{"id":980,"date":"2009-01-08T09:35:04","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T09:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=980"},"modified":"2009-01-08T09:35:04","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T09:35:04","slug":"reappraising-causewired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=980","title":{"rendered":"Reappraising CauseWired"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple months back I reviewed CauseWired<\/em>, a book I’d been comp’d<\/a>. It was not a glowing review, but it wasn’t that negative either.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a>. 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.
\nSo I did. With some frenzied behind-the-scenes work from a team of helpful souls, the Don’t Be A Rodney<\/a> 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.
\nThe 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.
\nIf 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, … Continue reading Reappraising CauseWired<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-political","category-self-ish","category-small-group-action"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-fO","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}