Matthew's RSA blog

Caution: Creativity

On Tuesday we had Sir Michael Lyons in the house discussing his review of public service broadcasting. He made a powerful case, and stood up well to some searching questions from the audience (you can hear it shortly, and from next week will be able to see it in edited form on this website)

A key debate is whether the so-called ‘excess’ licence fee (the money was added in the last settlement to the BBC’s budget to cover the costs of digital switchover) should in time be given to Channel Four and other broadcasters to support them in their public service role, and thus ensure a diversity of content provision.

Lyon’s response is firstly that the BBC itself faces constant demands for better services (for example, more regional content) so it could spend the ‘excess’ many times over.

Second, while he recognises the problems faced by Channel Four as markets fragment and advertising revenues fall, Lyons does not think top slicing the license fee is the right response, particularly because to do so would change the character of C4 and thus be self-defeating.

But the core of the Lyons thesis is that what matters to the public is diversity of content and of platforms not diversity of supply. If this is the goal it is one, he argues, the BBC is quite capable of discharging on its own.

Michael Lyons has built a robust argument that is an effective counter to laziness of the excess licence fee argument. However, Channel Four too is making a strong case and the common sense view that we need diversity of supply in PSB as in other public services will be hard to resist.

As it makes it case the BBC will have, as always, to try to avoid the charge of arrogance. It was with this in mind that a particular article in The Times caught my eye. A woman is being threatened with a lawsuit by the BBC for posting free knitting patterns of Dr Who baddies on the internet (under a creative commons licence). This woman was forced to remove the patterns because of copyright infringement. The case continues, but I think that the BBC is missing a trick.

As we are entering an era of what Lawrence Lessig at the University of Stamford called a ‘read/ write’ culture, it is important that publishers begin to take notice of the benefits presented to them by fans.

In Japan the manga publishers have long had, and benefited from, a tacit agreement with their fans that they will look the other way when fans create new books about existing characters, sometimes taking them in entirely new directions.

Surely the BBC could, and should, view this model of shared intellectual property in the light of its public service role of encouraging creativity and innovation.

On an unrelated topic, the always engaging Daniel Finkelstein wrote a fascinating column yesterday about the happiness debate. It’s definitely worth a read.

Injustices and waiting lists

This week’s events began with a screening of the BAFTA nominated “Taking Liberties”. The film follows the stories of normal people whose lives have been turned upside down by injustice, while using humour to emphasise its serious message. Set against a striking contemporary soundtrack, the film provoked a fascinating discussion with director and producer Chris Atkins and Jess Search, Chief Executive, BRITDOC.

RSA Thursday examined the question: The Secular State – the best option for British Muslims? Featuring Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist for The Independent and co-founder of a new organisation, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Inayat Bunglawala, writer on Islam and current affairs, Dr. Usama Hasan, Director of the City Circle and Ed Husain, author of The Islamist and deputy director of the counter-extremism think-tank, The Quilliam Foundation, this spirited debate was clearly too short for the audience! Though time defeated us in the Great Room, after the formalities audience members packed the Vaults to carry on the discussion over drinks. The RSA will continue to provide an independent platform to address these important issues in the coming months, both on and offline, via the Fellows Networks platform and future public events - so the debate is far from over...!

The increasing popularity of our events programme makes it all the more useful to have audio downloads and soon we will also have “Vision” to look forward to. More and more events are fully booked within days of their release and with long waiting lists, it’s great to have an alternative available for those who have missed out.

Mohamed, Osama and Steve

It has been a mammoth week of lectures with some super-stellar names. We continued our partnership with booksellers Blackwell's on Tuesday as we welcomed poet Simon Armitage to the house all the way from the hills in Yorkshire. Simon treated attendees to a reading from his new book, Gig: the life and times of a rock star fantasist as he regaled us with tales of a life intertwined with music, gig-going and poetry.

On Wednesday we saw a totally different crowd of lecture-goers stream into the Great Room as Charlie Leadbeater and Matthew Taylor discussed the ever-changing and collaborative nature of world of the web. This coversation was continued by Jonathan Zittrain on Thursday evening as he pondered the future of the internet. Lucky lecture-goers received a free copy of his new book with the generous support of AOL.

