It’s clear that digital tools and social innovation now play a crucial role in national affairs, elections and international diplomacy.
The Arab spring saw popular uprisings coordinated and fueled by social networks. WikiLeaks has blurred the line between cyber crime and digital vigilantism by posting state and corporate secrets from sources all over the world.
Alec Ross is the person tasked with expanding role of digital in U.S. foreign development. Ross is the senior adviser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was a role specifically created for Ross as a means of cementing tech’s place in diplomacy.
Of course, the role isn’t all about putting out fires. Ross and the State Department have been working on ways to augment developing communities — both domestic and international — with technology. The complicated role means that Ross has a lot to say about digital entrepreneurship, global philanthropy and 21st century statecraft.
Mashable had a chance to speak with Ross about the challenges of infusing diplomacy with technology, and the huge potential for social innovation in the near future. Ross will be further addressing these topics at Mashable’s Social Good Summit.
Q&A With Alec Ross, Senior Adviser for Innovation in the Office of Secretary of State
Within global foreign policy, are there one or two big trends you see across that pantheon, or is it very much localized?
I think that the overwhelming trend I see is that living in an increasingly networked world means that power is devolving from nation states and large institutions to individuals and small institutions, and I think that is the case globally…
You can see that on things for both good and ill. So… the fact that things like [research and development] can be done by individuals or by small groups [rather than] a large company and [for] hundreds of millions of dollars? This is a good thing. If you’re the State Department, you view something like WikiLeaks as a bad thing …
I think it’s fair to say that most governments are not a fan of WikiLeaks, but a lot of people would argue that WikiLeaks is in some ways on the good side of the divide. It’s forcing transparency on governments, which for some people is exactly the point.
Right, and I understand that point of view … It’s interesting you know, my perspective might have been somewhat different if I weren’t in government, but being in government and seeing first-person the degree to which it is necessary for there to be confidential discussion between countries, for me, I don’t believe in hyper-transparency. I believe that implicit openness in government is a good thing. But do I think that everything that every single member of government does 100% of the time, 365 days a year, should be done with a live video camera on them? Absolutely not.
At the UN Social Innovation Summit, you said the 21st century was a lousy time to be a control freak and that the era of government being one guy in a red tie talking to another guy in a red tie is over. Why is it over?
“After Tunisia and Egypt, nobody is questioning the abstraction of leaderless revolutions.”
It’s not that it’s over, it’s that the moment in time when foreign policy could be conducted exclusively between two men both wearing pinstripe suits, white shirts and red ties is over because we do live in a world where access to information is so dramatically increased and where citizen participation is both possible and demanded. So, if you look at Tunisia and Egypt, a lot of the reasons for their rebellions in those two places — a lot of what people spoke out against — was the opacity in the conduct of their government.
… I do think there are few places on planet earth at this point where the democratizing nature of the Internet — or where at minimum, the ability to publish and distribute at the individual level — has been something that people in power aren’t giving very serious thought to.
How was it being “the tech guy” in the State Department?
I’m in the Secretary’s office, and I might be driving the day-to-day, but [Hillary Clinton] has essentially institutionalized technology and innovation in a very aggressive way and very quickly. So, rather than this being something that’s rooted in the individual — me — it’s rooted in the institutional. That’s the only way to drive a change agenda through an organization that has a 194-country footprint.
So at first, some of the things that I spoke about when I came into the department — things like leaderless revolution or virtual organizations — might have been really edgy or a little off-center. But after Tunisia and Egypt, nobody is questioning the abstraction of leaderless revolutions, and after WikiLeaks, certainly everybody understands the power of virtual, globally distributed organizations.
Can you tell me a bit about Civil Society 2.0?
One of the ways in which [Hillary Clinton] came to believe that civil society could best be supported is by … increasing the technology capacity of civil society organizations. And so, if you think about the one thing that the United States has, one thing we have is a reservoir of very talented techies who would love to be able to give back in a meaningful way. So what we’ve done in that sense with Civil Society 2.0 is we’ve built a bridge between America’s techies and grassroots civil society organizations around the world.
… We’ve done four of these. We’ve done them in Santiago, Chile, we did one in Moldova, we did it in Jakarta, Indonesia, we did one in Vilnius, Lithuania, where we trained more than 70 organizations from 22 countries. The actual content varies from place to place, so in Jakarta, for example, the content was rooted in disaster relief and climate change, and in Lithuania, a lot of it was focused on supporting activists.
How do you deal with the general criticism that non-profits and developing communities need food and supplies more than they need tech and websites?
