I was lucky enough to hear my friend Mark Pesce speak at the Social Innovation BarCamp in Sydney on 6 Nov and his talk, while entertaining, was also profound.

Mark commenced by referring to mobile phones as “dream machines that deliver the desires of the material heart”. Then he pondered the notion of materiality and how it takes us away from the ‘real’ and towards the things. He concludes that what we own ends up owning us and that the material goods we own do not matter at all in the long run. He draws attention to Australia’s prison of stuff. He noted that sustainability starts with each of us saying no to stuff and that we need friends who’ll say “f*ck off mate, we’re full”.

These are challenging ideas. A call to reject the lure of things, of shiny pretty things, is hard to execute in this society that is so full of shiny pretty things.

Social Innovation Keynote by Mark Pesce from ApostrophePong on Vimeo.