I promised a few of my own thoughts after liveblogging the “Are online social networks the new cities” at yesterday’s Innovation Edge conference. I’ve not had much time to reflect on the session, which is a shame as it’s a question that touches on a lot of areas of interest for me, but being so broad it can be hard to impose an appropriate structure on the conversation, particularly with such a large audience.

I very nearly gave up making notes during the session as it seemed to wander quite some way from the intended topic, spending a lot more time on the implications of social networking sites for education and family life. Certainly family life and the education system are key components of city life and looking at them is part of answering the question, but too much time was spent on that topic when none of the panel were really in a position to discuss it in any great detail.

Michael Birch’s comments that they had thought a lot about urban development when planning Bebo were probably the point that most piqued my interest. His reference to the problems of fabricating a community in the way that Milton Keynes, Welwyn Garden City and other similar towns were created is an important point for anyone seeking to design online social spaces. It’s a shame he wasn’t encouraged to develop that further. This is one area where our understanding of the web is very clearly still in its very early stages; we’re only just beginning to see platforms that allow people to mould their surroundings in a way analagous any good physical city allows and developing that way is likely to push at many of our preconceptions.

As with so many conversations about the web—whether we’re talking about the differences between the so-called Webs 1, 2 and 3, the relationship between blogs and traditional journalism, or social networks and other forms of interaction—I got a sense that there were false dichotomies. As the panel thankfully noted, teenage behaviour may look different online but in most respects what we’re seeing is an extension of the teenage norms we’ve seen over several generations. And similarly the most fertile conversations about cities and social networks seem to hinge on things like our local ning group, the Facebook Neighbourhoods app, outside.in, and tools like some of those MySociety is building. The web doesn’t simply replace spaces, but whether limited or pervasive it can augment them, as Andrew Blum discussed in a piece from October.

Maybe a future session of this sort could work better if it were focussed more tightly on innovation in the overlap between urban spaces and pervasive internet.

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A couple of weeks back I attended NCVO’s seminar on the Future of Citizenship. Building on a recent report by The Henley Centre that developed four scenarios of how notions of citizenship and civic involvement may change over the next twenty years, the workshop-based afternoon was focussed on the challenges and opportunities that such changes will present to voluntary organisations. It was a fascinating afternoon and I’d highly recommend taking a look at the full report (PDF) and checking out the follow up questions on the Third Sector Foresight website.

Not working directly for a voluntary sector organisation I was definitely in the minority, but it was abundantly clear that whatever direction society moves in, the role of online services can only increase and that it is necessary for those of us building such services to be actively helping those working on the ground analyse the strengths, limitations and possibilities available.

A key concern arising from all scenarios was the likelihood that the coming years will see an increase in levels of social exclusion. Whether we are resource rich or resource poor, active or apathetic, the requirements of the population at large to work out their own access to services and manage their inclusion in society are highly likely to increase and some will be left behind.

In one conversation I had with a representative of an organisation working with an easily identifiable group of contacts I was told that they are increasingly concerned that by putting a heavy emphasis on online support for their constituency, the less tech-savvy are being left behind and it can be hard to see who they are. In such contexts it seems fairly trivial to add a reporting layer to their online services which will identify which of their contacts are not using the system and so should be offered extra support, but with decisions frequently being made based on small budgets and limited IT expertise, there is often little space for such thinking or expertise to customise the off-the-shelf packages that allow for a quick and cheap setup.

It was also clear from the research of the Henley Centre that most people see citizenship as primarily a “horizontal” concern—how we relate with our neighbours—rather than being about the “vertical” connection with government. For those in attendance, working on social issues every day, the need for those two axes to be connected was clear, but that message is not generally understood and in some cases is met with hostility. It’d be interesting to see how more use of tools such as those built by mySociety can make those connections, blur the divide, or maybe even break down the dichotomy to develop new ways of relating between government and society.

Most in attendance foresaw a future where physical resources and access to transport are harder to come by. Between global warming and peak oil we are likely to see far more constraints than we are used to. Many in the voluntary sector are ideally placed to help society through those situations, but will themselves feel the pinch. New ways of working together, sharing resources and optimising travel are needed and will have to go beyond efforts such as Virtual Bali to address more day-to-day issues.

