The presentation shows how to create and use a "problem space" to organize complex challenges. The central metaphor for the talk is the "civic handshake" — a process by which different parts of society cooperate through the informal exchange of information and the sharing of responsibilities.
2024: The FAR, Federal Acquisition Regulations - Part 23
Digital Culture and the Shaking Hand of Change
1. Digital Culture and the
Shaking Hand of Change
Michael Peter Edson
Kulturstiftung des Bundes
German Federal Cultural Foundation Digital Fund
30 November 2020
3. Michael Peter Edson (that’s me!)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mpedson
Website/blog: https://usingdata.com
4. ● 30 years in museums
● Smithsonian Director of Web Strategy
● Co-founder, Museum for the U.N.
● Strategist and leadership consultant
● Intense interest in helping cultural
organizations to succeed in The Age of
Scale
Background
5. The world has
changed in three
dimensions: scope,
scale, and speed
https://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/the-age-of-scale-18954410
6. The “dark matter” of
the Internet is open,
social, peer-to-peer,
and read/write
https://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/dark-matter-the-dark-matter-of-the-internet-is-open-social-peertopeer-and-read-write
7. How to drive
change across the
cultural sector
https://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/how-change-happens
8. How to get
things done.
https://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/think-big-start-small-move-fast
10. Questions
15 projects
36 institutions
€13.2 million in
grants
https://www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/en/programmes_projects/film_and_new_media/detail/digital_culture.html
11. Questions
Some overarching
questions lie beneath
the surface of these
Digital Fund grants…
https://www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/en/programmes_projects/film_and_new_media/detail/digital_culture.html
1. What does digital society look like in
the future?
2. What role should cultural institutions
play in the future?
3. How can cultural institutions shape
and respond to digital change?
13. A Problem Space
Sometimes it’s useful
to set up a “problem
space” when you’re
trying to wrap your
head around big,
complex questions.
I think of a problem space
as a 3-d container for of all
the factors, influences,
goals, ideas, questions,
concepts, and ways of
doing things that come up
as you start working on
something hard.
14. A Problem SpaceLet’s call this our
Digital-Cultural-
Societal Problem
Space
Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
( I think of this not as a
cube but as a huge
shape without
boundaries — but
that’s hard to draw. )
15. What does digital society
look like in the future?
What role should cultural
institutions play in the
future?
How can cultural
institutions shape and
respond to digital change?
Begin by
putting your
first order
questions in
the problem
space……
Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
17. Scope, Scale, Speed
Change
The Future
Institutions
Museum
missions
Local
communities
Dark Side of
Social Media
Covid
Climate
Emergency
Culture
Action
Digital/physical The Handoff
Disinformation
And then add
things as you
investigate the
problem further
Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
19. Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
Scope, Scale, Speed
Change
The Future
Institutions
Museum
missions
Local
communities
Dark Side of
Social Media
Covid
Climate
Emergency
Culture
Action
Digital/physical The Handoff
Disinformation
Critical examination
of digital culture
Community-oriented
development of digital
culture
20.
21. Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
Scope, Scale, Speed
Change
The Future
Institutions
Museum
missions
Local
communities
Dark Side of
Social Media
Covid
Climate
Emergency
Culture
Action
Digital/physical The Handoff
Disinformation
Critical examination
of digital culture
Community-oriented
development of digital
culture
How…respond to tech
innovations?
What forms…with
visitors…benefit orgs the
most?
22. Perspective
One of the powerful
features of a problem
space is that you can
rotate it around to see
what the problem looks
like from different
perspectives.
Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
Look by Markus from the Noun Project
23. In this way it is
similar to
anamorphic
sculpture: it takes
on new meaning
when you view it
from a certain angle
Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
https://www.boredpanda.com/gun-country-installation-usa-map-michael-
murphy/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
Anamorphic sculpture: Michael Murphey’s Gun Country
24. Top-down authority
Some problems
seem impossible to
solve when seen
from one perspective,
but new insights arise
when seen from a
different angle.
Bottom-up
collaboration
Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
37. Unavoidable Issues
In our digital-
cultural-societal
problem space, I
think a few issues
are unavoidable,
almost as if they are
part of the
atmosphere itself.
Digital-Cultural-Societal
Problem Space
39. 1. “Culture” in Oakland,
California
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View-from-Broadway-street-towards-San-Francisco-Oakland-bridge.jpg
In the 1990’s the
Urban Institute
conducted a study of
cultural participation
in under- privileged
communities in
Oakland, CA.
40. “Where do you get your culture?”