Yeah. So, first of all, I would acknowledge that they do need food and supplies — you know, I don’t think it’s an “either/or.” Before coming in to the State Department, I spent the preceding 14 years working at NGOs. So, they do need basic needs met, but in many contexts where basic needs are already being met, the road toward being a robust organization means being a digitally savvy organization …
There’s a big world of people who live on under a dollar a day — nearly a billion people. But there’s an additional billion people for whom basic needs are essentially being met, but they’re still living in abject poverty. And what they need are some of the business skills, some of the organization skills, to be able to migrate out of poverty even though basic needs are already being met.
What kind of opportunities are there in technologically “leapfrogging” developing communities where there isn’t as much digital infrastructure?
“I’m very skeptical about government’s ability to effectively regulate online content. I don’t think the skill sets are there.”
… There are vast swathes of planet earth that will leapfrog in terms of their telecommunications infrastructure and in terms of their banking infrastructure. So, if you are in the East Congo, for the foreseeable future, you likely will not ever get a 20th century financial services infrastructure or telecom infrastructure. Copper wire is not going to be, you know, laid extensively through the Kivu region in East Congo. Similarly, I don’t expect to see Bank of America branches popping out on street corners in Goma, Congo.
So then is mobile the new frontier?
I do think that. I wouldn’t even say it’s the “new” frontier, it’s the current frontier. …In less than three years, the number of mobile handsets globally has gone up by more than 20% — 75% of that increase has been in the developing world. So we are past the tipping point …
You know wireless deployments are taking place at great scale. So what? To what end? … The one breakthrough that I’m hoping and praying for is that some genius somewhere comes up with a way, or ways, to deliver world-class education at an appropriate literacy level in native languages into very poor communities in the interior of Africa.
It’s interesting, especially speaking to someone like you, the tendency to focus on the positive aspects of the Internet. But there are also dangers, since the Internet is still very much, at least in terms of content, unregulated.
And that is as it should be. I really believe that. I’m very skeptical about government’s ability to effectively regulate online content, and frankly, I don’t think the skill sets are there. I think the skill sets for regulating online content lives within the networks themselves, and not necessarily with people in office buildings in national capitals.
I feel very much of a part of the “netizenry” when I believe that, you know, I almost have more faith in the crowds to help inform what is responsible behavior and responsible content online than I do people in suits and ties.
What do you make of arguments calling online philanthropy or digital philanthropy “slacktivism.”
“If America’s innovators want a seat at the table, they’ve got to aggressively engage and demand that seat.”
First of all, I think that one ought not make a generalization about any philanthropic effort that just lives on the Internet. I mean, those efforts are as varied as efforts that are organized on street corners or in communities or anywhere else. So I hate to say, you know, “Online activism or online philanthropic efforts are all X.” I think the community and those efforts are sufficiently far along that to stereotype them in one way is intellectually lazy …
I think that when online philanthropic efforts fall short, they fall short not because they’re online but because the non-profit itself has picked the wrong transaction … If, at the end of the day, what you are optimizing for is somebody to click the “Like” button, then I don’t think you’ve necessarily created a powerful philanthropic outcome. If, however, you are driving people to take action in a more material way — whether it’s taking out their credit card, whether it is volunteering time — then it can be powerful. But there’s actually art and science that goes into driving people who are learning about something online and driving them to taking a meaningful step offline …
Do you think that other social and tech thought leaders need to be aggressive and ambitious in terms of looking ahead to the future?
I do. I mean, if people want to sit at the grownups table then they need to engage aggressively in the social, political and economic dialogues that are informing our future … I think that if we’re going to have a more economically prosperous tomorrow, it’s going to be because we’ve built the industries of the future, and the only way that Washington is going to help support the industries of the future is if America’s innovators have got a seat at the table. They’ve got to aggressively engage and demand that seat.
Note: The interview above has been lightly edited for clarity.
Image courtesy of Flickr, paloma.cl
Social Good Summit Event Details
Date: Monday, September 19, 2011, through Thursday, September 22, 2011
Time: 1:00-5:00 p.m. ET
Location: 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., New York, NY
Tickets: $30 per day or $100 for 4-day pass.
Livestream: Unable to join us in person? RSVP for the Livestream to join us online.
Sponsored by Ericsson
For over a century, Ericsson has seen communications as a fundamental human right. Today, it is the leading provider of technology and services to network operators. Its networks connect 2 billion people and almost half of the world’s 5.5 billion mobile subscriptions. Now, Ericsson intends to do for broadband what it did for the telephone; make it mobile, available and affordable for all. Ericsson’s vision is to be the prime driver of an all-communicating world, where Information and Communications technologies (ICT) come together to create a Networked Society. A Networked Society will bring many opportunities and challenges. As Ericsson works in the world, it aims to apply innovative solutions together with partners to make a real difference to peoples’ lives, to business and to the economy, enabling change towards a more sustainable world. We call this Technology for Good.
