db+Shifts+in+Sign+Systems

After the Battle of Seattle and anti-FTAA demonstrations in Miami, activism in North America (and public opinion) took a decisive turn as both a reaction to and a acknowledgement of the new police powers of a post-9/11 United States (Graeber 2009). Demonstrations and direct actions must contend with massive police funds and the military-grade resources it buys. One of many current projects for activists today includes building new capacity for information sharing, resource allocation, and long-term coalition building.

Non-governmental organizations are starting to lose their luster as forces for good. Recent reporting by The Nation (for example: Klarreich 2012) and forthcoming work by Mascarenhas show that NGOs not only exercise a kind of sovereignty, but also extend or propagate a problem for their own benefit. New organizational methods that work towards the expressed goals of NGOs but without further reinforcing structural inequality is now in demand. “Social entrepreneurship” may be a starting point, if not an early larval stage for a different arrangement of aid. Proponents of social entrepreneurship describe a “triple bottom line” that include positive cash flow, negative or neutral environmental impact, and social good. This method is becoming very popular for funding organizations like the UNDP, but there is still a focus of for-profit companies in the traditional sense. Open source techniques and values (open standards, mutual reciprocity, shared benefit) might provide a means by which smaller and more egalitarian relationships can be fostered while also solving a long-standing problem.

Online social action is typically seen as somehow less real, shallow, or mutually exclusive from offline social interaction (Jurgenson 2012; For an example see Carr 2010). While this has never been quite true, the perception that this is the case is slipping.


 * Carr, Nicholas G. 2010. // The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains // . New York: W.W. Norton.
 * Graeber, David. 2009. // Direct Action: An Ethnography // . 0. AK Press.
 * Jurgenson, Nathan. 2012. “When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution.” // Future Internet // 4 (1) (January): 83–91. doi:10.3390/fi4010083.
 * Klarreich, Kathie. 2012. “The NGO Republic of Haiti.” // The Nation //, October 31. http://www.thenation.com/article/170929/ngo-republic-haiti#.