Keynote at ICT Conference: Have a little faith in me

Hello all,

I (Jeyanthy Siva) want to celebrate with you: I have been invited to be a keynote speaker as part of a panel at a large (2,500+ people expected) international technology conference which is held in different parts of the world and is being held in Amsterdam this year: http://www.wcit2010.com/Program/Day%201/38#a38

I am honored to be part of an impressive panel of business leaders, an academic and an EU politician. The topic of the Panel is "Have a little faith in me: What part does trust play in the information society?

As part of this panel, each of us are talking on different aspects of trust and eGovernance - title of my presentation: "Trust out of necessity? Adapting governance to fit the new world"

The summary of my talk:

As technology levels society, expands access to information and equalizes power relationships, government needs to change from traditional hierarchical, rule enforcing, control from top model to the new government needed for the changing world. This necessitates a fundamental shift in paradigm from power over to power with - from distrust to trust, from closed to open/transparent, from tight control from centralized body to distributed power and creating nodes of feedback centers spread out through the regions. What will it take to get there - practice of NVC skills and consciousness leading to "see, think and behave" differently.

Jeyanthy Siva

Sandhi Institute

http://www.sandhi.org

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“The old concept of power, in which most of us have been socialized, originated in the worldview which assumed reality to be composed of discrete and separate entities--rocks, plants, atoms, people. Power came to be seen as a property of those separate substances, inferred from the way they could appear to push each other around. It became identified with domination. It was equated with the exertion of one's will over others, limiting their choices; This is a linear, unidirectional view of causality, in which power is a zero-sum game: "the more of it you have, the less of it I have"; "if you win, I lose." It fosters the idea, furthermore, that power correlates with invulnerability. To keep from being pushed around, defenses are needed. Armor and rigidity make one more powerful, less likely to be influenced or changed, i.e. dominated by the other.

From the systems perspective this notion of power is both inaccurate and dysfunctional. The exertion of greater force can certainly serve to defend oneself and others, but that function is one of protection, not to be confused with the generation of new forms, behaviors, and potentials. That capacity operates more organically and reliably from the bottom up, as "power-with." Systems scientists call it synergy.”

- Joanna Macy