262
12 Digital Democracy
projects, the efforts, and progress made. Companies would try to sell better products
and services, thereby promoting the practical implementation of better solutions.
Overall, this effort would create a positive, playful and forward-looking spirit
and collective action, which could largely promote the transformation towards a
sustainable digital society. In the short time available (remember that the UN wants
to accomplish the sustainability goals by around 2030), the ecological transformation
of our society can only succeed if the majority of our society is taken on board, and
if everyone can participate, contribute, and benefit.
The resulting solutions would then be evaluated and “best of” lists created for
the different disciplines of the City Challenge. Accordingly, prizes would be handed
out to the winners. However, as the creation of these solutions would be publicly
funded, they would be a public good, i.e. Open Source
76 (for example, under a
Creative Commons
77 license). This will allow that any city can take and implement any of the solutions developed. In other words, any city can potentially benefit
from all the innovations made by other cities. Moreover, big business, small and
medium-size enterprises, spin-off companies, scientific institutions, non-government
organizations (NGOs), and citizen initiatives could take any of these solutions,
combine them with each other and develop them further. This would enable combinatorial innovation and create a lively, participatory information and innovation
ecosystem. Hence, City Challenges would combine competitive and cooperative
aspects. Everyone with good ideas and solutions could add something to the public
city platform, thereby benefiting cities, citizens, and society altogether.
We are actually not that far from such solutions. Berlin, for example, has recently
organized a “Make City” festival.
78 Suppose, such festivals would take place in
many cities in a synchronized way, and that there would be more reporting and more
participation. Further assume that the solutions would be evaluated and shared, and
that there would be an alternation of competitive and cooperative phases, as suggested
above. Then, we could truly identify the best ideas in the world, and combine them
with each other, thereby promoting the emergence of a global collective intelligence.
The proposed approach combines some of the greatest success principles we know
of:
– competition (capitalism),
– collaboration (social systems),
– collective intelligence (democracies),
– experimentation and selection of superior solutions (evolution, meritocratic
cultures), and
– intelligent organization and design (using AI and other suitable methods).
The proposed approach also pushes for a new paradigm of globalisation, which
one may call “glocalisation”. It would be based on
76 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source.
77 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons.
78 See https://makecity.berlin/en/.
12 Digital Democracy
projects, the efforts, and progress made. Companies would try to sell better products
and services, thereby promoting the practical implementation of better solutions.
Overall, this effort would create a positive, playful and forward-looking spirit
and collective action, which could largely promote the transformation towards a
sustainable digital society. In the short time available (remember that the UN wants
to accomplish the sustainability goals by around 2030), the ecological transformation
of our society can only succeed if the majority of our society is taken on board, and
if everyone can participate, contribute, and benefit.
The resulting solutions would then be evaluated and “best of” lists created for
the different disciplines of the City Challenge. Accordingly, prizes would be handed
out to the winners. However, as the creation of these solutions would be publicly
funded, they would be a public good, i.e. Open Source
76 (for example, under a
Creative Commons
77 license). This will allow that any city can take and implement any of the solutions developed. In other words, any city can potentially benefit
from all the innovations made by other cities. Moreover, big business, small and
medium-size enterprises, spin-off companies, scientific institutions, non-government
organizations (NGOs), and citizen initiatives could take any of these solutions,
combine them with each other and develop them further. This would enable combinatorial innovation and create a lively, participatory information and innovation
ecosystem. Hence, City Challenges would combine competitive and cooperative
aspects. Everyone with good ideas and solutions could add something to the public
city platform, thereby benefiting cities, citizens, and society altogether.
We are actually not that far from such solutions. Berlin, for example, has recently
organized a “Make City” festival.
78 Suppose, such festivals would take place in
many cities in a synchronized way, and that there would be more reporting and more
participation. Further assume that the solutions would be evaluated and shared, and
that there would be an alternation of competitive and cooperative phases, as suggested
above. Then, we could truly identify the best ideas in the world, and combine them
with each other, thereby promoting the emergence of a global collective intelligence.
The proposed approach combines some of the greatest success principles we know
of:
– competition (capitalism),
– collaboration (social systems),
– collective intelligence (democracies),
– experimentation and selection of superior solutions (evolution, meritocratic
cultures), and
– intelligent organization and design (using AI and other suitable methods).
The proposed approach also pushes for a new paradigm of globalisation, which
one may call “glocalisation”. It would be based on
76 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source.
77 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons.
78 See https://makecity.berlin/en/.