World 2.0

By David Gurteen, Gurteen Knowledge

I recently spent January in South East Asia; giving talks and running knowledge cafés in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. As always, I learnt as much as I taught.
Most of us understand what Web 2.0 is all about as we move from a read-only web to a read-write or participatory web.
And we are coming to grips with Enterprise 2.0 where the technologies and social tools of Web 2.0 are moving from the open web into organisations.
It is still early days and there are many issues to be grappled with as we try to balance the structure and stability of the old world with the more fluid and complex nature of the new.
But the ‘2.0 meme’ is affecting everything. In a talk in Kuala Lumpur I was asked how you implement Enterprise 2.0 and I was replying when someone spoke up and said “We will never have Enterprise 2.0 until we have Managers 2.0!” In other words, it was managers and their out-dated mindsets that presented a major barrier to change.
And a few days later, while giving another talk at the National Library in Singapore, I found us talking about Libraries 2.0 and Learning 2.0. It then hit me that ‘2.0’ thinking is permeating everything. People were also talking about Business 2.0 and Education 2.0.
So what does this mean in its broadest sense? Well, we are no longer consumers of goods, services or education – we are all ‘prosumers’; that is, we all have the opportunity to create and consume. For the first time we are participants in everything and not the ‘victims’. Fundamentally, it is about our new freedom.
We are moving from a world where we were told to do things and where things were structured or planned for us to one where we get to decide what works best for us. We are moving from a monoculture to a highly diverse ecology.
We are moving from a simple world to a rich, complex, diverse one, where power is less centralised and more distributed. We are moving from a command and control world to a world where people can do as they please within the boundaries of responsibility.
Another talk I gave in SE Asia was to SAFTI (the Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute) and there I realised that the 2.0 concept could be applied to the military too. In the past, warfare was a relatively simple affair; there were rules of engagement and things such as the Geneva Convention. It was a male dominated world, but now with terrorism, men, women and children are actively involved in the fighting – there are few rules of engagement. It’s complex – everyone participates.
The SAFTI talk was the last of 20 talks and Knowledge Cafés over a period of a month and they helped crystallise my thinking. It’s not just about Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, about tools and technology. It’s far more than that. It’s about World 2.0. The ‘2.0 meme’ touches everything.
More than anything we need Mindset 2.0 or Thinking 2.0 – new ways of looking at and thinking about the world and seeing the opportunities to work in new innovative ways that these new technologies allow.
This thinking can be applied in business, in education and learning; to adults and to children; and to government and society. It’s not just about technology!