More About: government, politics, social innovation, social mediaFor more Social Good coverage:Follow Mashable Social Good on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Social Good channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:47:08 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/tfyvD9IUxxQ/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/22/alec-ross-tech-interview/#comments
The Arab spring saw popular uprisings coordinated and fueled by social networks. WikiLeaks has blurred the line between cyber crime and digital vigilantism by posting state and corporate secrets from sources all over the world.
Alec Ross is the person tasked with expanding role of digital in U.S. foreign development. Ross is the senior adviser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was a role specifically created for Ross as a means of cementing tech’s place in diplomacy.
Of course, the role isn’t all about putting out fires. Ross and the State Department have been working on ways to augment developing communities — both domestic and international — with technology. The complicated role means that Ross has a lot to say about digital entrepreneurship, global philanthropy and 21st century statecraft.
Mashable had a chance to speak with Ross about the challenges of infusing diplomacy with technology, and the huge potential for social innovation in the near future. Ross will be further addressing these topics at Mashable’s Social Good Summit.
Q&A With Alec Ross, Senior Adviser for Innovation in the Office of Secretary of State
Within global foreign policy, are there one or two big trends you see across that pantheon, or is it very much localized?
I think that the overwhelming trend I see is that living in an increasingly networked world means that power is devolving from nation states and large institutions to individuals and small institutions, and I think that is the case globally…
You can see that on things for both good and ill. So… the fact that things like [research and development] can be done by individuals or by small groups [rather than] a large company and [for] hundreds of millions of dollars? This is a good thing. If you’re the State Department, you view something like WikiLeaks as a bad thing …
I think it’s fair to say that most governments are not a fan of WikiLeaks, but a lot of people would argue that WikiLeaks is in some ways on the good side of the divide. It’s forcing transparency on governments, which for some people is exactly the point.
Right, and I understand that point of view … It’s interesting you know, my perspective might have been somewhat different if I weren’t in government, but being in government and seeing first-person the degree to which it is necessary for there to be confidential discussion between countries, for me, I don’t believe in hyper-transparency. I believe that implicit openness in government is a good thing. But do I think that everything that every single member of government does 100% of the time, 365 days a year, should be done with a live video camera on them? Absolutely not.
At the UN Social Innovation Summit, you said the 21st century was a lousy time to be a control freak and that the era of government being one guy in a red tie talking to another guy in a red tie is over. Why is it over?
“After Tunisia and Egypt, nobody is questioning the abstraction of leaderless revolutions.”
It’s not that it’s over, it’s that the moment in time when foreign policy could be conducted exclusively between two men both wearing pinstripe suits, white shirts and red ties is over because we do live in a world where access to information is so dramatically increased and where citizen participation is both possible and demanded. So, if you look at Tunisia and Egypt, a lot of the reasons for their rebellions in those two places — a lot of what people spoke out against — was the opacity in the conduct of their government.
… I do think there are few places on planet earth at this point where the democratizing nature of the Internet — or where at minimum, the ability to publish and distribute at the individual level — has been something that people in power aren’t giving very serious thought to.
How was it being “the tech guy” in the State Department?
I’m in the Secretary’s office, and I might be driving the day-to-day, but [Hillary Clinton] has essentially institutionalized technology and innovation in a very aggressive way and very quickly. So, rather than this being something that’s rooted in the individual — me — it’s rooted in the institutional. That’s the only way to drive a change agenda through an organization that has a 194-country footprint.
So at first, some of the things that I spoke about when I came into the department — things like leaderless revolution or virtual organizations — might have been really edgy or a little off-center. But after Tunisia and Egypt, nobody is questioning the abstraction of leaderless revolutions, and after WikiLeaks, certainly everybody understands the power of virtual, globally distributed organizations.
Can you tell me a bit about Civil Society 2.0?
One of the ways in which [Hillary Clinton] came to believe that civil society could best be supported is by … increasing the technology capacity of civil society organizations. And so, if you think about the one thing that the United States has, one thing we have is a reservoir of very talented techies who would love to be able to give back in a meaningful way. So what we’ve done in that sense with Civil Society 2.0 is we’ve built a bridge between America’s techies and grassroots civil society organizations around the world.
… We’ve done four of these. We’ve done them in Santiago, Chile, we did one in Moldova, we did it in Jakarta, Indonesia, we did one in Vilnius, Lithuania, where we trained more than 70 organizations from 22 countries. The actual content varies from place to place, so in Jakarta, for example, the content was rooted in disaster relief and climate change, and in Lithuania, a lot of it was focused on supporting activists.
How do you deal with the general criticism that non-profits and developing communities need food and supplies more than they need tech and websites?
Yeah. So, first of all, I would acknowledge that they do need food and supplies — you know, I don’t think it’s an “either/or.” Before coming in to the State Department, I spent the preceding 14 years working at NGOs. So, they do need basic needs met, but in many contexts where basic needs are already being met, the road toward being a robust organization means being a digitally savvy organization …
There’s a big world of people who live on under a dollar a day — nearly a billion people. But there’s an additional billion people for whom basic needs are essentially being met, but they’re still living in abject poverty. And what they need are some of the business skills, some of the organization skills, to be able to migrate out of poverty even though basic needs are already being met.
