Is Martha Lane Fox right about women in power?

"Imagine a new kind of digital organisation, diverse and independent but with a strong mandate from government. It would fight for civic, public projects to balance the power of the commercial internet. It could be the catalyst we need to shape the world we want to live in and Britain’s role in that world. It would help us address some of the biggest issues we face, but it would also engage with people in a new, radical way. In fact, I probably wouldn’t call it an institution at all. This would be no normal public body."

Martha Lane Fox asks this question in The Guardian calling for us to reclaim the internet 

She goes on to the problem of abuse to make the point that if wonen had more positions of power inside social media organisations this would not  be the case.

I disagree with that on the basis of personal experience. When Google was used to launch a smear campaign about our work, it wasn't about masculinity, but simple profit maximisation. Were they to moderate all activity it would not be cost effective, so they don't.

Woud Lastminute.com have been profitable if it cost more to manage that it earned in revenue?    

It's from personal experience also that I know how innovation competitions lead to project hijack. In this experience government had taken a central role.

Making the case for digital inclusion we had in fact imagined such an organisation, arguing:

"We are at the very beginning of a new type of society and civilization, the Information Age. Historically, this is only the third distinct age of civilization. We lived in an agricultural age for thousands of years, which gave way to the Industrial Revolution and Industrial Age during the last three hundred years. The Industrial Age is now giving way to the Information Revolution, which is giving rise to the Information Age. Understanding this, it is appropriate to be concerned with the impact this transition is having and will continue to have on the lives of all of us. In that it is a fundamental predicate of "people-centered" economic development that no person is disposable, it follows that close attention be paid to those in the waning Industrial Age who are not equipped and prepared to take active and productive roles in an Information Age. Many, in fact, are scared, angry, and deeply resentful that they are being left out, ignored, effectively disenfranchised, discarded, thrown away as human flotsam in the name of human and social progress. We have only to ask ourselves individually whether or not this is the sort of progress we want, where we accept consciously and intentionally that human progress allows for disposing of other human beings.

This is a tricky question. Except in the case of self-defense, if for any reason we answer "Yes", regardless of what that reason is, we are in effect agreeing with the proposition of disposing of human beings. Whether disposal be from deprivation or execution, the result is the same for the victim. If we agree that sometimes, for some reasons, it is acceptable and permissible to dispose of human beings, actively or passively, the next question is "Which people?" Of course I will never argue that one of them should be me, though perhaps it should be you. You respond in kind, it cannot be you, but maybe it should be me. Not only can it not be you, it also cannot be your spouse, your children, your mother or father, your friends, your neighbors, but, maybe someone else. Naturally I feel the same way. Maybe we come to an agreement that it shouldn't be either you or me, or our families and friends, that can be disposed of, but perhaps someone else. While we are debating this -- passionately and sincerely, no doubt -- a third party comes along and without warning disposes of the both of us, or our families, or our friends. And there is the trap we have fallen into, because whether or not we approve of our or our families' and friends' demise is irrelevant. It is fair because we accepted the principle of human disposability. We just didn't intend that it be us who are tossed, but if we or our families and friends die, it is in accordance with principles that we ourselves have accepted and so must live -- and die -- by.

We can actually engineer, very precisely and intentionally, a social system whereby human beings are not disposable, and then go about setting forward our social machinery with this requirement built-in as a part of our "social software", as it were. Or, we can decide not to do it. Either way, a decision is made as to the fate of those who would be dispossessed, unwanted, and in the way."

In 2008, with our focus on the vulnerable and voiceless of institutionalised chidcare, our late found wrote of social enterprise:

'The corporations involved in this almost fantastical deployment of the machines and communications infrastructure that we now rely on profited for themselves and their shareholders, and certainly produced social and economic benefit around the world. Those efforts were and are so profound in influence as to transform human civilization itself. That is the Information Revolution, and it is nothing short of astonishing.

So it is safe to say that all these players in the Information Revolution — the enterprises that created it — have engendered almost immeasurable social benefit by way of connecting people of the world together and giving us opportunity to communicate with each other, begin to understand each other, and if we want, try to help each other.

The term “social enterprise” in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today — 2008 — refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don’t address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven’t enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that “them” might equal “me.” Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not.'

In Ukraine we'd argued in our 'Marshall Plan' that:

"The needs for drastically improved communication infrastructure in Ukraine are manifold. We see a democratic political movement in its infancy that will have difficulty in advancing without the same basic and affordable communication infrastructure available in each and every democratic nation in the world. Ukraine does not have this.

We see a nation staggering under the crushing burden of widespread poverty, the extent of which no one is sure but which most people assessing the situation realistically is at least twenty five percent of the population. We understand that communication – particularly high-speed Internet communication at a cost that is affordable to half the population and all businesses – is essential for economic growth and development so that poverty can be reduced.

We see a staggering array of social problems arising directly from poverty, including but not limited to tens of thousands of children in orphanages or other state care; crime; disrespect for civil government because government cannot be felt or seen as civil for anyone left to suffer in poverty; young people prostituting themselves on the street; drug abuse to alleviate the aches and pains of the suffering that arises from poverty and misery; HIV/AIDS spreading like a plague amidst prostitution, unprotected sex, and drug abuse; more children being born into this mix and ending up in state care at further cost to the state; criminals coming from poverty backgrounds, ending up as bandits, returning to communities after prison, with few options except further criminal activity. These are all part and parcel of the vicious negative cycle of poverty, and this threatens to destroy Ukraine, if Ukraine is defined in terms of people rather than mere geographic boundaries. Overall, population is steadily declining; families have not sufficient confidence in tomorrow to reproduce more than 1.2 children on average per couple."

In 'The day we become silent about things that matter', I related just how difficult it has been to raise online awareness of 'Death Camps, For Children'  Even engaging online directly with Arianna Huffington cut no ice.    

Along the way, there were of course men and weomen who chose to be more supportive, This wasn't about gender however but compassion and becoming partners Karen Armstong's Charter for Compassion introduced some of them to us,