Architect Joni Baboci tells about Governing Futures

Resistance to change is a feature of bureaucracies. The circular economy aims to revolutionize the way the economy works, and therefore it is expected that institutions are not ready, willing or able to engage with radical change. It is therefore paramount to reimagine shared institutions that could govern the future of finance and redesign the incentives that preserve the status quo.

In terms of individual incentives modern life has become a constant sacrifice of privacy and individuality for convenience. Social media, streaming platforms, communication apps, fast-food chains, or the mobile device companies are only some of the industries that have commodified time. Balaji Srinivasan recently referred to how the traditional media mantra “if it bleeds, it leads” has shifted in new media to “if it enrages, it engages.” Unfortunately climate, circularity and sustainability have also fallen prey to enragement for engagement. The discussion has slipped from technical to ideological. The depth of argument in the public discourse is critically shallow.

In governance terms decentralization has been the keyword for a while. A network of distributed but well-networked horizontal teams iterating through an agile framework has been favored to strictly top-down hierarchical organizations. In a recent report McKinsey & Company describe four features of team networks that can help large organizations stay nimble:

– Launch teams fast and build as you go;

– Get out of the way but stay connected;

– Champion radical transparency and authenticity;

– Turbocharge self-organization.

This model does not simply generate buy-in or active participation. It changes the structure and incentives of organizations. It looks more similar to the German stakeholder corporate-organization model than the more popular and typically known Anglo-Saxon shareholder model. This long-term model of corporation governance means that an organization is not managed only in the short-term interest of its shareholder. It is rather a constant negotiation between the needs of its internal stakeholders (employees, managers, owners) and the larger, often more generic needs of external stakeholders (suppliers, society, government, creditors, customers).

An interesting case study in governing small-scale manufacturing is SF Made in San Francisco. It provides an interesting model in how a small-scale circular-economy focused group of manufacturers could start an integrated community through common governance. SF Made is a guild-like member-based community formed by the collaboration and participation of all of its members, local manufacturers. It is a nonprofit that provides much needed organization and coordination to artisans and makers with a particular interest in advanced manufacturing. Interestingly SF Made defines advanced manufacturing as: “not a new sector of industry but rather a set of digital tools and conceptual frameworks that can be woven into any manufacturing process.” From this mindset, advanced manufacturing, 3d printing and other maker processes are interpreted as a conceptual framework, rather than a well-defined set of technologies. I think similarly the circular-economy should be thought of as a strategic framework around which manufacturing technologies that still haven’t joined the mainstream can slowly coalesce into the status quo. In terms of urban manufacturing, SFMade provides another interesting example in how to kickstart an integrated, co-located, localist maker community. Through its different partnerships, SFMade was able to amend zoning codes and construct a new building which hosts most of the participating businesses. What is termed “inclusionary zoning” is one of the first examples of allowing light-industrial use to be mixed with other, more typical urban land uses. Referring back to the triple helix model in the previous essay, the SFMade ecosystem was further extended with Lime Lab, a manufacturing academy combining a prototyping studio with an education center supplying skilled workers to the future of manufacturing. This diversity in urban use can provide a fantastic framework on the physical future of our economy. It is a strategy that benefits manufacturers as well as residents. While previously industrial areas were highly polluting and therefore located far away from residential centers, advanced manufacturing produces almost no pollutants - and with strong recycling mechanisms in place - could easily be co-located with residential or commercial land use in future cities.

TikTok, Clubhouse and the changing use-pattern of Twitter illustrate a technological future where the border between consumers and creators is blurred further than ever before. Podcasting is great, but the success of clubhouse demonstrates that people don’t want to be “just” listeners. Blogging allowed individuals to publish their thoughts to the world, but now substack allows them to own a piece of their audience’s inbox. Instagram enabled and popularized photo-sharing, however - in contrast to instagram - the five most popular creators on tik-tok are social media personalities whose names you will most probably not know if above a certain (very young) age.

Transposing this way of thinking to democracy and governance exhibits how the future of elections and decision making will be less about multi-year representation and more about active individual participation or temporary short-term delegation. This means that one could either research an issue and involve himself directly in its decision making, or decide to delegate her voting stake to an expert of the domain on which a decision needs to be taken. If the city needs to decide on the morphology of a new art gallery a cultural operator might be better placed to make that decision, while if the decision concerns matters of infrastructure, an engineer might be the best person to delegate your voting stake to. This could happen ephemerally and temporarily for every single decision, or one could delegate entire domains to excellent individuals. The results and outcomes of decisions can be consulted to see how specific individuals perform in such a system. Merging the potential of future technology with the cause-based sensible engagement of citizens can produce a new way of governing - a modern, remote-first Agora.

 

The most important innovation of the last decade is blockchain technology. Cryptography has enabled private communication for decades, but an anonymous individual or team working under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the first practical application of an anonymous but trusted distributed ledger to the world in 2009: bitcoin. The past twelve years have seen a gradual boom and bust cycle of innovation in cryptospace: beyond financial speculation however, there are a number of relevant uses of blockchain tech that could revolutionize the way we govern communities, organizations, cities, governments and potentially, the economy of the future.