For our weekly RSA Thursday we were delighted to have Steve Coll over from America as he lifted the lid on the Bin Laden family and gave some interesting insights into a family whose power and money have been used to frighteningly varied ends.

We are pleased to also announce a few new additions to our May events programme;

On Tuesday 6 May, at 1pm Ray Tallis will be speaking about the most complicated part of our anatomy, the head.

RSA Screens continue at a gallop as we welcome director, Joshua Dugdale for a screening of his carefully crafted documentary, The Unwinking Gaze in which he followed the Dalai Lama for 3 years chronicling the many challenges that he faces.

And to continue our partnerhsip with Channel 4 we will be screening film-maker and journalist, Jon Ronson's Reverend Death.

We hope to see you all soon at some of the fantastic events that we have coming up over the next few weeks. As always, our events are all available as podcasts so if you missed any of this week's four remarkable and varied speakers you can listen again. 

Money, money, money

Investment and the sub-prime crisis aren’t normally topics for my blog – but recently two pieces, one in the Times and the other in the FT caught my eye.

On the one hand you have the always entertaining Jonathan Guthrie in the FT. He points out that the sub prime crisis is leading to an inevitable bonanza for litigators. In the US this has already begun in earnest, and Guthrie suggests it will soon start in the UK.

As he memorably puts it ‘Rating agencies must feel as vulnerable as a nude gymnast performing squat jumps in a porcupine farm’. If the US model is anything to go by they have reason to be nervous, as pension firms sue ratings agencies for diminution of share value.

In the Times Jamie Whyte, author of Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking, says that the idea that, in the light of the sub-prime experience, we should regulate to protect investors from bad advice and bad investment is tantamount to arguing that because we should regulate romantic relationships to reduce the possibility of people being jilted.

For Whyte the very idea of regulation in an area of free choice is problematic; ‘Once risks are known, regulating them is worse than useless. It can only move the price of risk away from, and usually above, the market price. It encourages financiers and investors to seek profit in areas where the regulators are not imposing their burdens – namely those where the risk are poorly understood’ 

Now, Guthrie is not advocating litigation merely predicting it, and litigation is not exactly the same as regulation (although if successful litigation establishes case law it will tend to have a similar impact to liability imposed by regulation). But these articles point to two different views of the rights of the consumer or investor.

Whyte relies on the principle of caveat emptor, while Guthrie suggests that people who have taken bad advice will naturally seek redress against those who gave them the advice.

The RSA’s Tomorrow’s Investor will be exploring just this dilemma. We will expose a selected group of small and ‘indirect’ investors to a comprehensive picture of how decisions are made about ‘their’ money. We will explore how sound are these decisions and also their ethical dimension.

At the end of the forum the question is whether, when the investors have these insights, it makes them want be more active, to have better protecting or more effective intermediaries. I’ll make sure we send Jonathan and Jamie our findings.       

We do

Last night we had a great lecture from Charlie Leadbeater discussing his new book We Think. The book has got interest and praise, not just for its content but also how it was written – collaboratively, via Charlie’s website. It may well be the first wiki-book

One connection I made was between Charlie’s thesis and Brooke Harrington who spoke here last week on her book Pop Finance. I asked Brooke whether Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and the foremost exponent of the breakdown in social capital, was interested in the 20 million Americans taking part in investment clubs.

Brooke surmised that Putman didn’t investigate this on the grounds that investment clubs aim to make money. But, as she points out in her book, there’s no correlation between the financial success of the club and its long term future. There are clubs which make no money but are still meeting and investing, just as there are some clubs which are financially successful, but break-up due to personality clashes. In the final analysis, it’s all about people voluntarily doing stuff together.

I similarly asked Charlie what he thought about Putnam’s thesis. Does the rise of forms of on-line collaboration like Wikipedia and Linux disprove social capital theory.

The answer in part is Putnam was looking at distinct forms of social capital, arguing that the capital communities most need is the type that is declining fastest. So for instance, in deprived communities, what’s needed is ‘bridging capital’; people who are not in work having contact with those who are and thus creating opportunities through networks and connections.

