Reappraising CauseWired

A couple months back I reviewed CauseWired, a book I’d been comp’d. It was not a glowing review, but it wasn’t that negative either.

CauseWired is the name Watson gives to social causes that leverage online tools, particularly social networks… Watson is clearly a very switched-on guy and he’s explored social activism in great detail, but the book left me feeling underwhelmed and convinced that it will date rapidly…. I wanted Tom Watson to ask himself harder questions. Instead it feels to me like he’s played safe and contents himself with giving a tour and quoting extensively from others. To give credit where its due, it is a very good tour of the online cause state of play in early 2008, but I can’t see this book retaining much value beyond 2010 or so. In that sense, it isn’t really for me.

Next part of the story. Only a few weeks after reading CauseWired, there was a change in government here in NZ. The new govt. acted fast and suddenly climate change policy was up for review. I felt like a response was needed – something to give a steer to the new government away from indulging the hardcore climate sceptics of their partner party. It soon became apparent that no-one else was stepping up.
So I did. With some frenzied behind-the-scenes work from a team of helpful souls, the Don’t Be A Rodney campaign was born. And it was a success on its own terms, generating at least a couple dozen and maybe as many as a hundred hard-copy letters to the new Prime Minister urging him to put his foot down on climate change.
The campaign would not have happened if I hadn’t read CauseWired. It is that simple. I think I knew everything I needed before the book, but CauseWired gave me something that I hadn’t given it credit for in my earlier review: detailed, specific inspiration. The examples in that book gave me some confidence and momentum I would otherwise have lacked.
If its effect on my life is the measure of a book’s worth, then CauseWired ended up as the most valuable book I read in 2008. And that’s something I never would have believed when I wrote that first review.

2 thoughts on “Reappraising CauseWired”

  1. I’m a co-founder of http://footprintsnetwork.org/ – an online philanthropy project that harnesses microdonations to fund poverty-alleviation projects… and am reading CauseWired now.
    One of our favourite quotes is from the late Anita Roddick who once said…
    ‘If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito’.
    This has guided us from a tiny, tiny idea through to a middling not-for-profit who recently realised we’d raised $500K AUD and are very excited about how this CauseWired world will explode for us (and many others) in 2009.
    I am so glad to read your story – not only for standing up for the environment, but also to hear that you’ve also found power in the idea that you can actually change the world. It’s just a matter of transforming that thought into some action, not matter how small the first step.

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