This started as a brief post about nonprofits and technology:
The NonProfit Open Source Initiative (NOSI) is building bridges between the Open Source and NonProfit worlds, so that NonProfit Organizations (NPOs) and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) can leverage the flexiblity, extensibility, and relatively low cost of Free and Open Source Software – and so that Open Source developers can learn more about NPO and CBO requirements. The Digital Divide Network has published an interview with John Stanton of NOSI, who points to the organization's publication "Choosing and Using Open Source Software: A Primer for Non Profits." Other organizations are also connecting NonProfits with Open Source, among them the NonProfit Technology Enterprise Network (N-TEN) and Aspiration Tech. There's also a loose coalition of activists and technologists at Activist Tech, which has just launched a new web site using the CivicSpace platform.
However there's more to say, and the Fourth of July is a good time to say it.
As more nonprofits and activist groups establish online presences, and as more of those are established as communities and networked effectively with each other, we have, potentially, the genesis of a new kind of decentralized, distributed organization. This isn't any kind of panacea; where you have many fairly autonomous groups forming, there will inevitably be more political tension, duplication of effort, greater confusion and disorder. That's the down side, and our hope for the upside is that "small pieces loosely joined" within a network environment will allow us to bring far more voices into the mix without a complete system overload and meltdown. Essentially we're talking about buying into some degree of chaos to develop a more democratic system of governance, not by changing the existing governance infrastructure (legislative/executive/judicial), but by creating a framework for more or less organized input, better ways to define and articulate popular will (while acknowledging and respecting minority opinions).
How are technologies "democratic"? As platforms for citizen journalism, political discussion and debate, and online community organization, various forms of social software bring new and diverse voices into the kinds of public conversations formerly reserved for politicians and pundits. As the introductory blurb on Dan Gillmor's We the Media site says, "Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation." The grassroots journalists Gillmor writes and talks about are bloggers using social technology to extend public conversation and have increasing influence on broader conversations that impact public conscience and policy.
The combination of social and technical innovation in the context of increasingly pervasive computer network access is worldchanging, but there are issues, three of which I mention in an interview on the WELL about Extreme Democracy, a book I co-edited with Mitch Ratcliffe:
- Freedom to connect: net-based democratic technologies depend on open
and accessible networks. Corporations and/or governments that operate
networks might restrict access and use, constraining speech and
stifling innovation. - Digital divide: when civic engagement and participation in the
political process require access to technology, those without access
are potentially excluded. We're talking about people who don't want to
fiddle with a dang computer, can't buy one, can't get an Internet
connection, etc. - Echo chamber: if we're just forming cliques where we talk to folks we
agree with and ignore other ways of thinking, we're missing the debate
that's an important element of democracy (IMO). Some are trying to
address this problem, e.g. Let's Talk America.
The Fourth of July is a celebration of national independence, but the 21st century worldchanging vision transcends borders and national and corporate interests and focuses on an acknowledgement of our interdependence, and the technologies that acknowledge, not just our individual freedoms, but also our sustained connections.
