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I would see two major issues with this perspective - one being that the "solution" lies in politics with the creation of "movements", "protests" and political "parties". The other, integral to this perspective, is the assumption of the need for "leadership".



The typical hope that the internet would empower positive change usually implies that the rich & powerful need to be DEFEATED in some way. It therefore joins the game of competition in which there are necessarily winners and losers.



Leaders are special individuals who are elevated because of their skills. They become powerful & are specially rewarded, becoming winners. It all fits within the rules of the game, so nothing much really changes.



The first thing needed for the empowerment of ordinary people is to do away with the old rules of engagement. So far, although the internet has made information available & given people a place to exchange views, it has fallen back on the same basic processes - agendas set by vested interest, leadership, moderators, majority rules, winners & losers etc.. No wonder nothing much changes. What's needed is a new process for the empowerment of ordinary people and the internet makes that possible, putting "process" into the technology & doing away with the dependence on skillful leaders.



"Village" is offering each and every community member a unique space where they can fully and conveniently express their perspective, free from the constraint of peer interruption, qualification or domination. Despite all the ideas embedded in "Village", step one of brainstorming and negotiating the description of a mutual goal and step two of brainstorming and negotiating a jobs list are pretty straight forward, intuitive and simple steps collaborators can easily take.



The online process used in Village where people are writing their ideas silently and in parallel, stands in direct contrast to the vocal and unilateral way people typically communicate in face to face groups (Butcher, Collis, Glen and Sills, 1980). In this way Village is moving away from what writers like Hearn and Parkin (1983) and Lannello (1992) would describe as a patriarchal management paradigm, where a contest of ideas is won by the most dominant voice.



Achieving high commitment decisions through high levels of participation, giving everyone a voice, and empowering an individual or a minority to take an idea forward are all central themes within the fields of self-help (Burns, Williams and Windebank, 2004), participatory community develop (Kenny, 1999; Ife, 2002) and cooperative group work (Dressler, 2006; Saint and Lawson, 1994). Village draws on and structures these principles into a process that is simple and intuitive enough for use by most people. Through using Village the tension between the need for structure and the often informal and voluntary nature of community participation can begin to be addressed. This would seem like a good example of the sort of community empowerment structure Kenny (1999) and Campfrens (1997) refer to the need for.



Regards

Chris Baulman

@landrights4all