This document is a DRAFT. It may contradict itself, contain obviously wrong things, and change rapidly!

Why does Newspeak House exist?

by Edward Saperia, Founder & Dean of Newspeak House

The way we make decisions as a society is breaking down.

We live in a nation that has a finely balanced constellation of institutions crafted over centuries to help our country thrive and survive: our government, our political parties, our newspapers, our unions, our universities, our schools. Under the assault of unprecedented forces, these institutions are showing signs that they may no longer be fit for purpose, especially when it comes to making decisions on issues of critical public concern - immigration and climate change to name but two.

Unless we transform these vital protective institutions, decision-making on the big issues will get catastrophically worse.

However, it is not reasonable to expect institutions which have been around for many hundreds of years to change themselves without the right kind of external pressure. We need pressure that is as modern as the problems we’re trying to tackle. We need a new wave of initiatives that draw the best from the digital world, the marketing world, the business world, the academic world and from the internet itself.

The good news is, there are many people already fighting for reform across different sectors, from independent technologists doing civically minded projects to grizzled veterans coaxing change from within rigid institutions. If you are reading this, likely you count yourself amongst them.

This community is large - but fragmented. People are isolated. Things are constantly reinvented. Reuse is poor. Silos are pandemic. Standards are poorly adhered to or non-existent. We must work together if we are to make progress. These are hard, systemic problems, and ideology only gets us so far. I believe we will not fix this by getting angrier, but by getting smarter. If technology can get us into this mess, perhaps it can help get us out.

To this end, I have created Newspeak House, a new independent institution founded to develop a community of practice for political technologists. Its design draws from historical patterns found in colleges, clubs and learned societies, mixed with more modern approaches suggested by complex systems and social networks.

It will start with three programmes:

• Explore and map the community of political technologists across journalism, government, politics, third sector, education, academia, and anywhere else we find people building political technology.
• Support existing organisers with event space in a permanent 5 storey building in the heart of London's Tech City (the eponymous Newspeak House).
• Each year create a dozen cross sector-specialists and hyperconnectors with a full time residential fellowship programme.

Watching the news today suggests that we're a long way from finding the answers - these initial programmes are about finding the right questions.

If you're excited about the idea of any of this, please come to an event, consider becoming a member, and contemplate applying for fellowship.

Any comments, questions, suggestions or tirades, please don't hesitate to contact me directly: [email protected], twitter:@edsaperia, facebook:edsaperia.

Some Background

I've been running Newspeak House for almost two years now. It started with quite vague intentions, just some kind of notion that politics could be improved with technology, and that community development was the key to doing that. No community, no reuse, no progress.

Some 250 events and 20 fellows later, I've learnt a lot about how these communities function and how a successful intervention could work. There have been lots of different experiments, not all successful, and this document is an attempt to capture some of those learnings, and more importantly ground the activities happening around Newspeak House in an explicit strategy.

In short; when I was setting this up I thought I was starting something a bit like a members' club, but in fact it's something more like a college. There's still a long way to go, and the institution described herein is not quite one that truly exists yet, but it at least provides a clear vision for what I'm trying to achieve and how people can meaningfully engage with it.

Notes:

There's a rich history of this kind of institution in many variations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_college

This is what happens when technologists cannot find their appropriate community: