1. http://www.<lickr.com/photos/naum/1639496461/
Rebooting Britain Alan Moore SMLXL
Straight line
The true possibilities of the networked society
thinking stops here!

2. http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/110371277/85945961‐jpg
The real voyage of
discovery is not to seek
new landscapes

3. It is indeed to look upon
the world with fresh eyes
Image:: http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/112642547/460954095‐jpg

4. So come with me on a short journey, and
it all starts, with a friend of mine. Steve
Watts is a wealthy Californian
businessman. Recently he decided he
would take his family on holiday to
Europe. He decided that it would be a
good idea to travel en‐familie throughout
Europe, by train. Indeed, an elegant way
to travel he thought, along straight tracks
and clockwork like schedules avoiding
the trials and tribulations of air and car
travel. His children implored him to take
this opportunity to read the Harry Potter
books, as they thought he would really
enjoy them, as indeed they had done.
Steve decided that he would leap into the
digital age – buy the latest iPod, and
upload Harry Potter books as audio <iles.

5. Donning the iconic white headphones as the 8am from Rome to Turin moved out of the
station, Steve looked out of the train window and began to take in the scenery and the stories
of Harry Potter. At the end of the week, sitting down to breakfast, Steve announced, much to
the horror of his children that he thought Harry Potter was severely over rated – well in fact
more than just over rated, Harry Potter was just plain rubbish. His kids looked perplexed.
Obviously his children disagreed, so, Steve explained that there was no structure, no plot line,
and the characters came and went in random order, constantly.

6. Steve’s kids picked up his iPod and looked at it and then they laughed – in fact
they laughed until they were in tears, much to the consternation of their father.
Why? Because Steve had been listening to Harry Potter all week on Shuf<le. Steve
did not get Shuf<le and so this simple everyday story sits at the very heart of No
Straight Lines. Because for many of us, we have only ever experienced a linear
life and a linear culture, Steve’s inability to comprehend even the possibility of
Shuf<le is a simple but telling example of that fact.
http://www.<lickr.com/photos/34478983@N00/237139242

7. Carlota Perez in her
book Technological
Revolutions and
Financial Capital –
says that there
comes a point in
time where the old
institutions are
found wanting, the
old frameworks
insuf<icient.

8. http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/113185311/1241888829265462‐jpeg
Let me explain
A linear
approach to what we
make, how we make it, who we
make it with, how we share and
communicate is a framework if you will, or a lens
that sets us to look upon our world and act in a very particular
fashion. Shuf<le is an example of a non‐linear approach, a means
by which we can access, curate and interpret the world in a
different way. But for some is very hard to grasp.

9. http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/115662173/good‐morning‐situ‐gunung‐ii‐by‐juhe‐jpg
Think about it like this –
the only straight lines made in nature are made by man,
and similarly our industrial world has been built with
the same straight‐line logic
and, philosophy. Yet nature is not like that,
it has no straight lines.
Nature <lows, nature is more connected, grass roots and interdependent.
It suggests a different type of process and logic at play that is not;
centralized, bureaucratic or in<lexible.
This is the world of no straight lines.

10. http://www.<lickr.com/photos/greentrench/179501134/
For straight‐line thinkers the world of no
straight lines is akin to living in a foreign
land; the customs, language, symbols etc.,
are dis‐lo‐cating‐ly alien – they are
outsiders, unable to fully participate, as
they do not have the comprehension, nor
the insight, or the necessary capability to
fully engage. They have become concussed
observers to the vital world around them.
The visceral shock however, is, that this is
happening to us, not in some foreign land,
but, in their own backyards.

11. Our world of business, media, and communications is evolving from the straight‐lines of an
industrial era to the more complex and networked world that mimics nature.
This interactive networked world isn’t about vertical silos, traditional notions of product and
service creation, mass‐production and mass media and marketing. It is about the massive
<lows of people, who are connecting, collaborating, organising and creating in a manner that
has nothing to do with a linear approach too much at all. This is truly an engaged and
participatory culture.
Yochai Benkler in the Wealth of Networks argues that for over 150 years our economies,
culture and society have been shaped by a straight‐line logic producing considerable economic
success. However, in the dawn of the Networked‐Society, a straight‐line logic of getting stuff
done becomes a barrier to progress. Why? Because, the change wrought by the networked‐
society is structural – challenging how markets and organizations have co‐evolved over the last
150 years.
The highest and best form of ef1iciency is the
spontaneous cooperation of free people.
Woodrow Wilson

12. http://www.<lickr.com/photos/14431773@N08/3512241035
Communication -
Community -
Communion
This creates a dilemma. And the dilemma is this – How can <irms and the people
that work in those <irms, develop coherent strategies/products and services that
are premised upon No‐Straight‐Line principles – when they have been versed only
in Straight‐Line thinking – at least for the over 35’s – from birth?

