We Are Human Infrastructure!

I’ve experienced an epiphany within the last couple of weeks.

We need to be proclaiming Cooperative Extension for what it is, what it’s always been: infrastructure — not the inanimate stuff like Interstates and sprawling high-speed rail or airport terminals but the flesh-and-bone variety — human infrastructure.

I owe New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for that insight. He used a couple of recent columns to illustrate how technological infrastructural development under way in China and India is destined to change the world as we know it.

Actually, that troubles him a bit. It’s led him to wonder whether the frantic effort under way in these countries within the past couple of decades to put this technological and educational structure in place is only the beginning of something even bigger and more far-reaching.

One thing is certain: These technologies are popping up on the Asian landscape like mushrooms after a heavy summer rain — so many, in fact, that they appear to be attracting many Chinese and Indians who otherwise would have stayed behind after graduate school to seek their fortunes in the United States.

Of course, there is every reason in the world for the Chinese and Indians to follow this path, to put more and more of this infrastructure in place: Each innovation offers more opportunity for intellectual exchange, which, in turn, creates enhanced opportunities for creativity and innovation.

Our own history has driven home this essential truth: Think of the enormous intellectual and economic advantages telegraphs provided American society in the 19^th century.

That’s precisely what concerns Friedman: the threat these immense leaps in Asia pose to America’s leadership as the world’s preeminent creator and innovator.

He may be right.  The technological implications of this infrastructure to our future are immense. But so are the implications of the human infrastructure. 

Until now, we Americans have been way ahead of the curve on the human dimension.  The Morrill Act of 1862, which established land-grant institutions, followed by the Hatch Act and the Smith-Lever Act, represented a few of history’s most visionary attempts to develop human infrastructure.

Granted, some would contend that this type of human infrastructure is antiquated and that the sole emphasis in the future should be on building the same kind of infrastructure as Asia.

I disagree. We Americans run the risk of selling ourselves short if we emphasize technological infrastructure at the expense of human infrastructure.  There is still enormous value in the dense network face-to-face relationships that characterize the Cooperative Extension mission.  They have enormous potential for enhancing the connections that emerge from this newer, technological infrastructure.

I’ve already seen this through my own experiences working with Extension educators who already have successfully merged their traditional Extension roles with the emerging roles of networked educators. Yes, they’re learning how to use social media tools to expand their reach to newer, larger numbers of clientele, thereby increasing the speed and volume of intellectual exchange.

But through their traditional face-to-face relationships, they’re also enriching this dialogue.  And by enriching this dialogue, they are equipping themselves with a comparative advantage that many other educational entities lack. 

One effort that speaks volumes about the continued relevance of this older infrastructure is the work of Alabama Extension precision farming educators.  Using social media, they are drawing on the experiences they’ve gained through longstanding face-to-face relationships with row-crop producers in their regions to provide producers in other states and even other regions of the world with a clearer picture of some of the challenges they will face in adopting this new technology.

Of course, this is only one of many imaginative ways a successful marriage of older and newer infrastructure is occurring.

In this era of ultra-lean budgeting, it behooves all of us in Extension to take stock of our comparative advantages. 

We represent some of the best human infrastructure ever developed in any place of the world and at any time in history.  With some technological enhancements, we can become even better.

One other important point to bear in mind: We should be proclaiming this essential truth to the people who hold our future in their hands — our stakeholders.

Wanted: A John Wesley Legion for Cooperative Extension

John Wesley, Anglican Innovator, Methodist Founder

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Methodist history grasps one of the great ironies of that movement: that it started out not so much a movement of its own but as an attempt to reform the Church of England — namely, to make it relevant to working-class English men and women coping with the effects of industrialization and struggling to understand their place in it.

As a matter of fact, to this Methodist, the Wesleyan movement has always borne a remarkable resemblance to our movement.  After all, what was the purpose of land-grant institutions and the Cooperative Extension undertaking that followed other than an attempt to equip farmers and working-class men and women with the mental resources and skills to weather the effects of industrialization occurring around them?

I’ll even take this comparison one step further: Much as 18^th century Anglicanism was in need of a makeover, so is 21^st century Cooperative Extension.  Yes, we need not one John Wesley but a legion of them: men and women who can help transform our movement into the relevant, post-industrial knowledge organization that it must become.

What exactly would such a transformation entail? For a quick overview, I heartily recommend David Brooks’s latest column: “The Crossroads Nation.”

Just as agriculture was the major activity a half millennium ago and industrial production was the preoccupation of the last century, “innovation and creativity will be the engines of economic growth” in the 21^st century, he contends.

The most successful societies of the world — and Brooks is fully confident that the United States, despite its current challenges, will remain the world’s most successful society — will provide aspiring innovators with the social context they require to realize their fullest potential.

This kind of achievement doesn’t occur within a vacuum — some solitary genius laboring alone in a laboratory or library.  There will be a measure of that, yes.  But social collaboration — networks — will comprise the most essential component. As Brooks stresses, creators and innovators will require teamwork every bit as much as solitary inspiration and discovery.

“The main point in this composite story is that creativity is not a solitary process,” Brooks writes. “It happens within networks. It happens when talented people get together, when idea systems and mentalities merge.”

People ask me why I, a confirmed pessimist, continue to express unbounded optimism about Cooperative Extension despite the seemingly endless budget cuts, downsizing and demoralization that inevitably follows. 

There is one reason: I am fully convinced that our history — our longstanding acquaintance with collaborative knowledge — fully and uniquely equips us to capitalize on what is occurring all around us.

We Cooperative Extension professionals are fortunate to work in the nation that Brooks believes is still the best equipped to serve as the world’s creative hub. We Americans speak the global language, we remain a high-trust society, we’re a universal nation with contacts all over the world, and we still possess a high degree of social trust and openness — all prerequisites for the society that is emerging.

Likewise, we’re fortunate that the successful society that emerges in the 21^st century will be ours, the one best equipped to provides hubs — junction points — for this immense global network. 

Yet, we have some immense advantages of our own: namely, an enormous potential to provide American society with a number of these critical junction points. 

Even so, fully seizing these opportunities will require an organizational makeover.

That is why we will need creators and innovators of our own — legions of them — people who can show us how we can draw on our historic strengths to complete our transformation into a fully networked knowledge organization, one that promotes both creativity and innovation.

We need a legion of John Wesleys.