Matthew's RSA blog

Free as ...

This week I’ve been recalling the iconic line from Withnail and I, “Free to those that can afford it, but very expensive to those that can’t”.

This sprang to mind while reading in the Guardian about Freeconomics – Chris Anderson’s idea that companies are giving away many of their goods for free, and opening up new revenue streams elsewhere. For example, a colleague recently upgraded her phone with a particular network, and in return received not only a free new phone, but also an i-pod nano.

The business model here is based on the assumption that since i-pod will only play i-tunes formatted songs, Apple is broadening its consumer base. Given how cheap manufacturing has become, thanks to globalisation, it is actually a cost effective way of distributing goods and then making people pay for the services later.

In large part major corporates are responding to the rise of what Matt Mason (who spoke here yesterday) calls The Pirates Dilemma – which is about how corporations can compete / collaborate with the people who distribute their intellectual property without paying royalties or receiving consent.

The new economics of the internet is part of a more general reappraisal both of the ‘big’ economics of markets, risk and regulation but also the day to day economics of our own consumption patterns. Things can change quickly.

Twenty years ago the value of a family house in the London suburbs was equivalent to the cost of about 400 good quality video players. Now, even with the housing market slowdown, you could buy 16,000 multi functional DVD players for the price of the same house. In the 1980s we would have expected to pay a lot more for an item of clothing than a basic foodstuff but now you can get a perfectly serviceable t- shirt for less than a good loaf of bread. It’s easy to get disorientated about the real costs and value of stuff.

With food and raw material shortages, and climate change, a key issue in the politics of consumption is waste. Whether its white goods with built in obsolescence or the tons of good food we chuck into dustbins every day I wonder whether we are approaching the end of the disposable society.

We have no idea how much producing a kilo of meat costs in environmental or economic terms, we have no idea what the real costs of making our i-pod are in labour or any other sense. We suspect corporations of overcharging for cheap goods – and they may well be in some cases. But what we must do is regain some perspective on consumption, for the good of our planet, or even just for our own peace of mind.

Come on(line) everybody!

In a world that is increasingly digitally enhanced, how do we ensure that people can be included in the conversations that are happening on the internet – or even at a more basic level can take advantage of cheaper car insurance (which seem to be available through internet only deals)?

This is true not only for society as a whole, but closer to home, as part of this society.

Roughly a third of Britons are considered ‘digitally excluded’. I’m chairing a conference on this tomorrow which will be looking at how we can reach this final third. No doubt I’ll be sharing my thoughts on this later in the week. But it made me think about what we’re trying to do here with the RSA Networks.

Tonight there will be an RSA Networks Exchange event here at JAS. The event is designed to mirror the experience Fellows have at our growing (and under construction) online platform. They can propose, discuss and support innovative projects. In essence it’s the physical manifestation of the virtual experience.

The idea is that not all the projects discussed tonight will be taken forward, indeed, not all the projects should be taken forward.

In our society we have an aversion to failure. This makes a lot of sense, failing makes us feel bad. But one of the capacities we need to be promoting is that of resilience. The ability to say ‘ok, this idea wasn’t so great, but I’m glad I put it out there, now I can move on and do something else.’

The other point of putting your ideas out there is that you can link to other people who are interested in similar things, and then together you can have even better ideas.

The beauty of the internet is that it creates a place for iterative project development. To borrow from recent speaker, Jonathan Zittrain, it’s a generative process. Together we can create something that is better than any of our individual ideas.

As I’ve said many times, our Networks project is about bringing together Fellows, so that they  can work together on projects which will support social change. But it occurs to me that not all our fellows are part of the ‘digitally included’. Of course with this blog I’m preaching to the converted, but it’s worth thinking about. How do we engage more Fellows in the online debate?

Have a look at this from Clay Shirky, who seeks to answer the question non-digital people always ask which is ‘Where do you find the time’.

Brain Food

RSA Screens is going from strength from strength as we started this week with acclaimed British director, Nick Broomfield’s controversial new film, Battle for Haditha. This is a war film about ordinary people in an impossible situation, chronicling a series of of still disputed events which led to a number of tragic killings in Iraq in November 2005. A packed Great Room came to see this special screening and pose a series of challenging questions to the great man himself.   

