What Are the Possibilities
June 17th, 2010 by John Creighton in Dispatches
Tags: Culture-Structure, Education, School
Clay Shirky’s talk on “Cognitive Surplus” challenged my views on people watching loads of television. Brad Rourke brought my attention to this talk. Shirky’s idea is that television is an outlet for more brain capacity than society can effectively put to use. I recommend watching his entire 15 minute talk. I’m guilty, in my youth, of being a TV watcher. I can recount far too many episodes of Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeanie, The Brady Bunch, Beverly Hillbillies, Big [...]
Read more...Dealing with the downside… and up
June 5th, 2010 by John Creighton in Dispatches
Tags: Culture-Structure, Public Leaders, Technology
What do cell phones, the internet, and the pill have in common? They all are structural changes in our lives that changed our culture. And, they all have downsides… as well as upsides. A spring issue of Time Magazine reported on the 50th Anniversary of The Pill — the pharmaceutical contraceptive that has achieved the status of one name moniker enjoyed by icons such as Madonna, Pele and Lebron. It is hard to argue that The Pill transformed society. National [...]
Read more...Advance Your Career: Develop a Diverse Social Network
April 20th, 2010 by John Creighton in Dispatches
Tags: Community, Culture-Structure, Social Media
Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody,” provides concrete evidence for why we should care about the diversity of our social networks. And, the flip side of that coin, why we should be more concerned about the fragmenting of America. Many authors have written about the growth of self-isolating communities, places and spaces where people choose to associate only with other like- minded people. Bill Bishop documented this phenomenon thoroughly in his book “The Big Sort.” I have written before [...]
Read more...Citizen Centric Instiutions
April 6th, 2010 by John Creighton in Dispatches
Tags: Citizen Centric, Culture-Structure, Public Leaders
I have interviewed hundreds of people over the past 20 years about the role of public institutions in their lives. One of my more recent reports, The Organization-First Approach, co-authored with my mentor Richard Harwood for the Kettering Foundation, examines how a variety of public organizations engage their communities. I imagined, recently, what I might say if I was interviewed. Specifically, what kinds of institutions will people need and want in the future? Here’s what I said (as with any [...]
Read more...Producer Nation
February 15th, 2010 by John Creighton in Dispatches
Tags: Citizen Centric, Culture-Structure, Social Media
Patrick Allitt describes the United States as “America the Miserable” in a recent addition of The Spectator. The mood of the country certainly seems stressed. But, Mr. Allitt says that American gloom is more than just a temporary blip. The source of immediate stress for many American families is neither hard to trace nor difficult to understand. Nearly one in five American adults are either unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work as my colleague Brad Rourke reportedrecently. Lack of [...]
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