The Future Is In Our Past -
It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years since the entire world was expecting catastrophe when the clock hit the year 2000. In Newtown, we gathered in the Waterfront Premises at the Barbour Site and, with the help of Aliant, communicated with people all over the world.
No one was expecting the world's end when the clock struck midnight, but there was a strange feeling that we were on the cusp of tremendous change. The event was indeed a harbinger of things to come.
2000 came and went, and whilst evil still prevails, generalized chaos eluded, and still eludes, the predictions. Without a doubt, the most mind boggling happening of the past decade is the change in the way we communicate. People across the globe are talking to each other daily. Ideas, good and not so good, are being spread at an alarming rate.
The Internet phenomenon Facebook changed the way we see each other and the world. Whereas, before Facebook, we communicated online with strangers sporting anonymous usernames, Facebook connected us to family and friends in a way never before imaginable.
Instant communication between individuals, the proliferation of information and the ability to conduct extensive research on any topic, within minutes, make it more difficult for the usual indoctrination techniques to have an effect. It's harder to fool all the people all the time.
George Bush is becoming famous for saying, "You can fool some of the people all the time and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." Governments may continue to follow George's Bush's philosophy but it may not be long before they get the message. The time of the citizen has come.
Citizen blogs have taken over the web and have become as important as regular news for getting out the word. It is inevitable that with exposure and transparency some of our sacred cows are open to scrutiny. We have had to face some cold facts about our beliefs.
One glaring example of how far we have come in a decade is the choice of the top 5 articles published by the Scientist in 2009.
Number 1... Merck published Fake Journal. It was revealed that the well-known pharmaceutical company Merck paid a company to produce a publication that looked like, but was not, a peer-reviewed medical journal.
Number 2... OA Journal accepts Fake Paper. The journal accepted a paper written by a computer. The article was deemed to be peer-reviewed and the journal requested $800 in "open access fees".
Number 4... Elsevier published 6 Fake Journals. The publisher admitted to publishing medical journals, sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, which looked like peer-reviewed publications.
3 out of the 5 top picks concerned organizations that engaged in activities designed to fool the public. In the top 10 we see another three headlines... Science Paper pulled, Life after Fraud, and Renal Researchers faked Data.
Until this decade, it would have taken enormous resources to expose a corporation like Merck to scrutiny. If such a deception had become known it would likely have remained within the scientific community. Great care would have been taken to keep this kind of revealing information from the public.
Today, the public is often the first to know. Yet knowing and assimilating the enormity of the danger to our institutions are two different things. In 10 years, we have come a long way from believing that governments and institutions knew best and whose mandate would protect us from harm. Yet, we still find it hard to question why deception and dishonesty, in our institutions, are not as rare as we might imagine.
Even with the current organizational exposure, we want fervently to believe that the individual, rather than institutional culture, is culpable? Being able to put deception down to one person saves the institution's reputation. Punishing the person at the bottom preserves the illusion of invincibility.
Bob Dylan was correct in saying "the times they are a changin'." Still, there remains a lot of work to be done. We know now that it is not just individuals who fool us. It is the structure of our organizations that is designed to give the illusion of people first but in actual fact keep people as numbers to serve. There is built in structural protection to ensure that the organization wins.
Unfortunately, haven't we had numerous examples of this in our own province? Eastern Health and the fishery are prime examples, where we have been given the impression that the corporate structure is working for the people, and that the health of big corporations is good for the people overall.
Well, thanks to the Internet and open communication and much to our chagrin, it becomes clear that that this is not the case and we have been made painfully aware that when there is a choice between the health of people and the health of corporations, governments have already chosen.
Is all this inevitable? Or is it possible to turn things around truly to put people first? After revealing the ugly truth, will the Internet also bring a new type of organization?
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