Tom Watson’s book CauseWired is about the rise of online social activism. I was informed by Johnnie that advance copies were being distro’d free to bloggers to generate some online buzz, and seeing as this sounded right up my alley, I signed on up. Not too long after a proof copy turned up in the post. Neat! Thanks, Wiley!
CauseWired is the name Watson gives to social causes that leverage online tools, particularly social networks. It’s the name of his supporting blog as well. It’s also the first mark against this book for me. It’s a clear case of buzzword-creation, trying to add a new phrase to the lexicon like “tipping point” and “long tail” came along in recent years. That’s no great sin in itself, but “CauseWired” is an ugly, ugly ohrase, complete with the oh-so-00s capitalisation in the middle of the compound word. It’s a name that looks horribly dated already and the book isn’t even out yet.
And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with the book as well. Tom 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.
CauseWired consists of ten chapters describing a number of online tools and projects, like Facebook Causes, Kiva, Razoo, DonorsChoose, Change.org and MyBo. It discusses key people behind the scenes and relevant anecdotes to represent the power of the new models. The message is very clear that these online tools lower the barriers of entry and enhance organizational capacity so that it is fairly easy to build and communicate with a network, and that makes some radically new infrastructures possible for philanthropy and political organization.
It is something of an exhilirating tour, and more than slightly humbling when I note that 90% of the people leading these projects are younger than me. However, its a tour without a thesis. Watson isn’t arguing any case, or projecting any particular future as likely, or saying anything more than “this is a thing that’s going on, and right now it looks like this”. There seems to be an unwarranted confidence in the power of the new platform; the massive success of the Obama and Hillary primary campaigns was certainly enhanced by online tools and distributed yet tightly-managed structures, but it was probably more important that it was a clash of potent identity-politics to anoint a challenger to eight years of the most toxic rule in American history. This is a perfect storm of conditions and probably doesn’t indicate how any future effort will work out.
In the final chapter Watson gives more than token acknowledgement to some of the real problems with online tools, such as saturation, which will inevitably become a huge issue as online cause platforms multiply and fight for sunlight. However, Watson doesn’t do much more than acknowledge the problem, then move on to other issues. It is trivial to see that online social activism sites and tools cannot expand infinitely, but what the consequences of their growth might be is not given much consideration.
Ultimately, I think the problems I have with CauseWired are because 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. It’s something to give to, say, a charity director who is wondering what is possible online, or someone who hasn’t previously considered the ramifications of “web 2.0” – the stories and examples here will get them up to speed very quickly. But it doesn’t seem to have much to say to those already involved in social activism, or whose experience of the net is already two-way.
So by that measure I guess I can’t recommend this book to most of the readers of this blog. It may be I’m being rather too hard on it, and asking far more from it than I really should do. To that end perhaps I’ll embrace the Web 2.0-ness of it all and invite questions and queries from readers. Are you intrigued by this book’s premise? Ask me in comments about whatever interests you and I’ll do my best to shed some light. There might be a whole constituency for the book that I’m just not seeing.
Author:
Green Image Design
The accolades for this Greens billboard keep coming, with a best-of-week award from international ad-industry site BestAds. Judge Alan Russell of ad agency DDB Canada gave the Greens billboard the “best outdoor” nod, saying “First Choice goes to Green Party. It’s so damn simple I ask myself, as with all the best work, why didn’t someone think of that before? Few words, striking photography, emotional appeal, clever, yep it’s got my vote.”.
I’ve also been impressed with the visual design of this one-sheet, released with a major policy announcement that the Greens would favour a coalition partnership with the Labour party rather than the National party. This is an amazing piece of communication, condensing huge amounts of information into a small space and giving the reader great tools to unlock the content; it is comprehensible at a glance and also rewards detailed study. This is a really difficult task and they’ve absolutely nailed it – I wonder if the same team who did the billboards are behind this? The Greens have really lifted their game this cycle, and while it would be foolish to say the Greens are riding a wave of support due to their snappy design, it surely isn’t hurting them and is making it impossible to dismiss them as amateur idealists who don’t know what they’re doing – which has been, in the past, a surprisingly tenacious criticism.