13. http://www.flickr.com/photos/lewishamdreamer/1523495713/
There are no such things as conscripts ‐ there are only volunteers, says Euan
Semple, he says young people are coming into traditional organizations having
spent the entirety of their young lives: collaborating, networking and getting stuff
done in very different ways. They are confronted with an alien world of: linearity,
silos, hierarchies and the ego of title. The friction is palpable because the old
organizational models cannot cope with or take full advantage of the new
potential, unleashed is a profound transformation in the way of doing things,
of getting stuff done.

14. Make no mistake – we are currently in the midst of a communications revolution –
and once you have stormed the Bastille you don’t go back to your day job.
We are at the barricades <ighting for a participatory culture as the modern world
has stripped us humans down to units of education, production and consumption.
In fact we want to, recover something of the spirit of the Enlightenment on terms
appropriate to our time. And this is what Reboot is all about: whether its Lee
Bryant talking about People Power, Andy Hobsbawm looking at how we create
Social Good from Social Media, Tom Steinberg giving us a real alternative vision of
a participatory and transparent Democracy – through mySociety, Paul Miller
offering us a vision as to how we can collaborate and innovate together better. We
want, No we demand the shared ability to connect to other citizens on common
ground. Because we have become victims of the rules we all live by. Replace every
member of Parliament but ask them to work within the current system – and you
will get exactly the same outcome – It’s a system breakdown.
Communications technology can be wielded as a powerful agent of social and
political change, today it is being wielded with great might and great ferocity.

15. We have turned away from a Read Only In the age of mass media, the press was
to a Read Write culture – Nokia says able to de<ine the sphere of legitimate
25% of all media will be created by us debate with relative ease because the
by 2012 – YouTube uploads 13 hours of people on the receiving end were
audio‐visual material every minute of atomised but connected “up” to Big
every single day of the year. This is folk Media but not across to each other. And
culture for the 21st Century – albeit on now that authority is eroding says
steroids. Journalism Professor Jay Rosen
communicationstransformation

16. http://www.<lickr.com/photos/42526951@N00/255187152
But what is driving this communications revolution?
Is it that technology has just appeared? Is it a <luke? An accident?
The simple answer to that is no. Technology is a human creation
in the <irst place and it succeeds or not the the extent that it
meets fundamental human needs, human beings have an innate
need to connect and collaborate, through communal and
cooperative activity we <ind context and meaning in our lives.
Right now, we are directing communications technology to
achieve very speci<ic things for society. As Carl Jung said….

17. “I”
Needs
“We”
to truly be
“I”

18. Noisy ghosts in the machine called life
But our industrial, mass media, mass consumer society, strips us of what
makes us who we are – we have become units of production and consumption,
battery farmed, and raised in a world where we feel little personal
accountability to each other. We have deconstructed humanity almost to the
http://www.woostercollective.com/2008/09/fresh_stuff_from_dan_in_bristol_uk.html
point of destruction – sceptical !? Ask any practicing psychologist who will tell
you of the very complex psychological problems many people have as they
struggle to construct their identities.
Sadly many of us have become very noisy ghosts in the machine called life. In
the UK Every 3 in 5 people suffer or have suffered from a mental health
problem
The crisis of our modern age is the crisis of meaning, these are the deep
drivers to what all the speakers at Reboot are concerned with – what Reboot
directs you to is how we can rediscover our sense of ourselves and in doing so
– Reboot Britain.

19. Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/camil_t/82015664/
“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do
exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and
develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces
which make it a living thing.”
John Stuart Mill – On Liberty 1859

20. A new commonsense for the networked society
http://www.<lickr.com/photos/nathaninsandiego/2723981272/
Participatory culture – folk culture for the 21st Century
In a late medieval carnival, for example, everyone had a role to play and a chance to distinguish
themselves individually by the brilliance of their costumes, the wittiness of their jokes, or their
talents as dancers or athletes. Barbara Ehrenreich in her book Dancing in the Streets, a history
of collective joy, says that the capacity for collective joy is encoded into us almost as deeply as
the capacity for erotic human love of one human for another. We can live without it, as most of
us do, but only at the risk of succumbing to the solitary nightmare of depression, argues
Barbara Ehrenreich. Today, the most prescribed drugs in the world are those for depression.
We want to co‐create, share, collaborate together in this way we <ind common meaning.