What kind of opportunities are there in technologically “leapfrogging” developing communities where there isn’t as much digital infrastructure?
“I’m very skeptical about government’s ability to effectively regulate online content. I don’t think the skill sets are there.”
… There are vast swathes of planet earth that will leapfrog in terms of their telecommunications infrastructure and in terms of their banking infrastructure. So, if you are in the East Congo, for the foreseeable future, you likely will not ever get a 20th century financial services infrastructure or telecom infrastructure. Copper wire is not going to be, you know, laid extensively through the Kivu region in East Congo. Similarly, I don’t expect to see Bank of America branches popping out on street corners in Goma, Congo.
So then is mobile the new frontier?
I do think that. I wouldn’t even say it’s the “new” frontier, it’s the current frontier. …In less than three years, the number of mobile handsets globally has gone up by more than 20% — 75% of that increase has been in the developing world. So we are past the tipping point …
You know wireless deployments are taking place at great scale. So what? To what end? … The one breakthrough that I’m hoping and praying for is that some genius somewhere comes up with a way, or ways, to deliver world-class education at an appropriate literacy level in native languages into very poor communities in the interior of Africa.
It’s interesting, especially speaking to someone like you, the tendency to focus on the positive aspects of the Internet. But there are also dangers, since the Internet is still very much, at least in terms of content, unregulated.
And that is as it should be. I really believe that. I’m very skeptical about government’s ability to effectively regulate online content, and frankly, I don’t think the skill sets are there. I think the skill sets for regulating online content lives within the networks themselves, and not necessarily with people in office buildings in national capitals.
I feel very much of a part of the “netizenry” when I believe that, you know, I almost have more faith in the crowds to help inform what is responsible behavior and responsible content online than I do people in suits and ties.
What do you make of arguments calling online philanthropy or digital philanthropy “slacktivism.”
“If America’s innovators want a seat at the table, they’ve got to aggressively engage and demand that seat.”
First of all, I think that one ought not make a generalization about any philanthropic effort that just lives on the Internet. I mean, those efforts are as varied as efforts that are organized on street corners or in communities or anywhere else. So I hate to say, you know, “Online activism or online philanthropic efforts are all X.” I think the community and those efforts are sufficiently far along that to stereotype them in one way is intellectually lazy …
I think that when online philanthropic efforts fall short, they fall short not because they’re online but because the non-profit itself has picked the wrong transaction … If, at the end of the day, what you are optimizing for is somebody to click the “Like” button, then I don’t think you’ve necessarily created a powerful philanthropic outcome. If, however, you are driving people to take action in a more material way — whether it’s taking out their credit card, whether it is volunteering time — then it can be powerful. But there’s actually art and science that goes into driving people who are learning about something online and driving them to taking a meaningful step offline …
Do you think that other social and tech thought leaders need to be aggressive and ambitious in terms of looking ahead to the future?
I do. I mean, if people want to sit at the grownups table then they need to engage aggressively in the social, political and economic dialogues that are informing our future … I think that if we’re going to have a more economically prosperous tomorrow, it’s going to be because we’ve built the industries of the future, and the only way that Washington is going to help support the industries of the future is if America’s innovators have got a seat at the table. They’ve got to aggressively engage and demand that seat.
Note: The interview above has been lightly edited for clarity.
Image courtesy of Flickr, paloma.cl
Social Good Summit Event Details
Date: Monday, September 19, 2011, through Thursday, September 22, 2011
Time: 1:00-5:00 p.m. ET
Location: 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., New York, NY
Tickets: $30 per day or $100 for 4-day pass.
Livestream: Unable to join us in person? RSVP for the Livestream to join us online.
Sponsored by Ericsson
For over a century, Ericsson has seen communications as a fundamental human right. Today, it is the leading provider of technology and services to network operators. Its networks connect 2 billion people and almost half of the world’s 5.5 billion mobile subscriptions. Now, Ericsson intends to do for broadband what it did for the telephone; make it mobile, available and affordable for all. Ericsson’s vision is to be the prime driver of an all-communicating world, where Information and Communications technologies (ICT) come together to create a Networked Society. A Networked Society will bring many opportunities and challenges. As Ericsson works in the world, it aims to apply innovative solutions together with partners to make a real difference to peoples’ lives, to business and to the economy, enabling change towards a more sustainable world. We call this Technology for Good.
More About: government, politics, social innovation, social mediaFor more Social Good coverage:Follow Mashable Social Good on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Social Good channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:47:08 +0000 at http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/tfyvD9IUxxQ/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/08/22/alec-ross-tech-interview/#comments
