Jon Alexander is the founder of New Citizenship Project which serves as a catalyst for social change. The organisation points where the energy for change already exists, and gives it a boost. These points can be anywhere – from corporate giants to charities, from government to community organisations. Here is an excerpt of his article from Huffington Post.
New Individuals, New Context: The Citizen and the Sharing Society
Jon Alexander: Following a presentation I gave at a conference in Copenhagen last autumn, I have been exchanging emails with trendspotter and business thinker Susanne A.C. who blogs at www.consciousandcurious.com. She is one of those driving the progress of what is known variously as ‘collaborative consumption’ or ‘the sharing economy’, and our conversation has been about the overlap between this and the concepts of citizenship that I have been exploring.
Our joint contention is that we are entering what has the potential to be an age of empowerment; with the emerging role of the individual in transition from consumer to citizen as the social context makes a parallel transition from linear, hierarchical and transactional towards becoming far more interactive and focused on sharing and collaboration. We share the belief that this is a new paradigm. In what follows, we explore together a few places where these changes are becoming manifest, and try to look ahead.
New technology, new values, new identity
From the perspective of the individual, there is clear evidence of a generational shift in values. Surveys conducted by Havas, Telefonica, Globescan and others highlight that those currently coming to maturity as the generation in charge – call them millennials, prosumers, aspirationals, or whatever you like – are moving away from depending on physical objects and ownership to create our sense of identity, preferring to define ourselves by our social interactions and relationships.
This shift is very much related to the shift in technology and possibility. In a world where the web facilitates sharing of objects and resources – whether rooms in your house through Airbnb, electric drills through Kingfisher Group, or pretty much anything through yerdle.com – we simply don’t need to own things; access is the new ownership.
Add to this the ‘maker movement’, which adds personal decentralised production to the picture of collaborative consumption. This movement is a trend revolutionizing the way we design, produce and trade goods from everything to recycling, upcycling, DIY and recently the development within 3D printing. More importantly though, it is a change in behaviour patterns which sees people creating their own products and demystifying the brands that have dominated identity creation. UK brand Technology Will Save Us, with products like DIY Gamer, is one of our favourites in this space.
In such a world, it’s open to debate (and we have debated!) whether what came first was the change in mentality or whether we are just reacting to having needs and wants met in new ways. In many ways, though, it’s a moot point. Both causal directions are in play. And the consequences for the identity construct of the individual are the same regardless. As one big name CEO in Davos put it, “this new generation simply don’t see themselves as Consumers.”
New skills, new intelligence, new currency
And what will come as a result will be dramatically different.
As we focus increasingly on sharing and collaboration, subject expertise will become less important than facilitation skills – those who create platforms for others, arenas for the wisdom of the crowds to aggregate and become wholes greater than the sum of the parts, will be far more important than the hero specialists we currently worship.
As we develop our social interacting skills and we experience the new benefits for “me” via “us”, we could be developing a new social intelligence, a change in thought patterns and subsequently behaviour. Susanne expects this idea of social intelligence – SQ – to become a new important trend in behaviour patterns and an important asset in human resources.
In the wider world, this is something we’re already seeing measured in the form of trust ratings in the new economy. This is something that first started on ebay, but people like Rachel Botsman, author of collaborative consumption bible ‘What’s Mine Is Yours’, reckon these ratings will become more important than your credit rating as this future unfolds. These ideas are already affecting the development of alternative currencies like bitcoin, and will only become more important.
