Some Characteristics of “Power to the People” 2.0

A knowledge management perspective on Society 2.0

The source of the comparison chart and the text that follows is David Gurteen's World 2.0 newsletter:

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 starting to affect everything. In a talk in Kuala Lumpur I was asked how you implement Enterprise 2.0 and I was talking about some of the barriers 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 mind sets that was 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 was permeating everything. People were also taking 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 - 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 "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 mono-culture to a highly diverse ecology.

We are moving from a simple world to a rich, complex, diverse one. One where power is less centralized 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.