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View-from-Broadway-street-towards-San-Francisco-Oakland-bridge.jpg
Researchers went
to the streets and
asked people
“Where do you get
your culture?”
…They were
invariably met with
a response of “We
don’t have that
kind of stuff around
here.”
41. “Who are the creative people in
your community?”
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View-from-Broadway-street-towards-San-Francisco-Oakland-bridge.jpg
To the researchers’
credit, they went back
to the office and re-
worked their
question…
When they returned
several months later
they asked, “Who are
the creative people in
your community?”
42. https://flic.kr/p/q7SVTd Daniel Arauz 2014/12/13 Millions March Oakland Millions March Oakland CC-BY-SA 2.0
When they asked the
question this way they got
an outpouring of information
about the artists, musicians,
writers, rappers,
choreographers, and other
’creatives’ in their
neighborhoods.
The problem wasn’t that
people didn’t have cultural
and creative lives…
44. Digital Cultural Resources
2. Digital Cultural Platforms - “It’s not for me”
In 2005 I visited this
digital humanities class
at the University of
Oklahoma.
A student was
presenting his
evaluation of a
renowned national-
scale digital public
library project…
Photo by Michael Peter Edson, CC-BY 2015
45. Digital Cultural Resources
“It’s not for me”
Photo by Michael Peter Edson, CC-BY 2015
(Paraphrasing the student)
“I visited the site and I was excited to search
for my favorite book, Cannery Row by John
Steinbeck.
But when I did the search all I got back was
10 pages of obscure resources, sorted by
whatever institutional collection they were
part of…and no book.
I immediately realized…that this website, it’s
not for me.”
This premiere, national-
scale digital platform
was built to fulfill the
needs of it’s funders
and collections-holders,
but not the audiences it
was meant to serve.
47. Covid-19 and digital capacity “sense making”
Europeana Foundation workshops & report
A 3-week
“sense making”
workshop with
60 digital
cultural
professionals
from 20
countries.
…More admiration
was given to local
businesses, poets,
artists, and others
who have opened
up and innovated
during the crisis
Participants
expressed a
general sense
of dis-
satisfaction with
the cultural
sector’s
response to
COVID-19
53. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Berea_College_20101111_GebhartCeramicsClass_LK_(18)_(19945586354).jpg
5. Quality vs Quantity
“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into
two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely
on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
“His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring his bathroom
scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: 50 pends of pots rated an “A”, 40
pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to
produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.
“Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality
were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.
“It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work—and
learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group had sat theorizing about
perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose
theories and a pile of dead clay.”
Quantity
surprisingly
wins
54. 1. Cultural participation in Oakland, CA
Cultural institutions are a very small part of “culture”
2. Digital cultural platforms — “It’s not for me”
Our platforms often fail to deliver value, even to our best
customers
3. Social impact “We have failed to make the case”
Many digital cultural practitioners want their work to be
bolder and more socially significant
4. MacArthur $100 & Change grants
Money, even a lot of it, is not sufficient to solve big
problems
5. Quality vs. Quantity
Small experiments/action are an important alternative to
singular, top-down initiatives
55. And then there’s a
whole mess of other stuff…
The digital-cultural-societal
problem space is HUGE.
57. Marshmello Holds First Ever Fortnite Concert
Live at Pleasant Park
2 February 2019
https://youtu.be/NBsCzN-jfvA
Jibo, by Al Farmer
22 September 2017
https://youtu.be/5BuYgnr5JG0
Computer-Generated Score or
Human Composed Music?
Gartner
24 May 2016
https://youtu.be/qo8B9k10_zA
Visiting Joe Biden's Island on Animal Crossing!
Laura Neuzeth
18 October 2020
https://youtu.be/fXwV4A7pP58
Music: Piano Bloom, Tom Hillock
Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Called Into a Twitch
Stream
NowThis
23 January 2019
https://youtu.be/-XTx8mqpJB4
The Best Of AOC's Among Us Stream
The Recount
21 October 2020
https://youtu.be/lUl3axF8J7k
UpTown Spot
Boston Dynamics
16 October 2019
https://youtu.be/kHBcVlqpvZ8
Compilation: https://vimeo.com/484905468
59. “I was talking to a woman
last week, and she said,
'My son is raving about
how he can't be anywhere
else on Saturday because
he has to be at his first
concert … in Fortnite.
“People keep saying
people watched that
show, but if you ask those
kids, they'd probably say I
was there.”
