Technology won't be enough

Let's nip this one in the bud. I think tools for democratic communication are necessary for effective mass social movements, but not sufficient.

Way before the technology is in place, let's make it clear that the technology won't be enough.

With a network that has the potential to reach huge numbers of people, we (and be we I mean I) may be tempted to spend inordinate amounts of time crafting the perfect message to get it passed on to tons of people.

(Heck, I spend too much time hacking together imperfect messages now, with no hope of any distribution whatsoever.)

It's not going to work. Electronic communication is only a part of the network, let alone the movement of movements the network should support.

The idea of democratically moderated communication, flexible joining of groups, and non-overlapping endorsing (rather than duplicate copies) of messages are so people organized in person have a larger network to plug into, at the level they can handle at a given time. Conversely, connections made online need to translate into meeting and action in the physical world to accomplish anything concrete and good.

PWGD will try to provide the tools so that no organizing is truly wasted, and so that effective organizing is recognized and supported. (By organizing, we mean self-organizing, or at any rate groups that become organized to work together to get things done, and not the imposed hierarchical organization of governments, corporations, and too many non-profits.)

But sending e-mails, no matter how well crafted, how democratic the communications system, is not organizing.

This has been a note from Benjamin Melançon to himself.