So last week something quite monumental happened. Many digital people, myself included were invited to Buckingham Palace. I say myself included at the start not from wanting to big myself up, but because last time someone wrote a blogpost like this, the excellent post by Bobbie Johnson, someone said that it was sour grapes about not being part of the in crowd. Knowing Bobbie I can’t think of anything further from the truth. In the spirit of transparency, here’s the invite. I’ll forgive them for now for one thing, getting my title wrong, there are other things I can’t forgive.
When emailed the invitation I accepted, when the physical invitation arrived I decided not to go. I really felt uncomfortable about the host. My feeling about his burgeoning relationship with London’s startup scene is that he is looking for a new meaning in the fallout from his downgraded role as a special trade representative a result of some dubious dealings while acting as a representative of the country.
It would have been interesting to see my fellow digital people in lounge suits. Amusing but not necessarily comfortable. It’s not really how the sector is. I know it’s politic to dress up for events, such as this picture below, but it just feels like the first step onto a slippery slope.
The slippery slope I refer to is about losing sight about what makes us us. The night before a few people over dinner were talking about us being the new establishment. If in becoming the new establishment we become the old establishment, modelled anew a bit, more digital but not much else, then we’ve done a massive disservice to generations of digital people behind us. We don’t need to change ourselves to become more like the people we often feel are corrupt or doing the wrong or inappropriate thing.
Anyone who hasn’t already read Ben Hammersley’s excellent speech to the IAAC should read it now. Anyone who has read it before should read it again before they jump on a digital duke bandwagon. Ben’s speech and being a mentor at Young Rewired State say three things to me.
1. We’re becoming the new establishment just by being ourselves, through being intelligent and through the simple truth that everything digital touches is being transformed.
2. We’re a transitional generation. Born of an analogue world. As Ben says “ third-digital-native, third-pathfinder. And … also third-establishment”. As such we need to be mindful of the decisions we make, not just for ourselves but for those who come afterwards. We’re stewards.
3. Our role is really to move aside the old establishment were we can, not to replace them wholesale with all of their tendencies and fallibilities. We, the people who rail against the hyperconsumptive business mechanics of the broadcast era and the 21st century, mustn’t become the new dinosaurs.
I wanted to remind people of something written in what, for a now secular humanist building, is the closest thing to a geek church we have in London; Conway Hall. Who has not sat in pews at Conway Hall and listened to and debated the dogma of digital either at Interesting, Playful and The Story.
To Thine Own Self Be True
I pondered this a lot at Playful. The sun hit it in almost a road to Damascus style way. I’d felt sad the night before as I saw friends heading to the palace, delivered through the media of Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare - the new broadcasters - that I wasn’t going there with my friends. As I stared at those words in Conway Hall surrounded by those same friends I knew I’d made the right choice for me. I’m not judging them at all, part of me wishes still that I’d gone. This is my personal view.
On my way from Conway Hall to see another friend after Playful I passed by the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp. Agree with them, disagree with them, it’s up to you. When The Telegraph writes an article with this title you know that something is amiss and the old establishment is despised.
As I walked away from the camp I walked past many stereotypical city workers, in suits, smoking cigars, the epitome of excessive consumption. I felt deeply that I’d hate the world in which my friends had not displaced them but replaced them in every way. I’d like to think we have a strong enough moral compass to not go that way, but I fear that the system is grasping out at a time of crisis. It realises the power is shifting in some ways, not yet in the companies that broker power and wealth, but in the companies that have relevance in the near future.
I’d swap any number of evenings at the palace to spend a day in the company of my friends at Conway Hall and see wonderful things like the fabulous self-effacing Swede Emil Ovemar nervously giggling among the balloons while Toby Barnes haphazardly sorts out the next very clever presentation.
Call me naive or sentimental if you like. I just think we can do better and I hope to fuck we don’t become a new “old establishment”. Our kids will hate us and they and we deserve us to make a better world and system. We need to fight for it and not to settle for the path well trodden or take short cuts that will lead us astray.
I’ll leave you to think over Matt Locke’s wise words below. I’m not trying to appropriate his sentiment on this matter. I personally don’t know how he feels about the palace. I just know how I feel reading this: empowered.
