Tuesday, November 11, 2008

CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World by Tom Watson

CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World by Tom Watson is a book that looks at the changes to social activism created by advances in social networking. Watson a journalist and community organizer discusses various methods of connecting with citizens and fundraising. A large portion of the book is taken up with Facebook the causes application allows someone to show on their profile there support of an issue. Unfortunately besides providing a large mailing list there isn't much here demonstrating that this is effective. I do have a Facebook account and I've been known to add various things without deciding to become involved. The section of the book on micro-financing is much more satisfying because it can actually point to success stories both in developing countries [microloans] and in the US [schools]. There's also a short section on the political campaign of Barack Obama. How the campaign harnessed the Internet. I'm not sure it's really on topic but it was interesting all the same.

It should be noted that everything here is nice and legal the closest thing they get to civil disobedience is some of the groups will crash congresspeople's phone lines. I understand why anonymous versus Scientology is not mentioned but that is definitely a part of the new digital world.

Recommended!

Note: this book was provided for review purposes by the publisher.

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