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On Tuesday evening I found myself at a google/demos event, How Has The Internet Changed British Democracy?. Unlike most discussions about the net and democracy I’ve attended, the panel here was very ‘establishment’, consisting of Demos Director Catherine Fieschi , Spectator Editor Matthew D’Ancona, Stephan Shakespeare, the founder of online polling agency YouGov, and BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson. Tom Watson MP was detained in the House of Commons, or he would have joined the panel.

Given the establishment panel it was refreshing to hear a general concensus that while there have been lots of indications of change, the real potential of the net has not yet been realised in British politics. Catherine Fieschi concluded her introductory statements noting that she doesn’t think the internet has changed democracy “yet in our societies, but I think it’s gone some of that way in others.”

A recurring theme, first clearly voiced by Spectator Editor was that we should be looking for a genuinely new form of politics for the internet age, and not simply how the net “facilitates and speeds up” the old forms. There was a general consensus that Gordon Brown’s recently announced “new politics” has (in the words of Catherine Fieschi) “a distinctly 20th century feel” but while many ideas were thrown around, what was naturally lacking was any description of what a 21st century version might look like.

Nick Robinson discussed in some detail how he came to start blogging, first in the form of an “election diary” some years back, and more recently again on the BBC News site. He pointed out that as TV reporter he didn’t get much feedback and that by providing a feedback mechanism the blog had helped his reporting. In particular he pointed to the resignation of former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, when there was a sense among some members of the public that reporters had know of Kennedy’s drinking problem and were covering it up. Robinson claimed that he had been unaware of that sense, and that the blog made him aware of it and so able to address it directly.

Robinson was particularly concerned that in an age of on-demand television and increasing narrow-casting it is all too easy for viewers to “opt out” of the political news he believes is vitally important. He sees blogging and other new media as a way to engage a new audience. His eagerness to engage is impressive but I found myself wondering if a better way to handle a situation where people are only watching a narrow selection of news is to try to make sure that reporters work harder to convey the contexts of (and hence the interweaving between) their stories. He hinted towards this in suggestions that he wanted the BBC to make better use of amazon-style recommendation systems for news but I think it bears further development to help people dig deeper into the contexts their interests exist within.

Tom Steinberg of mySociety challenged the panel to discuss a “non-media” aspect of the political process they could see changing in the coming years as a result of the internet and while they shared a focus on the somewhat obvious element of direct accountability (as demonstrated to some extent by mySociety’s projects) the key interest seemed to be in the position for co-creation in the consultative and drafting process. We have tools to gather opinion and to collectively edit documents, can that be harnessed to change the way the government writes Green Papers?

Perhaps the strongest sense I took away was that government needs to wake up to the possibility and need for stronger feedback loops. At the mySociety Disruptive Technologies session earlier in the month Stef Magdalinksi led a discussion that spent quite some time on the need for campaign facilitators to provide feedback loops so that campaigners can see the impact of their actions and all involved can refine their work.

The same possibility exists for government who could be proactive in their responses to petitions especially, as Nick Robinson pointed out, those gathered through the Downing Street Petitions system. Government can use these systems to identify people with specific interests and to supply them with information, whether persuasive or simply educational, to deepen that conversation. Similarly people can be identified to receive alerts about consultations, to be invited to discussions, and so on. It may be possible for expertise and interest at the grassroots to more effectively bubble up into policy making.

It would be naive to think that major change that will happen quickly or withour pressure, but the possibilities are enormous and this session showed that there are people close to the policy making process who are thinking seriously about the possibilities.

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The good people at mySociety have been discussing the API they’ve opened up for They Work For You. They also have a few examples of how the API might be applied.

Best of them, and possibly the best API demo I’ve seen, is a text adventure run over telnet. Entering a UK postcode will select an MP for you, and you have to guide that MP to Tony Blair’s Sedgefield constituency, doing battle with any opposing MPs you pass along the way, and eventually fight the PM himself.

Entering my parents’ Tunbridge Wells postcode unfortunately selects me a Conservative MP, but in the spirit of role-playing I guided him to Sedgefield and defeated Mr. Blair. Greg Clark MP’s verbal diarrhoea skills are not to be trifled with, and he picked up 3246 Experience Points along the way. Very entertaining.

Read more about ‘Battle your way to Sedgefield’ here, and try your hand here (or here if you really want to avoid telnet).

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