The End of The Corporation

A corporation is in itself a unique system; within it gets created its own language and rules to fulfill a purpose. The purpose would be focused on a set of skills, products or services that for it to survive should simply make money, essentially to exclusively benefit those who have a share in it and control it. The problem is that for a corporation to be effective it requires individuals moulded into its system to function solely within a small subset of its processes. It used to be thought of individuals living their whole life within the processes of this system but a trend has slowly emerged over time that individuals migrate, not only within the one organisation but across many. It seems that this trend is towards more migration and more change for the individual ultimately to a point where a person will have many careers in their life, possibly many at the same time.

Pushing the boundaries here it appears we are leading towards a time when the individual may work for a corporation as and when they wish to, on what they are capable of doing when a requirement appears. Imagine, everyone becoming freelancers of a sort, picking and choosing what jobs they will do as and when they require, or more ideally when they want to. The corporation becomes more and more just a shell of processes and stored knowledge to fulfil its purpose. Imagine the opportunity to the individual in learning and developing many skills as they please, instead of being tied to a grinding wheel fixed by the corporation. How the individual would find the work would be through some form of agency that allows all of these functions to be marketed to anyone that requires them. Today we have service auctions that allow service providers the opportunity to bid and work for other individuals or companies and I can see this idea evolving further to allow “everyone” to work on “anything” that is “available”. These have so far taken advantage of cheap labour markets; however, those markets would not remain cheap for long and if the agency is taken to evolved global form would level out all individuals with the same opportunities and benefits.

Now the corporation can be seen as just a method for achieving its purpose – ultimately to benefit its share holders. What if the corporate system existed within a universal framework that has everyone as the shareholder?

One of the biggest problems with a corporation is ultimately in its efficiency. It cannot nowadays exist as a monopoly and must therefore compete with other companies to target a market. It can never be efficient, precious effort and resources will always be wasted in its effort to compete with its rivals. If everyone is equally its shareholder then all that is left is its methods for achieving a purpose and only one set of method is required to fulfil one purpose. The corporation will not be needed. If this set of methods is developed openly and transparently then any part of it can be scrutinised for efficiency and changed, they can be used and reused efficiently to fulfil many different purposes. Different versions can be created and tested out to constantly improve them and the best of any previously learned corporate methods can made to benefit everyone.

There will be no more need for corporate secrets, no more restrictions on the freedoms of employees, all of the system will be available for anyone to challenge and the sharing of skills and creativity will improve its efficiency.
We have a final form of corporation, global, universal, where everyone is equally the director, the employee and the customer. The rate at which progress could be made could be phenomenal, no more wasted or conflicting efforts, no more misinformation or misdirection that advertising a brand would require. The days of the corporation may well be seen as the time when the rich had power over the poor and exploited them for their own financial gain. Now we exploit each other equally to fulfill our needs for products and services with the benefit of tackling any global issues and requirements effectively.

For the individuals that this final form serves, they have the means to be psychologically self-determined, never working each others’ failure because this would have a negative impact upon them directly. They will have the ability to collaborate and create ideal products and services, from society wide inventiveness, fit for purpose, fully supported and using the most ideal resources. The customer would be fully served; no more false claims or promises.

Al Gore Shivering - In Ice

One funny bit of news to finish off - A group of skeptics in Fairbanks, Alaska have created a 5-ton ice sculpture of a shivering Al Gore, apparently debating the idea of global warming, inviting him to put his argument forward and by pointing out that it should last until March before melting away. As a resident of England I am actually painfully aware that global warming to us will be a massive freeze, once the fresh water clogs up the currents bring us the Gulf Stream we are in for similar weather to Greenland.

Another area for the wiki should also will be a summation of the current global issues facing us. Particularly of the type that one nation alone cannot tackle.

Obama's Challenge

It's notable too that today Obama will take the oath of office on President Abraham Lincoln's inaugural Bible on the steps of the Capitol building. He has evoked the spirit of the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King, calling on Americans to dedicate themselves to public service to help the many people facing hardship. I am interested in how he handles making the government more open. His first challenge however will be tackle the current financial crisis.

I was tempted to write my own version of Martin Luther Kings speech "I Have A Dream" - but one, I don't think I could follow up a powerful speech such as this, and two, I think I had better find some interest in the idea first.

The W3C and the Beyond One World Process

I am keen to put together ideas of how the whole process of Beyond One World can be run. Knowing that it is very unlikely that I will get it right and for the fact I have not managed to get any feedback yet I am going to put forward a process that I consider to be the best of its kind - that I am aware of so far. I do know that the process that I choose will completely change if it goes forward, but I consider that the best way of making any progress is to put together my mistakes as quickly as possible and then work towards a solution when the problem is understood better.

