Manchester’s civil society shaping what “Just Enough Internet” means for the region.
The Federation, powered by the Co-op, is home to a community of digital and social innovators. In particular there’s a community within the space who are supported by Luminate and the Co-op Foundation and specifically chosen because of their commitment to social impact. The support manifests as free desk space, support on how to grow and sustain a social enterprise, and the building of a peer community. Already committed to their own social impact missions, it’s been interesting to imagine what they can also achieve together, and how the work they’re doing can reach out to, and influence, the wider Greater Manchester community — and vice versa.
One output from this work has been the Responsible Tech Collective, which Lauren initiated after our initial workshops with the community, and has been doing a great job of leading — co-designing it with a growing community of the organisations based in Federation with other businesses, social enterprises and public sector organisations across the city. As that grows, something I’m particularly interested in, is the role of civil society. By civil society, I mean all the organisations, voluntary and community groups, associations, faith groups, and local charities who’s work and how they’re constituted (if they even are), sit outside the market and the state.
Why Civil Society?
At some point it may make more sense to no longer separate out civil society from business and government — as someone who thinks systemically, I generally believe for real change to happen you need all parties at the table. However, there’s something important about equity here — a bit like the diagram below, but imagine the smaller child is civil society. I don’t believe there’s a level playing field at the moment when it comes to civil society’s capacity to be equally (alongside business and government) shaping the impacts of technology on our society. The necessary firefighting and framing of “needs” has meant civil society’s often a long way away from preventative work — community and voluntary organisations generally have less resource, less time and space to engage, and because of both of these things, less ability to develop a distinct point of view from their unique position — embedded within the fabric of people’s lives. If we believe there is vital knowledge and expertise in civil society, that needs to be at the forefront of determining what “Just Enough Internet” means for a place, then we need to recognise that not everyone starts at the same place, and not everyone has the same needs.
Fixing the systematic obstacles (rather than fixing individual differences) requires us to be more intentional. If equality is treating everyone the same, equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful, and at this moment in time, the work I’ll be doing is to focus on what civil society organisations across Greater Manchester need, in order to fairly and successfully contribute to the Responsible Tech agenda.
There are two other reasons why civil society might be important to keep distinct at this time. One I’ve already touched on — the knowledge and wisdom that exists in these groups and organisations, who are so entwined in our community life. As Dan Sutch says —
“From a societal point of view social sector organisations have a kind of sensing opportunity to understand where the biggest challenges are across our communities and across people’s lives: where you see particular peaks of demand or where you see the implications of policies, it’s often felt first by charities, community and voluntary organisations having to provide, having to step in. And I don’t think we very often see them collectively doing that — making use of a kind of sensing mechanisms for understanding what’s wrong.”
Secondly, how civil society organisations and groups are incorporated (if they are) feels important. Again as Dan says “There’s something really vital about organisations that don’t have other competing motives as their starting point so it’s not a profit motive or a distribution of income motive or even a growth motive” — charitable organisations are set up literally by legal guarantee to start with and focus on the social needs of individuals, families and communities. I also saw what happened when privately owned companies and the “ventures” narrative ended up dominating the UK “tech for good” scene, which, now drowned out, had started with its roots in social justice.
As this work develops we may find some limitations of charities, voluntary and community groups — in the way in which they can organise themselves, the way in which they can do stuff, the way in which they’re financed — but at the moment this is civil society having more equity when it comes to contributing knowledge, critical thinking and voice.
*These quotes are from a set of interviews I did for the launch of the Catalyst, which you can read here.
The concept of “Just Enough Internet” belongs to Rachel Coldicutt.
