A New Way to ‘Celebrate’ Sept 11

Have you ever heard about the Broken Windows policy? It’s the famous Giuliani’s strategy to tackle crime in NY. If a window in a inhabitated building is broken, fix it or vandals will break other ones, then the door, drug delears move in etc up to theft and murder.

Giuliani was successful. Since 1985 crime has steadly declined in NY but New Yorkers don’t feel safer.

While the Mayor was busy fixing windows in the neighbourhoods 2 airplanes bumped into the Twin Towers forcing everybody to review the security issue.

You might reply: ‘What can a Mayor do with international terrorism?’. Let me ask you: ‘ What’s the Mayor’s main duty other than the safety of citizens?’

This week the European Commissioner Reding called for ‘the right to be forgotten’ of European citizens. Every person has the right to have deleted whatever personal data has been stored by company use through the internet. For instance, Facebook wouldn’t own the pictures of its users – as it is the case now – if the right came  into force.

Nice principle, Commissioner, but it’s neither feasible nor correct.

First of all, I don’t see the European Commission or any other public body enforcing such a right looking at the growth rate of internet use. Moreover, it’s not up to the Commission to come up with legislation for a phenomenon that goes well beyond to its remit. What would the Commission do if the company was located in North Korea?

The web is an emergent system. Any attempt of top down regulation would fail or kill it. Looking at the hackers I would opt for the first one.

Without quoting another European Commissioner, Levandowski, who called for more ethics and less regulation for the growth of European economy (Krakow 8 Sept), the solution will emerge in the web. Eventually companies and users will develop appropriate norms to serve the interests of both parties. If users are not happy with Facebook’s policy on pictures they will migrate to other social networks. It happened with MySpace. It hasn’t happened with enterprises and trade unions over the last 2 centuries.

After 2  failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and ongoing global economic crises, Sept 11 tells me that we live in different worlds where power is diffused and solutions emerge. Gov top down action has a limited impact. People engaged make  a difference.

I’m reading the The Leaderless Revolution by Carne Ross. I recommend it. The author is a former diplomat who abandoned his career in goverment after realising that government can’t deliver anymore in a complex world such as ours.

This is what I’m leading with the project in Naples. Stop waiting for goverment, ACT.