The problem with the simplistic social capital thesis is that it seems to imply that after 150,000 years of human evolution in which we have been hard wired as a social species we have suddenly decided to retreat from the public sphere.

What I take from both Charlie and Brooke is that Putnam was mapping less a fundamental shift in human nature and more was the decline of old collectivist institutions. These institutions – think political parties, think trade unions, think established churches - are characteristically bureaucratic, rigidly hierarchical, and culturally self-denying (‘you have boring meetings to make the world a better place’).

What Putnam didn’t see was that alongside the decline of these institutions what would occur is the emergence of ‘new collectivist’ institutions – like investment clubs and on-line social networks - which are less bureaucratic, more dispersed, more subtly hierarchical, and more self-actualising (or what ordinary people tend to call ‘fun’).

Human beings do still want to do good stuff together, but because our lives and our expectations have changed we want to work together differently. This is what we’re trying to do here at the Society. RSA Networks is one way of doing that, but there will no doubt be others – such as this blog. One way of defining my mission for the RSA is to build on the great traditions of this old collectivist institution, but work with Fellows to turn it into an exemplar of a new collectivist spirit. 

RSA Networks Exchange

A few RSA colleagues went to the Social Innovation Camp a couple of weekends ago. This brought together technologists and innovators to develop new ways to meet social need.

Next month, the Innovation Exchange for the third sector is holding two 'festivals of ideas' that aim to bring together social innovators with commissioners of services in the hope that fresh approaches to old problems will emerge.

In a similar vein, as part of the RSA Networks project, we're now building up to our next big Fellows' event on the evening of 28 April - the RSA Networks Exchange.

This will be a bit like the ideas equivalent of a 'bring and buy' sale. You bring a project; you offer help in developing other people's projects.

We've already had a great response, with people saying they want to talk about subjects ranging from reducing the loneliness of freelancing, to initiatives designed to help people dealing with alcohol and drug abuse get back on track.

There is more about the event on the Networks platform, and you can get involved by registering your interest.

In reflecting on the buzz around these kinds of events currently, two things strike me.

First, the power of new technology to make visible a form of 'gift economy' that has until recently remained fairly hidden. If participating is easy, and feedback is quick and positive, people are willing to give their time and expertise to others and the greater good (a theme that will no doubt be taken up by Charles Leadbeater in his talk here next week). 

And second, perhaps an important reminder for us here, that the fuel of any gift economy is passion. Without passion, people have little reason to give up precious time. So part of what we need to do here is unlock people's passion for social progress, and help them to find others who share that passion.

With those reflections in mind, we've been busy inviting people via the OpenRSA Facebook group and the Networks platform. We'll see how it works, and feed any lessons into our plans for regular events of this kind in London and around the country.

Hope to see you there!

You might think I don't have anything to do

I'm having one of those days where everything seems to connect to everything else.

We have another great week of events here with Brooke Harrington on Pop Finance and my old line manager Jonathan Powell on making peace in Northern Ireland.

But the event I am looking forward to most of all is Stan Cohen on Wednesday.  Stan's book States of Denial is a scholarly and compelling exploration of how it is people deny their responsibility for terrible things happening in the society around them.

Stan's analysis is based on a library of sociological and psychological research but also his own experiences as someone who was brought up in apartheid South Africa and lived for many years in Israel.

Stan sees denial as a necessary human capacity to enable us to cope with suffering in the world. The question is less why deny, but what shakes us out of this state: 'Why people don't shut out is more interesting than why they shut out' he says.      

Re my earlier posting, Stan described four ways in which we deny responsibility; obedience to superiors, conformity with society, necessity and - here's the link to Rita Carter - splitting of the personality. 

Stan's session has a brilliant chair - yes, alright it is my father - so I'm hoping we can explore what light his concept of denial sheds on the challenge of persuading people and nations to tackle climate change.

There are some still some places left for the event (which you can book on the web site) so do join us here on Wednesday.

How multiple are you?

Thanks to Graham Rawlinson, one of the Fellows who organised the successful open space event in Chichester last week. On hearing the RSA is planning a major project on the policy implications of new insights into the workings of the brain, Graham recommended to me Multiplicity by Rita Carter.

