Full Circle Associates

Time for a Group Hub

To call this “bottom-up” isn’t exactly right, because what I’m talking about is a productive tension between leaders and end users. Just as Ebay is better than a thousand separate auction sites, and each auctioneer on Ebay is happy that Ebay advertises and improves its user interface and sets good rules for all to follow, the most powerful political network needs a center and something of an ideology. But if it’s built right, the imagination, language, and work can all come from the edges. Not just individuals on the edges, but groups and communities on the edges.

All powerful networks have hubs. In the best case, the hub is responsive, but even in the worst case, an evangelist at the core allows for networks to grow and coordinate -- and the individuals in the network to know each other and feel powerful.

I believe the collective-action solving power of the Internet can transform politics, in the best way, creating possibilities for localized but connected political communities, but I don't think it's a sure thing. Simply put, we face a battle between three interests--corporate interests, radical theological interests, and the interests in building civil society. Arguably, whichever group can best use the Internet to create new channels of power and community may well define the next couple hundred years. So this is mildly terrifying, but it creates a tremendous opportunity. We can seize the opportunity to transform public life --international and national -- in a civic, deliberative, democratic way.