But with this privilege comes responsibility. If the Internet allows ordinary citizens to influence world affairs we have to think very carefully about how we use that influence. Case in point: MoveOn's campaign to get American troops out of Iraq. Above is a video they

The event poster

Last Friday I helped bring Joan Blades, co-founder of the progressive online organization MoveOn and the feminist organization MomsRising, to speak at the Kennedy School, where I am a grad student. The event was serendipitous. A few weeks ago Lisa Renstrom, former President of the Sierra Club, asked me if I would set up a Kennedy School event with Ms. Blades while she was in Boston to promote MomsRising. I said sure.

I had the privilege of having lunch with Ms. Blades who, despite her impressive accomplishments, is utterly lacking in egotism. She

I just spent the past week visiting several colleges...and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed....

I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad....

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good,

Political change occurs by bringing pressure upon decision-makers. Because of the mass use of the internet and cell phones (ICT), millions of people now have access to the tools of mass communication and message dissemination, mass organizing and microfundraising. No longer

Still, I don't think this hub-and-spokes model of political activism shows the full political potential of the net. The promise of Web 2.0 is that we can all be content creators yet, for all its success in involving citizens in politics, MoveOn and its siblings are