As I write, I am in the middle of reading "Co-operation in the Age of Google" by Robin Murray, a review commissioned by Cooperatives UK: "a radical vision of the how the co-operative sector can expand in the 21st Century." Its underpinning contention is that "we are living at a time of profound transformation". I am reminded of a thread of recent postings on his blog by Andrew Sutton, such as "CE's New Wave - creative not beholden" which in part proposes "independent, small-scale action" centred on the individual a radical wat forward for CE.
Here is an extended quotation from this excellent read that challenges many of the assumptions about how we organise ourselves - and including conductive education.
"The US writers James Maxmin and Shoshana Zuboff see the assembly of packages or service modules around the needs of the individual consumers as a radical break from the twentieth century model of standardised services (or commodities) delivered by a specialist producer. It allows the pro-sumer to bypass large service organisations with rigid and costly structures, and stimulate a new trust based support services. Trust is the key, for the user has to have confidence that those providing the support are acting in the user’s interest not that of a supplier. They refer to this as the new Support Economy."
"In summary:
- Users are themselves increasingly involved, individually or jointly, in some element of design and production, changing from passive consumers to ‘prosumers’.
- Prosumption is most advanced in the economy of information. But in the material economy, goods and services are themselves being reconfigured around the user. Modern production has changed from pushing out products to pulling them through according to the demand of the user.
- Users have become a key source of innovation (second only to employees according to the EU’s Community Innovation Survey)
- New types of support services are required – from health coaches to computer help lines
- Users are developing their own mutual forms of support
- The service or commodity point of contact has be rethought around these support needs (whether the doctor’s surgery, the supermarket, or the school).
