What is "web thinking?" --Jon Warnow

As the technology coordinator for Step It Up, Jon Warnow has fumbled his way around a blossoming digital revolution as the movement builds to stop global warming. The day after graduating college (February 1st, 2007) he and his friends from school began a 10-week mad-dash to build this movement. Without an organization, and without any money to start with, they plunged ahead and scheduled a "National Day of Climate Action" for April 14th, 2007. By doing so, he and his friends opened up the floodgates for a sort of open-source, geographically-distributed day of activism. And by the time the big day rolled around, they (with the help of writer/journalist Bill McKibben and an incredible array of organizational allies) helped coordinate over 1400 actions. The distributed actions represented all 50 states--and beyond. They were not only synchronized, but unified in their message and their passion. At every action, citizens issued a bold call to their elected leaders: "Step It Up Congress! Cut Carbon 80% by 2050!" By the time night fell on April 14th, the whole world could visit http://april.stepitup2007.org and see the evidence of this unified movement, and could feel its passion through a cascade text, photos, and videos of the day of action. And the message was indeed delivered to Congress with force--what once was considered a politically infeasible call (cutting carbon 80% by 2050) became the minimum standard almost overnight. Just two weeks after the National Day of Climate Action, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama co-sponsored global warming legislation that contain precisely the targets advocated by the thousands of activists around the country.

Jon is psyched to connect to the veterans and luminaries at the intersection of techology and social change, and is grateful to his friends at BiroCreative for the opprotunity. He is especially excited to pick your brain about what sort of tools and information would be necessary to build the first truly global social movement.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• What
• is
• web thinking?
• --Jon
• Warnow