From matters of life and death to yet more questions about the very fundamentals of human existence. Leading experts in the practice and philosophy of medical science, Adam Zeman and Ray Tallis continued our popular RSA Thursday series with a revealing exploration of the brain, from atom to pysche. Despite ever more astonishing scientific advances, Zeman and Tallis agreed that we still struggle to bridge the explanatory gap between the physical brain and the mind. Food for thought of the very highest order...

Now to highlight two very exciting events coming up in our Spring programme:

We will be welcoming one of culture’s wisest observers and a regular writer on all things to do with the internet Clay Shirky. Clay will be exploring the impact of online social networks on the fast-changing world around us.

Finally to coincide with the launch of the RSA’s new Prison Learning Network, Rt Hon Jack Straw MP will be examining the major issues in prisons policy today.

A lighter blog next week as the Chair of the GDAC (glossy drama appreciation club) returns to fill you in on all the gossip!

From the RSA blogs...

The RSA has a clutch of blogs under its virtual roof with news and debate for the New Year. 

Carbonlimited is the RSA's project exploring personal carbon trading.  Their blog has the latest news and ideas and reflections on the project from Fellows and the team.

On the Arts and Ecology blog, there are some thought-provoking ideas about life without toasters, TVs and stereos.  And from our library and archive blogs, this week's featured book from the Fellow's library explores the motives of terrorists, and our archives put the 'Royal' in the RSA.  Enjoy!

Collective consumption… and perhaps a lecture

I wrote last week about the success of RSA Screens, at which film makers discuss their work with an audience prior to it being shown on Channel Four.

On my way into Clapham Picture House last week I saw an advertisement for a series of screenings in which operas at New York's Metropolitan Opera are broadcast live to cinemas around the globe.

In the summer months BP and others sponsor big screen showings of ballet and opera in town squares across the UK.

By its nature going to the cinema is a collective experience, but there is a difference. Unlike just happening to sit next to a stranger at the Odeon, these events involve people using film as the focus for a group activity, or exchange, recognising that this adds something (beyond the size of the screen) not gained by watching the same material in your front room.

This desire for collective consumption will be vividly displayed tomorrow when millions of us choose to watch the Rugby World Cup final in noisy, crowded pubs and clubs.

A few years ago, in the face of falling cinema and live sport audiences, it was widely assumed we were on the road to the complete privatisation of leisure. As home entertainment options expanded and improved why would people bother with the effort and expense of going to see live performance?

But then things turned round. Film makers rediscovered the blockbuster and cinema developers went multi-screen. Sports clubs (football in particular) starting treating fans like paying customers deserving of comfort and safety; investors and sponsors saw that live sport could be good business.

The growth in collectivism goes further.

Every large town and city (and even some villages) seem to have a growing book, film, theatre or comedy festival. Then there is the expansion of the lecture circuit, the multiplication of rock festivals.

It seems we do like doing stuff together.

And something interesting is happening to our attention span. A TV executive told me the other day that it is getting harder and harder to hold viewers for longer than a few minutes. A fifty minute drama can't succeed with one pay off at the end. It must be full of sub-plots and mini-climaxes.

Similarly, we are apparently very intolerant of websites that aren't up to the minute, fully functional and speaking precisely to our interests.

Yet, we will sit in a muddy field and wait for hours to hear a band, watch a boring 0-0 and be delighted with a last minute winner, or listen to an author's lecture with only a small chance of being picked in the Q and A.

It seems we are willing to put up with things live and together, that we would never accept as individuals consuming bytes of access-anytime information.

Others I'm sure have written more eloquently and authoritatively on this subject, but I find these trends interesting and encouraging.

Is there something here that links to the RSA's broader 'pro-social' debate? I'd like to know what you think.

Then again you've probably stopped reading by now - maybe I'll have to do this post as a lecture instead.

Consumer Choices in the Frame

In my speech about pro-social behaviour (all reasonable speaker's fees accepted) I suggest we can group under three headings the ways we need to develop as people if we are to create the better future we say we want.

