Currently at www.valuetrue.com, we're openly cataloguing everyone's best ideas to take on the v5 challenge of trust-flow - is an organisation doing enough to be valued by local societies worldwide? Incidentally, I must say that one of the greatest sentences to have appeared in my inbox for many a long while appeared today from Harrison Owen creator of Open Space and author of The Practice of Peace: "I would guess that anybody who actually thinks they control a network has never worked effectively in one."

V5: What approaches do you know for ensuring that organisations suitably respond to the needs of local societies and diversity of human needs`worldwide?

Approaches may be classified either as technical or educational (including stories that capture the democratic imagination).

George Orwell was one of the first authors to predict that technology's connectivity worldwide would be used by boss classes to suppress the creativity and service of human needs rather than to multiply the value of learning and accomplishment worldwide.

When my father (Deputy Editor of The Economist) revisited Orwell's story in our 1984 forecasts for the future of economics and society in a globalising and networking world, we suggested that Orwell had made 2 mistakes.

First, of timing. His Big Brother outcome was forty years too early. Yet the denoument -in terms of which way networking technology would be systemised woul come in the next few years. As our chapter 6 timeline opined: By 2005, the gaps in incomes and expectations between rich and poor nations will be recognised as man's most dangerous challenge.

Second, globalisation and networking technology could -if open sourced - have the alternative outcome of empowering self-organsiation and productive learning from the grassroots up. In which case we might see humankind's most progressive area not just in terms of more money for the rich but resolving all the greatest human divides at every coordinate of our globe.

As a mathematician and reader of systems theory, I believe that everything to do with humanity's future is 'in play' in the next few years. If I am right, that makes open human Knowledge Management, a song we need to sing until everyone participates. We should be teaching 12 year olds why networking matters and the responsibilities of globalisation and behaving in openly trustworthy ways. Are we up to that challenge? I dunno...opentrustaudit.ppt posted by ..., 1:01 AM  permalink