The Problem With The Internet, Part 2: The Internet and Social Change

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With all due respect to my WCT colleague, Albert Ruesga, I don’t believe the Internet is currently the best place to build a social change movement rooted in deliberation and consultation.

Deliberation leading to shared understandings that subsequently inform action; consultation broadening a social change community beyond a few committed elites—I’m convinced the brunt of this work can best happen offline.

I’m not denying that the Internet has provided communities of social activists new tools for collaboration.  It clearly has.

I’m saying there are many characteristics of the Internet and its use that get in the way of transforming a group of loosely associated individuals into a community with shared understandings about the world and how to change it.  The story of Joe Sector, described in an earlier post, begins to name some of these barriers, but there are others.

Consider the state of our critical thinking and reading skills; our general lack of media literacy; our inability or unwillingness to penetrate what some critics have called the Illusion of News.

We carry all of this baggage and more with us on our travels through Cyberspace, though we convince ourselves that we’re fleet of cyber-foot, dancing effortlessly from site to site and blog to blog.  We fill with frenzied points and clicks the time we might otherwise spend banging our collective heads against a shared problem.

Comments

[i.a.t.]

what's your take on moveon.org? is that a counterexample?

[Sally Wilde]

I don't think it is, unfortunately. I say unfortunately, because I would like nothing more than to be mistaken about this.

My own experiences with Moveon.org have felt "episodic," one e-mail summons after another following this pattern: Here's this issue; sign this petition and click here; and oh, by the way, if you want to have a house party, here are the Moveon.org members in your area.

But who decided that this would be the issue and on what basis? What's the strategy that led to this tactic and who gets to shape that strategy?

The ActionForum, the one location on the Moveon.org website where deliberation among members might happen, is "on vacation" during this final push to the election "to conserve technology bandwidth." We're told that it will return after the election. But what good would that do? Won't it then be too late to deliberate with fellow Moveon.org members about the election?

As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of McActivism. You might win a battle or two, but in the end you will lose the war.

[chris esposto]

Albert, I am one of the students who did papers on your site for jon. I go to Rutgers and I was hoping you could post some or all of our reports. i am interested on others feedback.
Thankx
christopher

[Albert]

Chris, please e-mail courtesy_telephone (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know which report you mean.