It is an interesting combination of a science and self-help book based on the argument that we are made up not of one unified personality with many facets but of many different personalities.

This does not mean we are all suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), but that external stimuli affect which of our personalities is in the driving seat at any time and that in turn our ways of thinking and reacting depend on which personality is in charge.

Unlike those who suffer from MPD, our personalities are in touch with each other and draw on the same bank of memories but they are distinct entities with different characteristics.

Carter - who we hope to get to the RSA as a speaker - cites evidence of multiple and hidden personalities from several sources; those who are unusually aware of their different personalities, psychotherapy case studies and hypnotism.

Among her more compelling points is the comparison of personality switching with 'ambiguous illusions' such as the Necker cube (the line drawing in which one face of the cube can either appear to be at the front left or at the back right but never both at once). Carter also argues convincingly that a key aspect of socialisation is our capacity to believe, and project, the illusion that we possess a unified single personality despite the evidence to the contrary.

Also fascinating is her argument that a key characteristic of modern culture is the greater freedom we have to indulge and experiment with different personalities. Less clear are the implications of the distinction between one personality with many facets and many personalities, connected to each other and with common memories.

Carter's argument is that we can live more effective and contented lives if instead of bemoaning the weaknesses of our single 'I' we learn to manage the 'household' of different personalities that inhabit our minds.

If we can persuade Rita to speak at the RSA I hope we get a chance to explore both the science and practical implications of her fascinating thesis.

Speed dating, parking tickets and English pubs

This week Tim Harford entertained and informed a packed Great Room audience by showing how economics form an important part of many of our daily decisions, whether we realise it or not. With some revealing anecdotes from his new book, The Logic of Life, Tim explained the powerful rationalities that affect our choices - whether we're on a speed-date or trying to decide if it's worth risking that parking ticket. Those of you in the audience would have noticed that this event was being filmed; this is for our new exciting events strand, Vision. Along with our new website, we will be launching RSA Vision soon which will give you all the opportunity to watch some of your favourite events again and again.

On Wednesday Polly Toynbee chaired an excellent panel discussion on how we can reverse the worringly persistent correlation between how well-off a family is and the quality of the place they live in. And we rounded off our week with Paul Kingsnorth in conversation with Martin Wright, debating whether the proliferation of chain cafes and the demise of the humble English pub signals a deeper loss of national identity and character. A spirited DSA audience probed and prompted Paul with some great questions as he introduced some of the challenging themes that he writes about in his new book, Real England: Battle against the Bland.

We were delighted to get back some stats from our web team today who not only told us that over 60 people listened online live to Jeremy Deller's recent event but that it has been downloaded as an mp3 file over 1000 times. To listen again to any of our events from this week or before visit the audio pages of our website.

Memoirs of life, love, death and art

We shot into April at the speed of light with a busy week in the lectures team. First up on Monday evening we continued our education series with Edge on developing the potential of every pupil. Geoff Mulgan of the Young Foundation opened the discussion about diversity of provision in the education system, an area of special interest to the RSA as we look ahead to the opening of the RSA Tipton Academy in September. We were delighted to welcome Anders Hultin to the event to speak to us about the Kunskapsskolan in Sweden, an innovative system of preparatory schools which he co-founded.

On Tuesday evening, the novelist Julian Barnes spoke to a packed and attentive Great Room about his memoir of life, love, death and art - Nothing to be Frightened of. This was the first in a new series of collaborations with bookseller Blackwell and we are very much looking forward to welcoming poet, Simon Armitage as our next speaker.

MT has already blogged on our great event on Wednesday with Michael Landy, Neil Boorman and Daniel Miller so I won't elaborate any further than to say that the audio podcast will be available soon for any that missed out on that fascinating discussion.

And to wrap up the week, we welcomed veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk to our RSA Thursday stage. After shoe-horning as many people as possible into the Tavern Room, Robert shared memorable moments from his incredible reporting career and caused a great queue of people after the lecture who were eager to question the great man himself.

We slow from a fast gallop to a steady canter next week, and we kick off our week with Tim Harford revealing the hidden logic of life... prepare to be enlightened!