I apologize for the heavy-handedness with the exclamation points, but I am excited to announce that after a rather substantial vacation (in Portland, Ontario), I’m back to blogging.

And do expect a snazzy new update for next week. Make Something Happen will have some exciting and surprising new content for you to chew on.

Any ideas about what it might be, my friends?

I am very excited to bring it to your attention.

-Filed in The Point

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally taken a stab at writing a manifesto for The Point. What follows is a summary to the ideas that underlie our platform. Some, I imagine, are hopelessly abstract to those who haven’t spent the past year obsessively pondering them. I’ll do my best to elaborate on these ideas in future (and more frequent) posts.

Manifesto

The Point is much more than technology - it’s a new way of thinking about group action. While it’s important to us to accommodate trivial or absurd situations, what inspires us is The Point’s potential to fundamentally change the way that individuals and organizations interact.

Our beliefs include the following:

People will do what matters.

People want a way to make a difference, but feel powerless to solve the problems that can’t be solved alone. Inaction stems from a pragmatic judgment that participating doesn’t matter. Not apathy. If we think there are too few people to achieve a goal, we don’t bother. If we think there are too many, we don’t bother. But if the conditions exist for individual participation to be meaningful, we will take action.

It should be easier to care less.

We don’t care how much you care. Our job is to create tools that make it easy and fun to engage at whatever level you want and still make a difference.

Every problem has a tipping point.

Every problem has a tipping point of public frustration that will force a solution. If enough people want a problem to be solved and they have a way to find one another and coordinate action, they will solve it.

Amplifying the old tactics of change is not the answer.

A petition with a zillion signatures is impressive. For now. But as symbols of discontent, petitions derive their value from the fact that they take time to sign. As they become easier to sign, they become equally less powerful. As we grow used to the magnitude of petition and letter-writing campaigns, these tools will become no more useful than when they were handled offline.

The Web offers something more, but we must take a step back before we can move forward. We must correct our tactics to address the underlying problems of collective action and create rational incentives for change. We must break the path dependency on strategies that rely on press attention, and instead develop an approach that channels our collective will into a power that forces change.

A rule is only a rule if we let it be.

If enough people disagree with something, they have the safety in numbers to overwhelm authority. All they need is a tool to safely coordinate their behavior.

We love cute cats.

We believe that the most effective tools of change are neutral, and useful for stuff that has nothing to do with making the world a better place. Or as Ethan Zuckerman puts it, “sufficiently useful read/write platforms will attract both [cute cats] and activists.”

Stop waiting.

If man and the Internet were conceived at the same time, would we choose to pursue change through signing petitions, or writing letters to our elected officials imploring them to pass legislation? Probably not as much. The Web enables like-minded groups to channel their influence into something more powerful, targeted, and efficient. We can now solve our shared problems directly by creating rational incentives for change.

-Filed in The Point