The Connective Tissue of Democracy

Photo by Bioscience Image Library by Fayette Reynolds on Unsplash

The connective tissue of American civil society—the associations, clubs, congregations, and other spaces where people gather and experience collective life—has deteriorated significantly in recent decades, diminishing community resilience and jeopardizing the health of our democracy. While the roots of this civic crisis are complex, remedial action is imperative. How can we revitalize the intermediary institutions that enable civic life to flourish?

This virtual event, co-hosted by Stanford University's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) and the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, will examine how policymakers, philanthropists, and civic leaders can contribute to this effort. Sam Pressler will present on the newly released Connective Tissue report—a policy framework for government's role in building connection in American communities—and a panel of experts will discuss the possibilities and challenges of civic renewal. 

The panel, moderated by Aaron Horvath, a Sociologist and Research Scholar at Stanford PACS, will include: 

• Pete Davis —Writer and filmmaker; Co-director of Join or Die, a documentary on Robert Putnam and the decline of American community 

 • Josh Fryday — California’s Chief Service Officer; Appointed by Governor Newsom to lead service, volunteer, and civic engagement efforts throughout California 

• Hollie Russon Gilman — Political Scientist; Senior Fellow at New America's Political Reform Program where she leads the Participatory Democracy Project 

The event will be held on Tuesday, October 29, from 4:00-5:30PM (ET) / 1:00-2:30PM (PT). See the Connective Tissue policy framework here: https://theconnectivetissue.us/framework
The virtual event is on Tuesday, October 29, from 4:00-5:30PM (ET) / 1:00-2:30PM (PT).

 

You can register here for more info and a link to the zoom.

Fifteen years of Blueprints in 8:48

Thanks to Google's NotebookLM, here are two fake voices discussing 15 years of Blueprints. 

Let me know what you think. I'm playing around with this for #Blueprint25.

Civil society and AI Bots - part one of ?

                                                Photo by Andy Kelly from Unsplash

People are making bots of themselves.They're probably calling them AI assistants, and are making them DIY or by using sites such as Trint ot HappyScribe (for use on video conference meetings such as Zoom or Teams).  

Keith McNulty made a bot of himself to make sense of his own work (I'm using NotebookLM for this purpose. Here, for example, is 8 minutes of AI voices discussing 15 years of Blueprints). Other people make bots of themselves to enable 24/7 contact.

So, what do you do if you're planning a meeting or a conference or a community gathering and someone asks to send their bot instead of their physical self? If your organization already has a policy in place for this - and you've considered the impact of having a mix of bots and people at your events (on both the bots and the people) - feel free to share them so we can all learn. I can still host things on DigitalImpact.IO for civil society organizations around the world to use.

Here are some additional thoughts on this coming phenomenon from DataEthics.eu.

I have a new book coming out in July 2025 on AI And Assembly, written with an amazing group of collaborators, that looks at how AI is changing how we associate and assemble. This is just one example.

New (nonacademic) books on philanthropy

Here are two new books - one by one of my favorite novelists - that I'll be reading in the next few weeks. Thoughts and feels will be noted in #Blueprint25 (Yes, I'm working on it. My health makes it harder. Stay tuned - doing my best to get the 16th annual one done.)

Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind, has a new book out called Entitlement. The LA Review of Books says: 

"We follow Brooke Orr, a dynamic woman handling a massive responsibility—managing an octogenarian billionaire’s earthly fortune and assisting him in giving it all away. Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination." Sign me up.

And, in the "tradition" of Anand Giridharadas's Winner Takes All, a World Economic Forum insider, Thierry Malleret takes on the globalist crowd with his self-published work, Deaths At Davos. Semafor Media describes the book this way: 

"The self-published thriller centers on The Circle, a WEF-like institution consumed by self-interest whose cardinal rule is that “money always has the last word.” The Circle is “a handsomely sophisticated comfort zone for people who had already changed the world, not necessarily for the better, and wanted to cover their tracks.”

If you prefer TV,  Maya Rudolph, whom I adore, is back with more of Loot, the TV show about a billionaire's widow and the fortune she tries to put to good use. At least she'll be doing this when she's not being Kamala Harris on SNL.