21. HOS
http://www.we‐make‐money‐not‐art.com/archives/2008/05/erika‐larsen‐for‐the‐past.php
Human Operating System
The Open Society
George Soros worried deeply that unfettered capitalism was creating a closed society which only one
thing counted – material success. He argued for an open society a new type of operating system that
was not built upon market fundamentalism, dogma and avarice. I would argue this is what we might
call a Human Operating System. This social operating system looks beyond materialism to something
greater ‐ to liberate us from closed systems so that we can all re‐engage with the world to feel and be
accountable to each other and experience and enjoy the richness of life

22. http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/110384580/picapixels‐tumblr
@ Reboot we are showing each other what this Open Society really means
systems, platforms and services that enable people to better cooperate together,
more effectively and enjoyably. We go from faster to closer – from context to
deeper context. And as John Thackara says a culture of community and
connectivity has to be fun as well as challenging, as well as responsible.
The “open society” is created by the unfolding of; ideas, language and creativity
that brings us new ways of describing and comprehending our world.

23. The Open Society should NOT JUST SATISFY US. No it should
inspire us.

24. http://www.<lickr.com/photos/9266144@N02/1075722366/
I want to share some words with you that I want you to re<lect upon and in doing so to think
about what do these words suggest as possibilities to you? And perhaps as you spend your day
with us all @ Reboot apply this language to your company, your organisation and imagine what
that language means?

25. lightweight

26. <lexible

27. adaptive

28. creative
commons

29. open source

30. deep context

31. life‐long
learning

32. embedded
sociability

33. individual &
collective
accountability

34. mobile

35. grassroots

36. craftmanship

37. permeable
<lows of
information

38. blended reality

39. networked
economics

40. collaborative
&
participatory

41. social
innovation

42. i + we

43. networked

44. trust
&
transparency

45. shared
collective joy

46. read & write

47. collective
intelligence

48. mashable

49. hyper‐local
&
superglobal

50. technologies
of
cooperation

51. understands
the morality of
“enough”

52. Co­creation
The co‐creation of culture and the sharing of culture creates social cohesion.
Collaboration, participation, co‐creation

53. http://www.<lickr.com/photos/21526856@N00/2345518579
Craftsmanship in the networked society
Social philosopher, Richard Sennett's book The Craftsman, is an exploration
into the idea of craftsmanship, he begins from the basics of technique and
personal expression and applies that to a philosophy of how craftsmanship
might be at the very heart of social good in modern society. It is Sennett's
contention that “nearly anyone can become a good craftsman” and that
“learning to work well enables people to govern themselves and so become
good citizens.” This line of thought depends, among other things, upon the
Enlightenment assumption that craft abilities are innate and widely distributed,
and that, when rightly stimulated and trained, they allow craftsmen to become
knowledgeable public persons.” The craftsman is more than just a good
technician he is a bringer of peace and a maker of civilisation, he uses his
tools for the collective good.

54. Embedded Sociability
Every single case history and proposition at Reboot actually has sociability
implicitly embedded. Reboot recognises embedded sociability as part of the
DNA of the networked society – it is a fundamental requirement.
http://www.<lickr.com/photos/an_untrained_eye/1195966967/

55. Permeability of organisations
organisations need to be
permeable, with the ability
to absorb <lows of
information, and people.
This means using more
transparent methods of
communication from inside
http://www.<lickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum_photography/2862345500/
out and outside in.
It also means being <lexible
and adaptive, more organic
in thought and deed.
http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/113152317

56. People have lived and worked in villages since the dawn of civilization. The corporation, argues Charles
Handy, is a youthful concept, little more than a century old. One could argue, too, that the notion of a lively
village — with its unabashed humanity — is a more appropriate way to look at what the corporation
should be in the 21st century than the constrained and impersonal entity it has been.
Villages are small and personal, and their inhabitants have names, characters, and personalities. What
more appropriate concept on which to base our institutions of the future than the ancient organic social
unit whose <lexibility and strength sustained human society through millennia?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/krustysplodge/898377791/
The organisation as a village

