2/28/08:  Live notes from Harvard Law School:

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Overview from link above

“Here Comes Everybody” is about the social changes coming as a result of the internet’s power to support group action. Sharing, conversation, collaboration, collective action; all of these forms of group effort have been hampered by the myriad real-world difficulties of finding and coordinating with others. Our new group-forming media have removed many of those difficulties, and we are in the middle of a transformation of all kinds of group action.

STEPS:

Sharing

Conversation

Collaboration

Collective action

Every URL is a link to community

In addition, there is additional utility in linking those URLs to each other

Case study: Flickr

4th rung:  Collective Action

Fewest examples right now, because hardest to get going and sustain.

Hardest run, but will be more common in the future

Case study 1:

1999:  Northwest airlines:  Landed at 2:45pm. Passenger calls CEO, pilot asks passenger for CEO's home number. Finally get inside after 9pm!  Passengers organize class action law suit, Northwest settles out of court because the desparately want don't want to let consumers to get rights.  Last year, 2007, similar incident repeats itself.  Eight months later, NY state passes a law giving passengers a "Bill of Rights!"

How long before there is a real estate consumer bill of rights?

Ironically, a real estate agent,  "Relo" Kate Hanni / (Hanna?), helps stir things up, and creates a web site:

Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights

Hotline: 

William James, American philosopher, "Thinking is for doing!"

Similarly, on the internet:  Publishing is for Action!

Case study 2:

Flash mob

Nothing exposes dictatorship like arresting people for eating ice cream

Organizing tools have different meaning and application in different contexts, with different degrees of political freedom

Case study 3:

Standing up to the Mafia

Benefit to businesses, but activists have set up a search system where consumers can identify companies which are standing up to the Mafia

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Ridiculously Easy Group-Forming Improves:

Sharing

Conversation

Collaboration

Collective action

Increase of Collective Action will be a trend to watch in 2008

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Q&A:

Privacy issues:

Psychological motivation:

Unintended, negative consequences:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, example of publication that will be hurt by cut back in advertising

Conversation we need to have isn't about how to save print media, it's how do we save investigative journalism

RECafe:  Implications for real estate reforms?

Political: 

No one has suggested a political wiki for political platform?

Voice of the Faithful in Boston is an excellent example of collective action

Attracting attention of the media is one of the targeted priorities of some social media, and an effective, but ironic way to move up the stages of sharing to collective action. Ironic because organizing no longer needs media attention

Two ways to collaborate & conversation

If thinking is for doing, which of those two do you think is more effective in generating collective action?

Change in things we can do in MOBILE world will be important to watch

Social applications moving to the mobile phone, which is now a "dashboard" to their lives

Radical changes are coming because we are uncoupling activities from location

Twitter a more effective tool for motivating / organizing action in the real world than SecondLife