feeling at home in generative nyc

got back from new york yesterday; as always, new york leaves a deep impression. no, it’s more than an impression - it’s a feeling of being alive, as well as, a feeling of belonging. allow me to try to explain why this is.

it’s oddly strange in that way - many sociologists, not in the least Simmel, wrote about the city and the effect it had on human relationships - how the city introduced the idea of a society of strangers, a situation where one can live closely with people you don’t know much about. the city, as a sharp contrast to the small comfort of a town where everybody knows you. but the very comfort can also be confining - whereas the anonymity of the city can be liberating.

there’s another fundamental difference that nyc brings out in me: its diversity. earlier, i read an article that mentioned that there are two kinds of people: those who believe there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t (this statement being strangely meta paradoxical in its own way, of course).

one of the fundamental differences i believe exist that distinguishes people are their ability to deal with chaos, complexity or diversity. in other words, some people thrive in a more open but also more messy environment, while others have more of a tendency towards order. change and status quo; progressivism and conservatism; people who believe things can be better and/or will be better and people who believe in the status quo, or believe everything in the past was better.

some of these differences are confounded by power - those in power often tend to favor the status quo and everything that stabilizes the status quo. the older one gets, the more one tends towards conservatism and order. there is this classic “common sense” knowledge that young people tend to be more progressive and become more conservative over the years, with an interest in decreasing tax rates as one gets older being the main intervening variable. there are exceptions - people in power, who still favor change. if cynical, one can read this in a deterministic way as well, if you believe that these exceptional people in power realize that change is the way to stay in power. but if less cynical, one can read this as those in power realizing its responsibility towards society, to lead. consider how harvard law school is adopting, no, transforming itself, towards a policy of open access.

for that matter, there is literature in innovation research that qualifies two fundamental kinds of innovation: those that are disruptive, and those that are sustaining. models, structures evolve over time that give routine and stabilize our lives. think of how most of what we do, every day, is on autopilot. or for that matter, think of most of what guides society, are established rules that we don’t question.

consider how often we do things because they always have been done that way.
think how often “but this is how we have always done it” is served as a justification.

innovations are sustaining when they make ‘the things that always have been done that way’ more efficient. these are relatively easy to implement. these innovations do not disrupt or destabilize our routines, our work patterns, what we have come to do every day again and again until we don’t know better.

innovations are disruptive when they challenge what we do every day again and again. they are destabilizing when they force us to rethink the things we do because we don’t know better. innovations are disruptive when those who have authority, are in power because of the current routines will challenge, resist and fight back against these innovations.

consider to what degree peer to peer technology is being disruptive to the music industry.
consider citizen journalism being disruptive to what we think of as ‘journalism’.

but also consider the conditions that are more favorable to allow disruptive innovations to be created. it has to be generally open and inclusive - because more generally, those who don’t have anything to lose tend to come up with disruptive innovations - because they are not ingrained in the system and do not have the ‘common sense’ of routine. because they are not in power and have no power to lose; rather, they are more likely to gain from disruptive innovations.

jonathan zittrain has called this condition, this property, “generativity”. he refers to it as a property of a technology. swiss army knives are more generative than a regular butter knife. a computer that can go online is more generative than a standalone computer.

perhaps we can also consider generativity as a property of an ecology, a culture. democracy is a cultural form that has generativity built-in by allowing a certain degree of fundamental change (albeit every four years). obama is showing us this with his explicit focus on and belief in change.

to get back to my example of nyc: the city is more generative than a town. because of its more diverse population, because it allows for more experimentation, because it will find a wider appreciation of things. certain people thrive better than others in a generative environment, those with

• the ability to imagine gains currency in a generative environment.
• the ability to link seemingly disparate things gains currency in a generative environment.
• the ability to bridge clusters of ideas, likewise.

nyc allows me to further develop these abilities, to imagine, to bridge clusters of ideas. to link seemingly disparate things (one look at my recent mixtape shows you what i mean). to allow me to be both dutch and chinese, as well as dutch-chinese and chinese-dutch - as well as to expand what it means to be. that’s what makes me feel at home in nyc (or the internets, for that matter).