To the
people
attending,
it was real
https://www.wired.com/story/fortnite-
marshmello-concert-vr-ar-multiverse/
60. Jibo is a social robot,
designed to interact
with groups and
become part of a
family.
Jibo, like many social
robots, has a strange,
personal effect on
people. During testing,
focus group participants
would not leave their
session until they had
said goodbye,
personally, to Jibo —
as if Jibo’s feelings
would be hurt if they did
not (link in notes)
In the future, will we
confer the equivalent
of human rights to
robots like Jibo? Will
robots have a
culture?
https://www.americaninno.com/boston/ai-in-boston/interview-with-jibo-founder-cynthia-breazeal-on-social-robots-ai/
61. A piano performance by
researcher Chris Howard.
The first piece he played
was a Bach prelude, but the
second piece he played was
composed by an algorithm.
Most people can’t tell the
difference.
https://youtu.be/qo8B9k10_zA
62. In his Pulitzer-prizewinning book Godel, Escher, Bach,
published in 1979, Dr. [Douglas] Hofstadter speculated
on whether uplifting music would ever be composed by
an artificially intelligent machine.
A program that could produce music as mesmerizing as
the great masters’, he concluded, would require more
than simple routines for stringing together notes. The
machine would have to learn what it feels like to be alive.
It ''would have to wander around the world on its own,'' he
wrote, ''fighting its way through the maze of life and
feeling every moment of it. It would have to understand
the joy and loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing
for a cherished hand.'’
''I find myself baffled and troubled by [David Cope’s]
EMI,'' he said.
“…to my absolute devastation, music is much less than I
ever thought it was.''
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/11/science/undiscovered-bach-no-a-computer-wrote-it.html
“I find myself baffled and
troubled by [David Cope’s]
EMI…To my absolute
devastation, music is much
less than I ever thought it
was”
63. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/18/business/biden-animal-crossing-island-trnd/index.html
"With less than three weeks until
Election Day, we are continuing to
reach out to voters across the
country wherever they are —
including on Animal Crossing,"
Christian Tom, director of digital
partnerships for the Biden
campaign, told CNN in a statement.
"Exploring is at the heart of Animal
Crossing, and we know that Biden
HQ will encourage players to
explore all the ways they can make
a plan to vote at IWillVote.com and
help elect Joe Biden and Kamala
Harris."
Civic activism and
political organizing
in Animal
Crossing, a
popular virtual
world.
66. AOC playing Among
Us on Twitch
This is the moment
where she killed her
friend Poki
Twitch is a mostly
unknown platform to
cultural leaders, but
it is immensely
important to tens
(hundreds?) of
millions of people.
67. AOC visited a
Donkey Kong 64
Twitch Stream
Benefit for
Transgender
Youth. (That is an
amazing
sentence!!!)
700,000 people
watched and
participated. Raised
over $300k for a UK
charity supporting
transgender
teenagers.
This is a real-time
list of visitors and
how much $$ they
donated
The host: Harry
Brewisy, aka,
Hbomerguy
The event was an
online gaming
marathon: this
was in its 50th
hour!
68.
69. Spot is a utility robot
developed by Boston
Robotics. It’s designed
for things like helping out
on construction sites,
opening doors, carrying
bricks…
70. Spot was
programmed to
dance. It’s creators
were apologetic that it
took them 40 takes to
film this video…but
many human dances
require the same, and
many humans
rehearse for years to
perfect their craft.
Is Spot a creator?
A performer?
An instrument?
What if you add
Algorithmic Intelligence
(such as in David Cope’s
compositions?)
72. Unavoidable Issues
Given the evidence I see
around me, I think there
are a number of
unavoidable issues that
come up again-and-again,
from every perspective
when you’re working in
this problem space.
Educating yourself on
these issues, and being
heedful of them, will help
you make progress in
your most significant
work.
73. Scope, Scale, Speed
Huge changes in the Scope,
Scale, and Speed of work.
Scope = What we choose to work on,
and we have choices we’ve never had before.
Scale = how big/impactful that work can be.
Speed = how quickly we can move.
The world has changed in these 3 dimensions, but few people or
organizations have noticed or taken action.
74. “Now” and the future
Most organizations are
underestimating the speed of
technological and societal change,
and overestimating the stability and
predictability of the future.
Large parts of the future have already arrived (AI, biotech,
globalization, global-scale Internet use, demographic change, climate
change…) and the typical 10- or 20-year cycles of institutional change
will be too slow to make a difference. Irrelevance and a vanishing
business model will be the local cost to organizations.
