (Carmen Sirianni & Lew Friedman)

Open Source Intelligence (Robert Steele)

World Brain (H.G. Wells)

Civic Community (Jane Addams)

Civilizational Competence (Piotr Sztompka)

Social Learning (many authors)

+ Social Enterprise / Entrepreneurism / Innovation, etc.

Civic Intelligence:

Three Brief Examples

• Sustainable Prisons• Beehive Design Collective • Liberating Voices

Sustainable Prisons

The Sustainable Prisons Project is a partnership of the Washington State Department of Corrections and The Evergreen State College. Our mission is to reduce the environmental, economic and human costs of prisons by training offenders and correctional staff in sustainable practices. Equally important, we bring science into prisons by helping scientists conduct ecological research and conserve biodiversity through projects with offenders, college students and community partners.

Bee Hive Collective

focusing on their “True Cost of Coal” project

The Company Store

The Injury Medication Cycle

Rotten Tomatoes

Taking Legal Action

Consumer Detritus

Activism and Regeneration

Interviewing: 1 year (my estimate)Mural design: 6 monthsMural drawing: 1 1/2 years

• They pollinate! They travel around working with activists, students, “ordinary people”

• They combine popular education, art, social action, social analysis and critique — and, even, folklore.

• They lead by example and help empower people

• They demonstrate that other paradigms are possible. They are “traditional” and “slow” and their work is handmade and anonymous and collective.

• They don’t use human figures in their work...

Beehive CollectiveSome Observations

The purpose of the Liberating Voices project is to promote and assist citizen engagement through thought and action.

The patterns are intended to help build civic capacity and social imagination.

• The people in power won’t solve these problems by themselves. (Nor will the free market or other approaches that rely on “side-effects” do it all. )

• The activists we need to do this work come in many varieties and there are a million ways for people to make positive contributions.

• We need more people to support — and to lead — efforts to address our shared problems. (Note that this includes “ordinary people”)

• Keeping “ordinary” people out is not only unfair, it deprives the rest of us of a vast, largely untapped resource

• Unfortunately civil society is unorganized and spread out (although willing to help)

Our VisionEverybody is an Activist

Patterns are more like seeds that have different results when planted in different soil.

Different people, in different situations, will use the patterns differently. They are really tools for thought.

The use of a pattern is intended to change the flow of what would have happened in its absence.

Patterns are not recipesPatterns don’t provide precise instructions...

http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/

Each pattern is intended to promote positive social intervention from a grassroots perspective.

A pattern language is an ordered collection of patterns. (The concepts are from Christopher Alexander et al, A Pattern Language, 1977)

Each pattern contains five main parts: title, problem, context, discussion, and solution.

Pattern Games

Online (Facebook) game currently in work: What type of activist are you? Presents three patterns that best match your interests and personality.

Pattern Language ProjectsUsing Patterns to Orient Projects

from Conception to Implementation

• Many possibilities have been discussed including sustainable design, ICT for development, and urban architecture

• This is an important — and logical — next step

• It’s (partially) uncharted territory

• Begin constructing an evolving pattern language in your domain

• Use / modify / improve the methodology in the book

• Keep us in the loop!

Science 29 October 2010:Vol. 330. no. 6004, pp. 686 - 688DOI: 10.1126/science.1193147

REPORTSEvidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human GroupsAnita Williams Woolley,1,* Christopher F. Chabris,2,3 Alex Pentland,3,4 Nada Hashmi,3,5 Thomas W. Malone3,5

Psychologists have repeatedly shown that a single statistical factor—often called "general intelligence"—emerges from the correlations among people’s performance on a wide variety of cognitive tasks. But no one has systematically examined whether a similar kind of "collective intelligence" exists for groups of people. In two studies with 699 people, working in groups of two to five, we find converging evidence of a general collective intelligence factor that explains a group’s performance on a wide variety of tasks. This "c factor" is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members but is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group.

Some aspects of civic intelligence

• Building civic intelligence in others; knowledge, motivation, imagination, and appreciation of potential power

• Inclusive and participatory; diffuses into society — extends civic intelligence as an orientation.

• Cross-disciplinary approaches are central; for one thing they don't just solve a portion of the problem or, even, make matters worse in other areas.

• Efficiency and creativity (developing novel solutions) are key (as with individual intelligence)

• Meta-cognition and better collaboration (and better / faster information on what's working) and forecasting. (Meta-cognition implies and requires evaluation)

• Addresses several problems at once

• Addresses fundamental problems (usually environmental degradation or social exploitation)

• Better frameworks for understanding intelligence — and ignorance. Includes characterization of problems and appreciation of the unknown

• Better monitoring

• Mechanisms for problematizing

• Make activism cool (again)

Presumably useful for comparing, measuring?

How do we get to the moon? Build a bigger ladder

What if we're going in the wrong direction? Drive faster

What if our problems are too complicated? (1) ignore their existence (2) crucify people who mention them (3) take refuge in our powerlessness

Some Common Useless Approaches

At present our society persists in designing a great many technical artifacts in ways that make people feel passive, superfluous, stupid, and incapable of initiating action. Such systems bear the cultural embryos of tomorrow's citizenry. For as we invent new technical systems, we also invent the kinds of people who will use them and be affected by them. The structures and textures of future social and political life can be seen in the blueprints of technologies now on the drawing board. Langdon Winner (1991)

Networks of civic engagement embody past success at collaboration which can serve as a cultural template for future collaboration. Robert Putnam (2000)

building success or failure?

People can be intelligent. They can also be compassionate, creative, enthusiastic, and dedicated.

Perhaps societies can too.