an anti-bureaucratic manifesto

Sixteen realities of this new era.

This started as a module in my Bureaucrat Tipping lens, but seems too cumbersome to remain there. I'm loath to throw it out without putting it somewhere we can find it, so it will sit in the archives of the BFU Weekly Journal.

Unless of course it gets enough comments to justify working on it some more.

A week later I've decided to build a Squidoo lens around this idea; go ahead and visit Netcohort Manifesto.

an anti-bureaucratic manifesto

1. Humanity is composed of individuals.
2. Every functioning individual is better equipped to determine what is best for themselves than any other person.
3. The "one size fits many" bureaucratic age is over - it ain't coming back.
4. the world is still full of bureaucratic age misfits believing it is their calling to run the lives of others. Their world is shrinking, and in some cases imploding.
5. The technologically empowering age of the individual has begun; individuals are starting to self-tailor their own lives.
6. The social axiom with the greatest potential -- Do as you wish; without harming others and their rights to do as they wish.
7. If you so tailor your life so as to optimize opportunities for yourself and those you love, everyone benefits.
8. A life well lived is a disruptive technology.
9. Any exchange of loyalties is an ongoing negotiation. Individuals can choose where and why to direct their loyalty, and when to remove it.
10. Loyalty is now born of respect, not of position. If you are posturing for position, any loyalty perceived as gained is ephemeral.
11. Respect, or lack thereof, is reciprocal. Now is the time to change the equilibrium point with those important to you.
12. Institutions that seek quality relationships with their constituents are destined to find like measure to what they uniquely offer.
13. Too big -- a balloon waiting for a pin.
14. Too small -- the first step to success. Creative "too small" organizations and individuals are a pin box.
15. In fast paced technology environments what you know is far more important than where you learned it.
    
16. Your capabilities and character are becoming far more important than organizational position or certificates.

This was a good start, do you have an idea to add to the list?

Perhaps some speculative fiction showing human rights hacktivism will better portray these ideas?

Disruptive Technology & Disruptive Innovation

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Disruptive technology and disruptive innovation are both well described in Wikopedia. Joseph Schumpeter presented a well developed economist's view of the same idea in the 1940s, he called it creative destruction .


Regardless of origin, the idea that new technology slowly overtakes and then passes entrenched methodologies, to everyone's benefit except the old tech, is a sound concept. A new disruptive technology is frequently just a niche play at first, but as it develops it is found to be an improvement of the prior designs.

"Don't let schooling interfere with your education."
Mark Twain

Bastiat Free University employs a potentially Disruptive Technology. The Docebo open source learning system used at BFU fits many of the potentialities for disruption as outlined in Clayton Christiensen's books about disruptive technology. Your own Bastiat Free University hopes to become a Disruptive Innovation and inspire change within the traditional, inefficient, expensive, snobbish, and archaic government supported and regulated universities.


Whew.


Let me say that again: traditional, inefficient, expensive, snobbish, and archaic government supported and regulated universities.

An even stronger disruptive education format is being developed for the Netcohort Institute; think peer to peer education, P2Pedu.

OK, back to the post.


BFU has an article that performs an ad hoc comparison of distance learning and brick and mortar schools. Currently B&M is ahead. This article does not mention disruptive technology, but the arguments raised support the concept.


Our working premise is that the bureaucratic age is ending. The rise of the information and miniaturization age is itself disruptive. Economies of scale are reversing. In the Industrial age large organizations and centralized decisions were efficient and pushed out smaller enterprises from all but niche markets. Today a new Netcohort is creating customer centric small and adaptive groups that are surgically appropriating the most profitable sectors from the industrial age dinosaurs. They do this using disruptive innovation to satisfy their customers.


The cost of centralized vertical management, in time and money, is causing the implosion of bloated bureaucracies. Organizations based on the economies of large size dwarfing the needs of the individual are falling as the individual finds personal satisfaction elsewhere. Disruptive information technologies will substantially reward the small efficient netcohort as they freely associate and collaborate based on reputation.


Bastiat Free University is participating in this individual centric disruptive innovation. The fact that archaic education will need to be replaced is already apparent. The current system stamps out machine part graduates to fit in industrial age social machines; just as the industrial age grinds to a halt.


BFU is not even noticed by B&M as of yet, and honestly may never be a threat. There will however be many such technologies launched. One of them will be effective at inspiring and training the reputable entrepreneurs needed.


The new network society needs a netcohort; disruptive innovators that will replace the vanishing middle class of the industrial age. Education needs to create independent, knowledgeable, action oriented graduates that enjoy learning. They will want to find pleasure in learning; as change accelerates learning will become an everyday, all life experience.


BFU offers Renaissance education, looking back to move forward. This new age is likely to be more like the Renaissance, individualistic and creative, than like the industrial age that has just past. Discover how to be a disruptive innovator by using Bastiat Free University's disruptive technology.


Rediscover the pleasures of self directed learning.

Allan
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