IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2018 - 5

EDITORIAL

Jeremy Pitt

One at a Time,
and All at Once

Wicked Problems
and Collective Action
jour ney of a thou-
sand miles begins
with a single step -
yes, yes, we know;
we've all had the in-
spirational-saying desk calendar with
that particular aphorism included
on some auspicious day, National
Clothes Peg Day, or some such.
But while familiarity might have
drained from the saying some of its
ability to inspire, that does not make
it any less true. And its truth becomes
increasingly apparent when there are
so-called wicked problems - a social
problem whose complexity and conti-
nually changing requirements is such
that there is not necessarily an obvious
terminating condition, or even a con-
sistent set of criteria by which to evalu-
ate such a condition if it even existed
[1]. These problems tend to have sig-
nificant economic, environmental, or
political dimensions; require the coor-
dinated and concentrated effort of a
"large" number of people; and may
require significant efforts of persua-
sion to convince those people that:
firstly, a problem even exists, and
secondly, that they can contribute
meaningfully to its "solution." Such
efforts are also likely to encounter a
number of strong cognitive biases and
economic (dis)incentives. These range
from confirmation bias, where people
are more likely to reject data that con-

A

The Benefits of Collective Action
Can Begin with a Single Deed
flicts with their axioms than rethink
their axioms [2], to transaction costs
and future discounting, where the
costs are incurred by some individu-
als in the present are greater than their
short-term benefits, and indeed long-
term when most benefits are accrued
by others in the future [3].
But just as the thousand-mile jour-
ney seems daunting at the outset, it is
still necessary to take that first step.
Then so it is with wicked problems. It
is necessary to start somehow, even
if, to push the analogy a bit further,
you've got no map, no knowledge of
the destination, and no milometer to
measure the distance that has been
covered. But this can sometimes be
the essence of collective action for
addressing wicked problems: some-
times human behavior defies top-
down direction and even nudge [4],
and begins instead with a single initiat-
ing event and "snowballs" from there.

Parkrun
A fascinating example of this is
parkrun (www.parkrun.com). As its
name suggests, parkrun is a weekly

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2018.2795091
Date of publication: 2 March 2018

march 2018

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

timed 5k run in a park, starting at
9:00 a.m. every Saturday (or 9:30 in
Scotland), open to all, of whatever
age or ability, and free at the "point
of access," that access point usually
being the local municipal park. Park-
run was a U.K. initiative originally
called Bushy Park Time Trial in 2004,
but at the time of writing (December
2017) it has morphed into a world-
wide organization, with events in
more than 1300 parks in over a dozen
countries, with 2.5 million register-
ed runners worldwide. The total
distance covered by all the runners
is reckoned to be about 150 mil-
lion km (basically a gentle jog from
the earth to the sun). The founder,
Paul Sinton-Hewitt, was awarded a
U.K. honor for his services to public
health, the benefits of even a once
weekly cardiovascular workout being
well-known.
The transformation from single
initiating event - Bushy Park Time
Trial - to global collective action
addressing, perhaps indirectly, a
wicked problem (public health, by
addressing risks associated with

5
http://www.parkrun.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2018