57. http://www.woostercollective.com/2008/08/bruno_taylors_playful_spaces.html
We don’t take back the public realm by more CCTV ‐ Trying to control the public
domain remotely is never going to work. Why is it in Japan that you can leave
your bicycle left unlocked in down Tokyo – because society has a powerful sense
of the inter‐relationship between society – the public realm and the individual.
http://www.<lickr.com/photos/38435718@N00/264462892
Creating community is only marginally about technology. What matters is the
emergence of shared meaning as we interact with each‐other in meaningful
activities… For hundreds of years, when the majority of the population was
illiterate, participatory ritual and performance were the main ways that beliefs
were shared within a culture.
Taking back the public realm

58. The learning age
Stephen Heppell considers the 21st century to herald the ‘learning age’.
In the 20th century, he argues, we built big things (railways, universities)
but the focus for the 21st century is ‘helping people to help each other’.
In his view, “The old stuff won't do any more”.
The four Cs are Heppell's key…

59. Learning should be a {1}
part of all our lives –
an open, living Creating
breathing system
where intelligence
and knowledge is
shared and
distributed –
{3}
{2}
Collaborating Critiquing
{4}
Communicating

60. Deschooling business schools – a new capitalism
http://www.<lickr.com/photos/delibelli/279319214/
Contrary to popular opinion – business is in fact a social science – so perhaps our business
schools should be more like this – the Eden project The promise of this new world cannot
come about until education/business /politics etc.,adjusts to human need not the other way
around by connecting people with common interests, unlocking creative talent among
groups that have a passionate interest or an desire to exchange information globally, and
as a consequence new content and solutions emerge.
I believe that by offering collaborative tools for innovation at the grass roots we dramatically
increase productivity because as I have pointed out a simple truth people embrace what they
create.

61. The effervescent
beauty of systems
thinking
Straight Line Thinkers also fail to think of the whole system or pathway of help, which leads
instead to focusing on bits of the system, with the result that although each bit may be doing
its bit, the overall result is awful, as one part clashes against another.
John Seddon, argues that this dynamic is currently endemic in Britain’s public sector leading
to valueless activity, meaningless measurement, and ever poorer service, at ever greater cost.
You and I as taxpayers are paying heavily for this stupidity. The solution, Seddon advocates
is a Systems Thinking approach where [1] individuals come <irst, [2] waste is reduced
[3] responsibility replaces blame. It's an approach that is proven, successful and relatively
cheap ‐ and one that governments around the world, and their advisers, need to adopt urgently.
It is the difference between effectiveness vs. ef<iciency

62. simplexity
We create complexity by not thinking through solutions de<ined by simple
human principals. This is as relevant to our daily lives as individuals and as
professionals. We forget to look beyond the obvious and step back from
situations to enable us to alter our preconceptions of taking and making
solutions. And by doing so, we tumble into complexity

63. One of the ways to simplexity is through the Bill Bailey
principle. Bill is a comedian and he is asked how he comes
up with his jokes
The Bill Bailey Principle

64. Bill says – well I start with a laugh and works backwards.
What do I need to do to create that about of laughter!!
Where we start to think about solving problems will
determine where we end up.

65. James Dyson started by asking a question and focused there after on <inding the
very best answer / experience to that question. His focus was on effectiveness
not ef<iciency. Funny that – he also has 50% of the vacuum cleaner market –
globally.
But we also see the same approach for MyPolice and in there is a suggestion of
a completely different approach, a process that provide very different results.

66. I suggest, that rather than <iddling around with bits of the system, we raise our eyes and
minds upwards and yearn for the vast endless sea of possibility of what our society could
be beyond the con<ines of Straight Line thinking – Embrace and use daily what Howard
Rheingold rightly describes as “Technologies of Cooperation”.
What you call things is important, as I have also explained, we need a new language and
framework to enable to us to succeed as a society, and, we need to put commerce in its
rightful place within the human fabric of the networked society.
We need a system reboot into a new social paradigm. As Richard Sennett argued in the
Craftsman
We want to, recover something of the spirit of the Enlightenment on terms appropriate to
our time.
We may need a form of dualism for a while, understanding that we are in the process of
making a journey, spiritually, socially, and economically from one way of seeing and
behaving in the world to another. The source of the solution lies in <inding once again the
‘being’ in human being. The fundamental need we have is to <ind shared meaning, because
without such communal meaning or belonging, we become bricks in the wall, living
meaningless lives.
We need to Reboot the system and we need to Reboot it now.

67. SMLXL:
Contact: alanm@smlxtralarge.com
Twitter: alansmlxl
www.smlxtralarge.com
Thank you http://icanread.tumblr.com/post/85622811/via‐inothernews