We need to be more positively engaged in collective decision making, we need to live in ways that are more self-sufficient and sustainable and we need to be find new ways of being 'other regarding'.

Under the second of these headings I mention the growing importance of our behaviour as consumers. The rise of Fairtrade shows that many of us (surveys suggest about two thirds) want to be ethical consumers and that this can make a real difference.

But if we want the overall impact of our consumption to be benign, we need to ask more questions. For example, what about our role as the consumers of financial products?

The RSA is intending to undertake a consultation and deliberative conference to explore whether small and medium sized investors know how their money is invested, if they care about it and are they interested in having more say over it.

I wonder whether we will find we are simultaneously investing in companies with a strong commitment to social and environmental responsibility and, indirectly, in aggressive investment funds which see overly generous corporations as good targets for takeover and asset stripping?

Some of us may be buying more ethically but nearly all of us are buying more. Yet, do we ever stop to ask whether we actually want or need the next gadget or luxury product?

The other day I was in PC World buying an accessory for my son's computer. I was fifth in line at the checkout and was intrigued that three out of four customers in front of me were buying variants of the same product.

The item in question was a digital picture frame. Based on this small sample I confidently predict this will be a chart topper in next Christmas' most bought present list.

Before getting to the meat of my argument I have to admit to an aesthetic (some might say 'snobbish') bias.

I can't imagine anything less appealing than an unattractive constantly flickering picture frame in my front room featuring an ever changing catalogue of family snaps taken from the picture files on my computer.

Imagine being at the house of someone with one of these. When they are speaking to you is the polite thing to look at them or to gaze admiringly at the slide show of family snaps scrolling by on their mantelpiece?
If an amusing photo of the kids in fancy dress pops up does one show appreciation by grinning inanely even though the conversation is about the situation in Darfur or the new outbreak of foot and mouth?

But behind this bias is something more serious.

As I understand the technology, a digital photo frame is designed to be always on (after all we don't turn ordinary picture frames on their face when we leave the room). The frames work by receiving a signal from a wireless router which we also tend to leave on full time. I'm not sure if the system also requires the computer to be on but it might encourage us to leave our PC always in stand-by mode.

If I am right about the spread of these new gadgets - that they will soon be seen as must-have objects - why not have one in every room? 

So a new gadget, another thing moving around and flickering in our homes, another thing to make ordinary conversation more difficult, and most of all another way to use electricity and increase our already bloated consumption of carbon.

I am not saying we should ban digital picture frames, nor that we can, or should stop the endless pursuit of new consumer gizmos. But if ethical consumerism is to move beyond the top layer of our crowded supermarket trolleys, part of the process might be encouraging a more critical debate about whether every new consumer good is, well, good.

Am I on to anything here?

A quick and random thought.

In my office every day I hear two very different views of the world.

On the one side is the world of technology, creativity, social enterprise, and philanthropy.

So much that is exciting is happening at the intersection of business, particularly new business, and social action.

Technology companies, internet billionaires, hedge fund tycoons, ex-presidents and vice-presidents seem to be striding the world setting up new foundations, creating networks, exploring new ways of engaging people in issues like climate change, conflict resolution and African poverty.

The pace of change in our society and the creativity of young people as the drivers of this change are breathtaking.

To hear all this it can surely only be a matter of time before a new and better world emerges...

And yet look at the other axis - between state and citizen, or between different states.

Here the big problems seem stuck or getting worse; disengagement, poverty, climate change, conflict.

In ten minutes before I dash of to the annual dinner of the RSA in Yorkshire I have no idea how to even think about this disconnect.

Is it that all the technology and big business billions are just drops in the ocean?

Is technological innovation really more about making money and pandering to shallow individualism than making the world a better place?

Is it that the state (like many large corporations) and international institutions are simply incapable of operating effectively in today's complex fast moving world?

The biggest challenges we face can only be met with the right interventions from the state - locally, nationally and internationally - but much of the dynamism in the world (the ideas, the technology, the people) is taking place well away from the formal sites of political authority.

Am I on to anything here?

And should the RSA be trying to find ways of thinking about and overcoming this disconnect?