#LandscapeOfChange Pioneers - Michel Bauwens, Alastair Parvin and Yaacov Hecht

I see the people who are exploring practical ideas about our present and future as people who are living the lives of explorers in the Landscape of Change. I mean that they are explorers and trailblazers in the areas of life which are uncertain and changing. The areas of uncertainly are increasinlgy becoming a reality in the lives of many people, who would never have chosen to explore them. The explorers are going abead of the crowd, and the directions that they take become like beaten tracks across the Landscape of Change. When they explain about what they are doing and thinking it is can be like hearing the reports of explorers. As we hear details of these explorations it helps us to decide if we want to follow in their footseps or to go a different way as we map out our own pathways through the Landscape of Change

Production and working together

MIchel Bauwens has influenced my Landscape of Change thinking for several years. In Four Scenarios for the Collborative Economy he analyses a few specific aspects of peer-to-peer (P2P) dynamics, information-sharing, and value. Towards the end he explores the very real problem of people in the P2P community who are creating value through their work and are sharing the fruits of their work freely, but are not earning money as a result. He explores ideas around how the P2P community should relate to the people who are not contributing freely in a similar way - i.e. people who are who taking a more "normal" approach of investing their time in earning money for themselves, but who nonetheless want to benefit from the work of the P2P community who are working freely.

Architects, architecture and collaboration.

In Michel's work in the P2P Foundation he drives forward many ideas around new ways of working, thinking and collaborating. It is comparatively easy to understand these ideas when applied to open source software, but less easy to see how those ideas transfer to the production of physical objects. These issues are explored in a TED talk by Alastair Parvin. He is looking at architects and architecture and asking questions such as "How can architects serve all people - instead of just the richest?". His answers lie in open source, collaboration, and other features that often appear in the Landscape of Change Alastair Parvin: Architecture for the people by the people.

Education cities

Another important feature of the Lansdcape of Change is the need for life-long-learning, so that we can cope with the continually changing patterns of life, living and livelihoods.

In talking about education I often run into problems because people have many differing ideas about it. It helps to have relevant examples of what I mean. Yaacov Hecht's descriptions of self-motivated learning are very helpful, as are the entertaining TED talks and RSA Animates given by Sir Ken Robinson. Both people focus on schools, but their ideas of twenty-first century systems for learning and education overlap my experiences as a free-range learner online, and explorations of GlobalNet21 as an environment for learning.

In "Education City - A learning Social Network" The Path of Education System in the 21st Century. Yaacov Hecht describes '"The Fourth Wave" and various features of life that I think of under the heading of Landscape of Change. He also makes excellent observations and suggestions about educating children as individuals, and seeing whole cities as learning environments. This kind of educational experiences can become a reality much more easily for adults, as we are not caught inside the existing system of compulsory education. I believe that if we adopt effective self-directed approaches to our ongoing learning as adults then it will accelerate the adoption of such approaches within the formal existing education system at primary, secondary and tertiary level, which in turn will make it easier for young people to grow up and their lives in the Landscape of Change. .

Appreciation

I appreciate the explorations described so clearly by Michel Bauwens, Alastair Parvin and Yaacov Hecht. I look forward to a Landscape of Change where their beaten tracks have become well trodden paths and the preferred routes for many people.

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