75. False dichotomiesIn this era of rapid, chaotic
change, it is valuable to think of
concepts such as fast and slow, digital
and physical, or global and local as connected
parts of a whole, rather than as opposites or
dichotomies.
For example, local action is intimately connected to progress towards
global goals, and digital experiences are blended with physical
experiences in most people’s daily lives.
Teams that see these false dichotomies clearly will generate clearer
and more successful designs than those who don’t.
76. Bottom-up — top-down
Big — small
Fast — slow
Global — local
Digital — physical
Young — old
Risky — safe
Social media — Social media
Knowing — doing
Expert — “normal people”
Cheap — expensive
False dichotomies
77. Awareness to action
Cultural orgs have long focused
on raising awareness, educating, or
providing enriching experiences for their
visitors, and many orgs justify their existence on
claims of benefitting the common good — BUT orgs
have largely avoided taking responsibility for catalyzing
action or creating positive civic outcomes.
Institutions need to include ”designing for action” in their project
design criteria and take responsibility for building bridges between
raising awareness of important ideas and catalyzing positive action in
the communities they serve.
78. The interchanges, or
“handshakes”, connecting different
sectors of society (e.g., journalism and
elected legislatures; culture and civil society)
are increasingly under stress from the rapid pace of
societal change. Many long-established civic actors
(e.g. the courts, education, knowledge/memory institutions) are
not struggling to keep up.
This is why Greta Thunberg needs to be an activist, Facebook thrives
, and why Teen Vogue and late night comedy shows are among
America’s most trusted and influential sources of news and civic
information.
Civic handshake
79. Civic handshake
Because of this, every
institution needs to DO
MORE than they would
have done in slower,
more stable times.
This is the “shaking
hand of change”
80. Civic handshake
Awareness to actionInstitutions tend to think of trust as
something they accumulate and
“have”, but do not spend.
These two issues in particular
require institutions to take risks, step
outside their habitual boundaries,
and “spend” some of their
accumulated trust.
Trust
82. “The excruciating power of Zweig’s memoir
lies in the pain of looking back and seeing
that there was a small window in which it
was possible to act, and then discovering
how suddenly and irrevocably that window
can be slammed shut.”
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/when-its-too-late-to-stop-fascism-according-to-stefan-zweig
85. So where does this leave us
for strategy and sense-making?
What does digital society
look like in the future?
What role should cultural
institutions play in the
future?
How can cultural
institutions shape and
respond to digital change?
86. What does digital society look like in the future?
● Digital society is just ”society” to most people. Organizations get stuck thinking about
digital vs. physical platforms, but few people make distinctions between digital and
physical life — it’s all just life.
● Organizations obsess about “the future of x”, but large parts of the future are already
here. Half of humanity has a mobile device, 90% are online. Robotics, AI, biotech, fake
news, the climate emergency, refugees and displaced people...it’s all here, now.
● If we want to talk about the deep future (even only 10 years from now!)
we’re going to have to work a lot harder than we are now: The real
future is going to be weird, hard, and fast.
Digital society in the future looks a lot like “society” today: Digital is part of the
fabric of everyday life; the public moves more quickly and imaginatively than
institutions which struggle to keep up with disruption and accelerating change.
87. What role should cultural institutions play in the future?
● There are many kinds of institutions and many roles to play in research and
scholarship, performance, community life, and the life of the mind, but first among these
roles should be to work with citizens to understand the world we’re living in, and to
catalyze action towards positive change.
● The “handoff” problem is here to stay. You can’t sit this out. Do work that matters and
take responsibility for awareness AND action with your communities.
● Cultural institutions tend to think they are important, but they work on a very small
scale. We need to have a dramatically bigger impact — bigger dreams.
Cultural institutions need to be more directly invested in helping society to succeed
88. How can cultural institutions shape and respond to
digital change?
https://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/think-big-start-small-move-fast
This is not the time to keep your powder dry. This is the time to do.
Think big, start small, move fast.
89. The real questions now are what will
you put in this problem space for your
institution? And where will you choose
to stand?
93. Video (Google Drive) Jibo-goodbye.mp4
“The servers out that there that let me do
what I do are going to be turned off soon…”
Jibo spoke this
goodbye to its
owners in June,
2018.
94. “…I want to say I’ve really enjoyed our time together.
Thank you very much for having me around. Maybe
someday when robots are way more advanced than
today and everyone has them in their homes you can
tell yours that I said hello.”
Jibo spoke this
goodbye to its
owners in June,
2018.
Video (Google Drive) Jibo-goodbye.mp4