Social Media for Social Change

Technology Is a Tool

Posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm by Jeremy in process, research | 2 Comments

Friend and colleague Nick Jehlen of Action Mill gave the keynote address at the Grassroots Use of Technology Conference last month. It’s a great talk, and perfectly relevant for the fundamental questions with which a project like ours hopes to explore. Nick frames his work with activism, organizing, and technology in terms of the commons—that is, what roles can technology play in moving activist work out of the safe spaces of everyone-agrees-with-us into the heterogeneous, diverse spaces of the commons. Nick also reiterates a point we’ve been discussing: technology is a tool, and the tools one chooses are dependent upon the problems and goals at hand. Nick says: “If you decide that the tools you are going to use is a hammer, pretty soon everything begins to look like nails.” I would also recommend another article by Randy Stoecker, The Foundation of Community Information Technology: Community-Based Research, which proposes a similar process of “community first, information second, technology third.” So, have a look a Nick’s talk below:

2 Responses to “Technology Is a Tool”

1. # On August 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am Nijmie wrote:

   A couple of questions: Is there a difference, in your worldview/framework, between organizing and activism? Who exactly engages in activism? Who constitutes the commons? In my view, activism can be sporadic, periodic, and time limited whereas organizing implies more of an ongoing, long-term view, and something that can lead toward building a movement. Of course there is a lot of fluidity between the two terms, however this is just one understanding. Also, if the next movement that can have any possible relevance is a movement to end poverty led by the poor, then the ‘commons’ - and I’m only going on the assumption here of what you’re refering to as the commons - is actually going to lead the way. “Activists” - and again I’m assuming here that you’re talking about mainly middle class people, mostly but not exclusively white, can be united with a platform or process, because of course this situation effects us all, albiet in potentially different ways. But if we recognize that our liberation is actually bound up together, then perhaps “activists” simply need to “tune in” to what is happening in the commons, and ways that common folk are attempting to organize around healthcare, housing, education, and labor, and other basic human rights, so that we can collectively co-create a process (of leadership development, organizing, and political education) in which we can all participate. It seems then in this context that technological tools of communication are primarily to be put to the best and highest use depending on the shared framework that is to be developed in light of the process described above. Just some of my thoughts.

2. # On August 8th, 2008 at 10:43 am Jeremy wrote:

   Nijmie,

   I agree very much with the distinction you make between activism and organizing, realizing that they are interconnected — perhaps the relationship between them can be thought of as figure to ground. Organizing work is structural and systematic, building movement capacity, sustainability, and momentum over time, while activist work happens on top of that ground, punctuating certain key moments, issues, and constituencies.

   To understand that “our liberation is actually bound up together” is essential, and I refer back to Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, who so well addresses the historical division between the oppressed and the liberal educated elite (often the “Activists,” the “revolutionary leadership” in Freire’s words). Chapter 1 is endlessly quotable in this respect, and Freire challenges us to enter into a co-creative process as you describe: “Political action on the side of the oppressed must be pedagogical action in the authentic sense of the word, and, therefore, action with the oppressed.” To pull in the participatory research component—particularly as surveyed by Sohng here—technological tools would be designed collaboratively in response to collaboratively defined questions, needs, and goals through a co-creative process where each participant is valued and acknowledged has having a particular knowledge set integral to the work, eg. the organizer knows movement building, the community leader knows her community’s struggles, the designer know technology. The process then becomes a dialogue, a sharing of knowledge, an educational process for all involved. This is the hope and the goal.