Take Me To Your Linky
An amazing tour through a bunch of real-world ghost cities, almost none of which I’d heard of. Mesmerizing.
This one’s been all over the place – the 2008 US electoral campaign as a game of D&D
I love these photos by Chema Madoz
And finally… the brokers with hands on their faces blog!
Waitasecond
On the new NZ On Screen site that just launched, there’s a clip from NZ comedy legend Billy T James in 1990, doing a ‘newsreader in the future’ gag with the nation’s crooner Sir Howard Morrison. Howard delivers this line: “..there’s no truth in the rumour that the last four remaining Pakeha seats will be abolished…” There is applause and laughter, and the camera cuts away to someone in the crowd smiling happily at this riff on NZ’s controversial Maori seats…
…waitaminute…
…is that…
…a young version of National party leader John Key? The very chap who just got into hot water over the proposed abolition of the Maori seats?
Check for yourself. At the 3’30” mark.
Endorsing The Greens
Ruth just posted on how she’s voting this year, and it has moved me to comment: in a shock revelation that will come as no surprise to anybody, this election I’m voting Green.
Why? It’s the climate change, stupid. (To coin a phrase.) I feel strongly that the Greens are the only party that are really talking about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. The stronger their voice in Parliament, the more they can push the government to start dealing with the problem.
There are other reasons to vote Green; there are other reasons not to vote Green. But from where I’m sitting, climate change is the most important issue in the world right now by a wide margin. All of the other pros and cons of various party platforms just look insignificant next to it, like choosing the best music to listen to while the Titanic goes down.
So I’m voting Green. And if you agree that anthropogenic climate change as the biggest problem on our horizon, I urge you to vote Green as well.
(Also, I loved Ruth’s final comment in her post: “My favourite thing about New Zealand elections is that you vote with a fat orange felt pen, a clear sign of a serious democracy at work.” Hee!)
Story behind the story
The knot-tying that will happen in January all comes back to this little advertisement. This is the ‘flatmates wanted’ ad that was answered by strong_light.
If I use my imagination, I remember our first meeting in just as much detail as she does.
the right motivation
See, we all know that anthropogenic global warming is gonna make things rough, but its tough to actually get ourselves making changes. This is because humans are rubbish at responding to distant, nearly abstract motivations.
So I’m all in favour of this as a new way of motivating action: if you don’t stop climate change, a tiger will bite you in the scrotum.
Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world’s largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers’ natural habitat… “”We were trying to catch the tiger perched on a tree of our village with tranquiliser shots,” said the 47-year-old villager. “But it flung on me after falling on a net and bit my loins.”
I’m feeling more motivated already.
Powell Endorses Obama
Cheney made him soiled goods by forcing him to front the “case for war” to the UN, and then threw him on the garbage heap. Now Colin Powell gets his revenge on the governing clique that always hated him.
Not that Obama particularly needs the boost right now, and not that McCain is the same as CheneyBush, but it still tastes pretty sweet. Powell was a company man who was deliberately betrayed, but he never lost credibility among the Repub base or mainstream US, so his floor-crossing endorsement is big news. Even more so given that usually he’s reluctant to speak out at all, thanks to his deeply ingrained good-soldier approach to politics (the same one that led him to ruin by dutifully presenting garbage intelligence with those satellite photos of Saddam’s “weapon factories” ahem).
I remember at a party in ’99 or so, gleefully predicting that the 2004 US Presidential race would be between Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell. I was, of course, completely wrong but it has been nice to see them both in play in 2008, with all that confrontational identity content (race, gender) well in the mix. I kinda imagine that the USA right now feels like it’s getting healthy for the first time in years.