The solution I have chosen is as far as I am aware the best candidate to start from - the World Wide Web Consortium Process, the latest version being used is 14th October 2005 . This process is the biggest driver of open source and technology on the Internet and is constantly used and under review and change to meet its objectives. Now it is probably quite a bit removed from the intended use here but I will give it a go and see what comes out of it. What is intended is a process by which agreement and action for global issues and government is possible where every person can take ownership, take part and globally change for themselves in a way that is absolutely fair and efficient - quite a big undertaking... However, if a first attempt is made to create a process by which it can create and evolve itself then as more knowledgeable individuals join in it can be improved to fulfil its purpose.

To start work on this I am happy to put the current document in a Wiki and hack the process where I can see possible matches. Or indeed leave questions for myself or others later to answer where I find any areas of difficulty. The wiki can act as a simple form of version control too, where changes can be explained, noted and date stamped and the full history of it can be followed. In the future I am keen to use the best of breed configuration management techniques to make sure that its evolution is controlled, quickly made and robust.

I have a choice at the moment of where to start this work and I think I need to wait a week before considering where it should go. The building of the idea behind Beyond One World was initiated by the Google Project 10^100 and it seemed appropriate to use Google Apps to get the ball rolling. However, using this is a learning curve for me and I am not sure what support there is where any unusual is attempted. If I were to do this on my own platform then I would be certainly happy to run open source applications on my favourite hosts at Dreamhost, knowing that if there were any problems or unusual programming needed then I could just dive in and do it. The Google Apps however in theory should be far more scalable with a decent level of support. I must make sure I know that this support will be there though. I am not at all confident that this idea will make it to the voting next week on January 27th and if it doesn't, I will be on my own for probably quite a while longer working on the site. In that case I prefer complete control on fixing any problems and will pull the site back to Dreamhost.

Well let's see what happens - they actually had over 100,000 submissions and voting will only be for 100 hence my realism - flatly a 1:1000 chance.

It would certainly get exciting if it were in though...

This is your world - What are you going to do with it?

Hello Dear Reader.

You have unwittingly stumbled onto a page that gives you great responsibility.

As you know this is a beautiful world full of great and good people everywhere - but for some reason or another at this moment in time has so many overwhelming problems.

Unfortunately there is no around who wants to take the full responsibility for it. Some who have put themselves forward recently have failed - mainly because they could not be trusted or their intentions were seen as a little suspect.

So we have all decided that whoever stumbles onto this page MUST take charge.

You are now in charge of the world!!!

For as long as you are here you have complete control to change anything in the world and take full responsibility for it. Please be careful with what choices you make as this obviously has an impact on every soul resident upon it.

There are no rules as to what you can change and how you do it.

But please remember every action you take - or non-action if you are undecisive - will impact the world from this moment forward.

We would all ask however that you make your decisions according to the very best ideals that you can attain to. That your decisions are positive and at the very least will help those less fortunate than yourself. Hose for example who have no power to be able to do what you are doing now.

What are the highest and most positive ideals you can use by which to make your decisions? What issues are important to you?

Please be aware - All of our lives and our futures are in your hands.

These are the most important decisions you can ever make.

Please do not be hasty and rush into decisions we will all regret, but also please do not sit back and do nothing as there are problems in the world that are growing exponentially and something needs to be done quickly. Sitting back and doing nothing has already been tried and tests have shown that this indeed does not return positive results.

Also most importantly, please do not relinquish this opportunity to make the world a better place. If you abandon this post then who can we rely on? Who can we turn to?

To help you focus your priorities in these crucial moments we have put together some information on the problems affecting the world today. These can be found at The Problems Of The World Today Centre. Please understand that this information is very sketchy as we have not had time in our schedules to bother much with it - but promise that we will be developing it in the near future to aid you better.

Please place all your decisions as soon as they are made in our Beyond One World discussion group in the topic entitled If I ruled the world I would .... Others who have a stake in the running of the world will then act out your desires and respond to them.

If you have questions about your new role and responsibilities - and I am sure you will then please post them in the Beyond One World discussion group and someone will get back to you as soon as they can.

Good luck with you new assignment.

If the responsibility is too much for you and you need to pass it on to others as possible then please feel free to contact them to let them know of the vacant position we have. It needs to be filled - for all our sakes.

If you rise to the challenge then good luck in your role - The power is all yours.

In fact - It always has been...