Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Change technology or culture?

Esther Dyson is the chairman of EDventure Holdings and an active investor in a variety of start-ups around the world. Her interests include information technology, health care, private aviation, and space travel. She was recently part of an advisory group in Russia. She's not sure that innovation involves just investment and technology change. Her conclusions have political implications -- at least for civil society.

To Russia with Social Media

I recently was part of a US State Department/White House delegation to Russia. Our mission was to foster US-Russian cooperation, in fulfillment of the US’s policies of “21st-century statecraft” and citizen diplomacy. That sounds high-minded, for what the Russians were most interested in was how to build their own Silicon Valley.

The Russians thought that the way forward was to give tech companies some money and put them near a great university. Presto: a new silicon valley. For their part, the American delegation assumed that you could pour in some social networking and create a civil society…

I started my discussion with Russia’s government leaders by talking about my experiences as chair of NASA’s Innovation and Technology advisory committee. The issue, I said, was not really about funding technology innovation; it is how to create a culture that rewards thoughtful innovation and considers mistakes the price of learning…

All this is harder than simply building a university and funding a few start-ups. You need to change a culture from the ground up – and then let businesses grow, without too much interference, but with protection from monopolists, bad customers, and bureaucrats…

The Russian government (like the Soviet one before it) undoubtedly regards civil society as a threat. Indeed, some NGOs are a threat. But our unspoken message was that civil society is something that should be allowed to flourish if the authorities want a Russian Silicon Valley – or even just a cohesive country.

Civil society is not just politics: it is a restaurant giving unused food to the poor. It is a for-profit company such as Twitter providing its service free to rich and poor alike (even though advertisers will focus on the rich). It is successful entrepreneurs mentoring start-up entrepreneurs, and NGOs engaging not just with the government, but also with commercial outfits to get support for activities that will address vexing social problems such as maternal and infant mortality...

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Labels: change, civil society, political culture, Russia