Many Good Friday Linky
this week: has been busy and while I’ve had things worth saying i haven’t had time to do them justice. Ah well. At least there are always linky:
Cool knitted stuff, including a bunny the size of a hotel, and cephalapods
Back in 1982, one of the first of those “clues to a real treasure” books was released in the US: The Secret: A Treasure Hunt contained verse and paintings pointing to the location of 12 treasure casks buried by the author. More than 25 years on, only two have been found, one in 1984, the other in 2004. The hunt continues over at The Secret wiki! (Curious side fact: the treasure from the most famous of these books, the UK’s Masquerade from 1979, was found not by a puzzle-solver but by a guy who had inside info from the writer’s ex-girflriend. Wikipedia has the scoop and the solution.)
hix over at multi-dimensional has been running a series of posts on long-range thinking, and why we’re all so crap at it. He’s going somewhere interesting with this, and it ties in to something I’d never heard of, Superstruct, an internet game set in 2019 in which the world’s players respond to major global threats. Keen!
If you’ve ever played one of those classic text adventures (Eat Cake, Take Note, Go North, etc) then you’ll dig this: MS Paint Adventures has a cartoonist draw a scene and then receive “commands” from the internet audience, and then draw the next scene, and so you progress through a very strange adventure indeed. Like a lot of these things, takes a little while to get into its rhythm but is addictive once it hits stride.
An episode of Kamikaze Cookery, a twenty-minute cooking show in which a normal person tries to cook a recipe from one of those glossy recipe books fronted by Jamie Oliver. Cue much insulting of Jamie Oliver and a very entertaining show. Give it a try – I was tipped off that this was coming by esteemed sheep-hater Johnnie, and its good to see an episode out. (There’s also another episode in which they cook a steak with a blowtorch and a vacuum cleaner.)
And finally, a daily three-panel gag strip about the eagle eternally devouring the liver of bound Prometheus! Like Garfield only with a bird eating this dude’s liver in every strip.
Evil League of Evil
Bad Horse put out the call: the Evil League of Evil was seeking applicants. A rare opportunity to get on-side with the Thoroughbred of Sin. Many people rose to the challenge. And I helped one of those people. Here’s the app:
Evil League of Evil Application: The Embezzler from Jarratt Gray on Vimeo.
This is all a spin-off from internet musical Dr Horrible, created by Buffy-maestro Joss Whedon during the writers’ strike. When Dr Horrible is released to DVD, ten or so ELE applicants will round out the package. The open call was an invitation to compete for one of those spots.
JB saw his chance and devised a heck of a script around the Embezzler character. He gathered together a crew of amigos and amigas to make it all happen. A lot of effort went into prep, and a lot into editing etc. afterwards, but it still felt like the day of the shoot was when it all happened – always to remember, shooting a film takes a lot of effort. I was recruited to play second-string character Devil’s Advocate, and when we did a script readthrough in the morning I took the opportunity to stick my nose in about how the story resolved. To my delight, the whole crew managed to usefully find a shared creative energy – sometimes too many cooks will spoil the broth, but here it felt like every idea contributed moved us closer to a solid final product. I note that I am co-credited on the script, but to be honest, it’s very close to JB’s original, and most of the changes originated from other people – my main contribution was finding a good structure for a three-minute bit, and even then I had lots of help.
It was cool to have Jarratt behind the camera. its the first time we’ve worked together on a film since ’99 I think, and his expertise has grown – he does this sort of thing for a living after all. The rest of us could have put our heads together and got the material down to about 3′ 15″, but the only way we would have made the required 3 minutes was by cutting out jokes. Jarratt was able to apply years of experience to slice it down to 3 minutes without losing anything important, finding just the right way to compress information. That is highly impressive to me.
Directing was shared between everyone, even me for a bit (is this the first time I’ve directed since the nonsensical Morgue’s World project of ’92?) and in fact everyone pitched in all over the place. Lovely crew made a very busy shoot a delightful experience. I had some doubts when I arrived in the morning that it would all get done but it did, and while it was hard work it wasn’t unpleasant. Good fun times were had, pizza was scoffed, and baby Hurricane made numerous behind-the-scenes appearances.
Speaking of Baby Hurricane, here’s his application, the work of Debz (the assessor in the Embezzler vid) and Matt C (who spent most of the shoot wandering the streets with the leetle super hero). It’s a treat as well. Good luck to them both!