System Change
Adam Zeiner and
Marshall Ganz
I have heard John McKnight say that advisory groups speak quietly to power, protestors scream at power, and neither chooses to reclaim or produce power. The real problem with rebellion is that it is such fun. It avoids taking responsibility, operates on the high ground, is fueled by righteousness, gives legitimacy to blame, and is a delightful
... See moreAwareness’ is an unambitious political end-goal for a few reasons. Firstly: awareness of what? The information circulated in ‘awareness’ narratives often uncritically props up neoliberal ideology. Neoliberalism supports the privatisation of major businesses, cuts to state welfare, and an emphasis on ‘individual responsibility
“leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.
Counterintuitive. That’s Forrester’s word to describe complex systems. Leverage points are not intuitive. Or if they are, we intuitively use them backward, systematically worsening whatever problems we are trying to solve
What we need are visions of the future of technology that are values-driven, but we don’t need just design fictions. We need business model fictions, engineering feasibility study fictions, interop protocol specification fictions, investment return fictions.
It’s also something that I encourage people to investigate with their own practices. There’s so much that you can do beyond just making your thing. You can also work on the whole system of getting that thing and others like it out into the world. There’s a lot of room for expansion and creativity there. I think the coolest projects look at the
... See moreIf you didn’t want to look closely at your own organizational practices, if you felt uncomfortable about what younger works were agitating for, if you feared changed or anything that usurped your understanding of “how business is done” — Quiet Quitting was the easy answer.