Web 2.0 Social Change has an Essential Active Ingredient

Last week I attended a very cool conference about social change and the social web. It focused on 21 nonprofit organizations who made their case for funding their particular web 2.0 strategies. At the end, we voted for three who received substantial cash grants while the remaining 18 got enough $ to make the conference well worth their time and effort. My job was to walk around and do short interviews (now called videoblogs) with attendees for Netsquared,the sponsoring organization. If one could transform the idealism there into alternative energies, we could have provided all the electricity for San Jose for at least six months.

There are those who talk about the amazing reach and interconnectivity of the internet in quasi-religious terms, as the harbinger of democracy, human rights, transparent politics, medical cures, and the catalyst for economic justice between nations. You hear a story about somebody in an African village who put a written agreeement from a big oil company onto the web that shows the unfulfilled promises made by the company - that subsequently led to an outpouring of angry emails to the company - that led to a positive course of corrective actions by the oil company.....and it does seem like the web is a pretty magical place where Davids can slay Goliaths and Right can conquer Might.

But it's important to remember that the technology is neutral and can be marshalled for any purpose. Orwell, the author of "1984," would have a heyday with the omniscient breakthroughs that Google has made, linking our individual online searches to our consumer profiles. It's important to remember that the same platitudes were exclaimed about previous communications technologies as they emerged – like radio and television. In the early years of radio, the majority of stations were operated by small decentralized, local companies, unions, churches, etc. and it looked as though everyone would have a voice. After the Rodney King beating was captured by some random person with a camcorder, it was thought that camcorders would usher in a new era of citizen journalism and empowerment. The technology HAS made a huge difference, but always as a tool, albeit an increasingly powerful tool.

Behind every social movement or viral outpouring that has occurred on the web, there is an individual or small group who dared to imagine an amazing outcome and to put the wheels into motion. The action may have been as simple as scanning and publishing an oil company document, but it mirrors the same courage and eloquent simplicity as when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. The activists describing their web 2.0 projects at the NetSquared conference are part of that tradition, and I hope that they see that the most vital ingredient of what they have set whirling and snowballing on the world wide web, is their own creative, courageous, imagination.

photo credit:Lena Zuniga, GK3 Project Team, Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) Secretariat

Stick of Gum?

There's a story I will never forget about Neal Cassady, the icon of the Beat Poets who later morphed into the driver of Ken Kesey's psychedelic Magic Bus. He was entering a bar in Oakland and saw what was about to be a bloody scene. Four Black men were about to pummel a White guy. Without weighing any time consuming pros and cons, Cassady jumped into the fray tapping each man on the shoulder and asking in a loud, friendly voice, with an outstretched hand: "Stick of gum?" Somehow his package of Juicy Fruit gum disarmed a tense moment and a sure beating was avoided.

Cassady's creative courage has always seemed a luminous lesson to me. One time I tried to put it into practice and failed in my delivery, but more on that mishap in a different entry someday.

Yesterday, I pulled a book of essays down from the shelf, during my sunrise insomnia session. I read about a poet named Robert Desnos who was taken by Nazis in a truck crammed with men to a gas chamber. As they stood in line awaiting their deaths, Desnos jumped about in a jocular, animated way and asked men to let him read their palms. To each one he exclaimed that he saw a long lifeline, many children, and abundant joy. As unbelievable as it seems, according to Susan Griffin's essay, the Nazi guards were amused and decided to let this group live.

Griffin goes on to say that "social movements are driven by imagination....every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination."

The scientist, Jacob Bronowski, who was deeply affected by what he witnessed in Hiroshima after it was leveled by The Bomb, wrote:
"Order does not display itself of itself; if it can be said to be there at all, it is not there for the mere looking. There is no way of pointing a finger or a camera at it; order must be discovered and in a deep sense it must be created. What we see as we see it is mere disorder." To me, it seems he is talking about the importance of using our imagination.

More than the power of any particular political theory to reorganize society for the common good, I put my faith in the acts of persons springing forward in courageous acts of imagination to right wrongs and act as though a precious life is in their hands to save.