Movement is what we are involved with as a social tech group.
It should be no surprise that we are into a sundry of things. Mobile app development, web app development, AI systems R&D, 3D printing, website design, development and maintenance. Birdwatching, skin and scuba diving. Disaster response, community development. Gift-giving, philanthropy. Good governance. More.
More information, more capacity to adapt. More oscillation, more information. More movement, so long as sustained, more capacity to learn and adapt. More capacity to back propagate. More capacity to influence events as to have predictable outcomes.
Movements are what transform societies. Teams of teams of teams, not individuals.
No single individual can be expected to invent even the simplest mobile phone as we now know mobile phones. Not the Age of Inventors anymore. Teams of teams of teams enable significant innovations these days. Epistemic communities with similar visions of the future oscillating around the same attractors.
This is where we are not good at as Filipinos.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) authorities are calling for an organized effort to save Manila Bay. Invites the UP Mountaineers, a student organization. Does not invite the chairman of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Review Committee that has reviewed the 640-hectare reclamation project in Las Pinas City and Paranaque City, the 360-hectare reclamation project in Pasay City, and the 120-hectare reclamation project in the City of Manila, among others.
The forum involved is by invitation. Those who get invited are invited according to some measure or some norm. Anybody’s norm is, of course, dependent on someone’s unique past or prior experience — not everyone has the same past or prior experience. Ergo, limited to the little neat boxes of someone’s mental model. Less information.
Public hearings invite more attendance. Unlike public consultations that involve only “by invitation” access. It is open to everyone from the North Pole to the South Pole. Everyone, invited via some announcement on national dailies.
This means more debates. More individuals with their own unique past or prior experiences coming together establishing connections. More oscillations. More information.
For some reason, the DENR authorities expect to manage the 2,000 square kilometer Manila Bay hectarage by inviting only limited attendance to the discussions. They expect to generate the inventions and innovations needed. Predictable. Less information available, less creativity, less invention, less innovation possible. Less chance of adaptation. Less chance of success.
Imagine calling for an organized effort to save the entire archipelago. Not only Manila Bay.
No genius, no charismatic leader, no saint we can expect to transform the Philippines. Not even in a hundred years. This, in as much as no one is expected to be able invent on his own some mobile phone as we now know mobiles phones.
What we need are massive oscillations everywhere as if we were some ant with millions of antennae oscillating to find out the direction from where some pheromone is coming from.
We need political parties. Better, some movement of political parties relating to each other in some generative adversarial networking.
Movement is what we are involved with.
Photograph by Joe Galvez. Colorization by Prince Javier.