Category Archives: Guest Post
Rearing The AMP Beast-Child
Activism, media and politics used to be very separate elements circling a nucleus called public life. No more. The shifting communications landscape has changed the nature of these three formerly separate — and elitist — elements.
Visionaries like Marshall McLuhan, Bill Gates and Nicholas Negropante all saw it coming, and they were right. A, M + P are now as entwined as the amino chains on a double helix. They are building an organism, with traits good and bad.
Those of us who work in the sphere (and, more importantly, those who don’t) have a responsibility to correctly raise this beast-child called AMP.
How will we recognize a well-raised beast-child? It will be capable of acts of partisanship, which is now, for better or worse, an established fact of at least American life. But it often will commit fast-twitch acts of selflessness, feats of goodworkisms.
Unlike do-goodery — the toothless proclamation of a town council against some act of a field general in combat, or the banning of table-salt — goodworkisms of AMP’s well-reared beast-child delivers crowd-sourced help to people who need it and deserve it. That group is… everyone.
AMP should be the child who tears down the remaining walls around the elite, from 30 Rock and Big Labor to the Bureaucrat Class. It also should build floor-to-ceiling windows, with doors forever open and lights always on. AMP should make activism more honest and create a world where the people-powered media can freely view all the acts of politics committed by the formerly privileged elite.
Once the AMP child builds that world, those of us who work in this business (and more importantly, those who do not), can pursue our advanced acts of partisanship. But at least we will know that our disagreements are not superficial but rather substantial. Then we can argue about facts, not fairy tales.
I want to help raise the AMP child because if we all see the truth about how “things get done,” we may get back to disagreeing over approaches to problems instead of wasting our time pointlessly disagreeing about something observable, testable, and concrete: the truth.
Let’s Get to Work.
Nothing is going to change unless we change it.
It sounds simple enough, but it’s a lesson that has forever transformed the world of activism, media and politics. It’s the lesson that inspired a revolution.
A people-powered movement has emerged, fueled by the Internet and technology, that has given individuals the opportunity to come together and engage in a real dialogue, a platform from which to reject the status quo and to ask for something better.
This movement is about engagement and it’s about empowerment.
Activism, media and politics have always gone hand in hand – but thanks to the tools we now have and will continue to develop, their speed and influence are limitless.
During my time on the Howard Dean campaign, I was privileged to help drive this revolution forward, as people used the power of the Internet to take the first step to reclaiming a system that had long ago forgotten them.
And we’ve come a long way since then. New technologies are emerging every day that strengthen the people-powered movement, giving individuals the tools they need to make their voices heard.
But there is more work to be done. During this year’s inaugural summit, we’ll discuss just that, challenging traditional strategies and inspiring new thinking.
Nothing is going to change unless we change it, right? Let’s get to work.
