From Couch Potatoes to Activists
In our many discussions during our strategy week (read Dennis’ blogpost here), I repeatedly realized my roll as a technical optimist. This becomes apparent especially as, in exploring the chances and risks of digital media for the social sector, I am repeatedly convinced that the chances outweigh the risks of potential problems. (It is therefore good that we also have some good, critical team members who will take care that words like “revolutionary” and “innovative” will have measurable backing in our finished Trend Report).
Cognitive Surplus
I found affirmation for my optimism in the potential of digital media for a better world in my summer reading of Clay Shirky’s book, Cognitive Surplus. In it, the New York communications scientist (who we have to thank for his fantastic book, Here Comes Everybody) lays out the potential of digital technologies to challenge and breathe life into our fallow talents and good intentions, putting them toward the common good.
Today, nearly 2 billion people have access to the Internet, and together, they have an annual amount of 1 trillion hours of free time available. We spent much of this time in the last decades in front of the television – altogether, Americans spend 200 billion hours in front of the tube per year. The Web 2.0 is changing free time behaviors. For the first time, people aren’t passive consumers but rather have the opportunity to produce something themselves by publicly displaying their creativity and collaborating on larger projects, from the Apache web server over Wikipedia to Ushahidi.
Amateurs who had previously nurtured their hobbies and knowledge in small circles now have the possibility, through social media, to work together and publicly. Barriers that used to stand in the way of interaction and collaboration have fallen down. User-generated content is taking over the Internet. 24 hours of videos are uploaded onto YouTube every minute; Twitter transmits over one million words per day.
What motivates people to engage for free?
Why are so many people actively engaged online without being paid for it? Shirky points out numerous psychological and social experiments that show error in thinking that humans are motivated primarily by financial and material needs. Our intrinsic needs are much more important to us, and it is to this need that unpaid activity in the Internet offers a stage.
Such intrinsic needs include the opportunity for us to broaden our competencies (“I have improved in this programming language / photo technology / etc. …”); to broadcast our talents (“I wrote this song / blogpost…”); to gather social contacts and to collaborate together for causes (“we raised 2,000 dollars…”) or to engage in dialogues (“I have found that drinking a glass of milk worked against the side effects of this medicine…”). All of these opportunities help us to be more confident and content.
These new opportunities to promote and engage can be used for every kind of purpose, even seemingly-meaningless ones, like when people post sweet photos of kittens or trade pornography. But some of the opportunities can also be used for social good. As an example of the latter, Shirky describes the fans of the American baritone, Josh Groban.
Grobanites for Charity
On an online forum in 2002, fans of Josh Groban discussed what they should get for the star on his 21st birthday. One member had the idea to donate in Groban’s name for the social organization that was started by the producer of her favorite singer. Within days, the self-named “Grobanites for Charity” had gathered over 16,000 dollars. Motivated by their success, the group launched further Internet campaigns, and within a year they had collected over 75,000 dollars in donations. But the fans’ engagement wasn’t only limited to fundraising. They wanted to be sure to direct the donations toward good work that was directly linked to Josh Groben’s name and so met with Groban’s lawyers to found the Josh Groban Foundation.
Compared to the offline world, everything seems to have gone backwards here. Foundations and Clubs are usually started by the founder, who then works on finding supporters and members. In this case, the members and donors were the first to arrive and the foundation came later. In the meanwhile, the Grobanites have expanded their activities. In addition to collecting donations for the foundation, they now founded a side organization, Grobanites for Africa, which supports African children’s aid projects.
Providing detailed case studies, such as Patients Like Me and Responsible Citizens, Shirky analyzes the organizational structures and impact measurement of collaborative production, describing how digital media allow loosely-connected groups of amateurs to act efficiently and for free in areas where monetary markets, administrations and hierarchical nonprofits have failed.
The book is an engaging and action-oriented tour through the dynamics of the participatory web and is relevant for nonprofit organizations as well as for individuals who want to change the world for the better.
You can find an interview with Clay Shirky here in Wired as well as in this Video-Talk.
