I was walking down Bourke Street on Friday afternoon, going to meet up with Steve Sammartino for lunch and a discussion about starting businesses which are rigged for social good as well as profit when I bumped into the kids below.

As you can see, they we’re giving their all for charity, the Red Cross in this instance, and we’re not backwards in coming forward in letting the heaving throng of passer-byes know that giving them their spare cash was the most important thing they could achieve all day. There we’re several thoughts that came to me as I was digesting what I had just filmed.

Today’s children bring all of themselves to the task at hand

The guys we’re on the street because their school, Melbourne High, run an initiative each year which sees the entire year 10 student body hit the streets to raise money for a given charity. They could have very easily stood back, held their cans on the corner and basically just let people pass them by without intruding too much. The thing is, these kids we’re proactive in pushing people from their normal stupor and encouraging them to give them cash. Not forcing them, just offering some extra value for people to enjoy when they made a donation.

They didn’t just become part of the scene, but brought all of themselves to the task in full. Each student had their own creative take on how they could best achieve the task – there we’re more students all the way along Bourke St and each had their own unique way of getting my attention and alerting me to the need to help the Red Cross. How fantastic that each student could take a given task, such as “raising money,’ and independently come to their own decision about the best way to achieve an outcome. 

Children today are comfortable to be filmed being themselves

Before I captured the guys on camera, I asked them if a donation would allow me to film them dancing and they wouldn’t mind me uploading it to YouTube and this blog. Immediately, the answer was a resounding yes. They immediately understood what that meant, understood the risks and also (crucially) the opportunity. There has been a heap of negative press about how today’s youth can use video in unconstructive ways. Whilst this is true in some cases, it’s a symptom of the need kids feel to be (just a little bit) famous. They have grown up in a celebrity focused (obsessed?) society and these are the results. Importantly, however, they understand how to manage that and their own personal brand when online. Much more so than their parents have or will.

The impact this has on our future

So what does this mean? Steve Johnson suggests in his book, Emergence that we are moving to a place where we create our own unique content which self organises itself online based on the organic linking that takes place between friends and other related content. Kevin Kelly’s talk at TED about the next 5000 days of the internet has some fantastic ideas which engage this very idea.

In reference to the media industry “Turning on your television will be like logging on to the Web today: an infinite collection of links will beckon you – if not through the front door, then at least a few doors down the chain. Today’s breakaway Nielsen hits have half the audience and reach of The Cosby Show or M*A*S*H – and only two-thirds of Americans are even wired for cable”

Steve Johnson, Emergence.

Imagine what this will mean for the way we not only organise our lives, but the way we interact as organisations, communities and a society. People will be feeding content from the ground up which we will be simply linked and connected to via a huge number of other, relevant links. There will be limited top-down hierarchy and more relevance placed on the number of connections and links people are involved in. How will we interact as a society when this happens? What are your thoughts about the future of our social structures and norms? If today I can film a kid dancing on the street, what can I look forward to tomorrow?

There will be a session at Future Summit called Technology – Essential Growth Multiplier, which will engage with some of these topics. Is anyone interested in asking some questions for us to raise during the Q&A of this session?