(Continued from part I.)
The second lecture had two themes. First Himanen presented some examples of actual innovative centers and an analysis of their genesis. Then he moved on to consider the kind of ethical vision compatible with the global network society.
The primary example was that of the Silicon Valley. The Valley has been churning out innovative technologies for several decades, and according to Himanen, this is no accident. Without going into the details of his persuasive account, the general idea is that there is a rare combination of several important things in a relatively small area. There is the Stanford University, which means top-notch education. There are also plenty of venture capitalists eager to fund innovative startups. Partly related to the first two components, there is a culture of openness and encouragement. Finally, there have been people who keep the creative network together: these “manager-producers” know everyone in the area and are able to introduce people with similar interests to each other.
Another example is the success of ABBA. In their prime, they brought into Sweden more money in export revenues than Volvo. This demonstrates the financial importance of the culture industry. While Finland is known for the quality of its musical education, there have been no Finnish success stories in popular music. The difference, Himanen says, is in management. Although Finnish musicians are talented, they have not had the clever manager-producer ABBA had in Stig “Stikkan” Andersson. What makes this particularly significant is that the success of ABBA has helped other Swedish acts to establish themselves, demonstrating how the network benefits all of its members.
The second theme was ethics. Himanen pointed out that the global network society tends to be an exclusive club, and presented an ethical challenge: the idea is that success should not come at someone else’s expense, and that ultimately everyone should benefit. Alluding to Rawls’s veil of ignorance, he calls for global justice. (Actually his ideas were are very similar to the ones I discuss in The Liberal World.) For example, he commented on the immorality of the EU farm subsidies: while rich Westerners are keen to tell the developing countries to open their markets to foreign products, they are not willing to open their own. As a result, the developing countries are unable to compete in the unfair market.
Himanen believes that “social hacking” is an important instrument for bringing about a better world. It means taking something and using it for something for which it was not originally intended, with some social change as a goal. An example is a mobile phone modification that makes the device work as a mosquito-repellent. This is potentially useful to fight malaria. According to Himanen, justice also means freedom of information. This is not just an end, it’s also a means: The Internet offers interesting new opportunities for political activism. An example of this is “remixing”: audio and video clips are combined in a way that turns them into multimedia political statements. Himanen showed a couple of these clips, Keeping America Scared and Bush and Blair’s Endless Love.