Coalition of the Willing 2.0

Today an article about Fabfi was Printed in the in the Sunday edition of the Boston Herald. I was initially very surprised at the paper's interest in the issue. The subject matter is a little outside I would typically associate with the publication, and I wasn't really sure it would resonate with the readership in a way I would be comfortable with. But any publicity is good publicity, right?

As expected, there was some push-back in the comments of the online article of the type "what if this gets into the hands of terrorists?". I could dedicate 10 pages of text to why this fear is an unfounded construction of the mainstream media, but there's not enough time in the day to get on such a big soapbox...

The internet is the most democratic medium the world has ever known. It is the easiest way for individuals to participate in social communities, allows every user to speak his or her mind and knows few national boundaries. Trust and collaboration begins with personal relationships. Personal relationships start with communication. The internet is the medium for that communication. This year Facebook surpassed Google in the amount of traffic it funnels to major news and information sites. Our friends are the most powerful influences in our lives on what we think, how we act, and what we're passionate about. They support us in times of need, and join with us to create the movements that create social change. Why would we not want to make friends in the places we are most worried about?

"Coalition of the Willing" was a common phrase in post-1990 political rhetoric aimed at popularly legitimizing Military or Military-"humanitarian" operations that lacked widespread global support (Iraq being a well-known example). The rhetoric played to the belief that there is power an legitimacy in numbers--a belief well-founded in empirical truth, and one that is the foundation of democratic ethos. However, the original Coalition wasn't much of a coalition, and was definitely not of the "willing" in the traditional sense. The historical record shows that the list of members was retroactively edited and that significant financial coercion was at play in the acquisition of members--as a result it garnered widespread criticism and arguably had little political of operational value.

In the wake of nearly a decade of at-best marginally successful military and development organization attempts at solving the problems of security, infrastructure, governance and civil society, there is a new "Coalition of the Willing" forming. This coalition is made up of young people around the world interested in finding solutions to the problems that the big players have yet to solve. Their efforts are multiplied by digital media. SMS messages have been used to monitor elections. Cell-phone video has exposed brutal acts of extremist groups, and there is a growing interest in digital communication to address the challenges of government accountability (to name only a few applications). The sharing of technological skills between coalition members of different nations creates trust and builds multi-national personal relationships, and the solutions that result are applicable both at home and abroad.

It is a fallacy to believe that it's possible to prevent information access, and an even greater one to believe that such access is a negative force. If it wasn't, totalitarian nations such as China and Iran wouldn't go so far to limit digital communications. Instead of arguing about who might be using digital information to do harm, we should accept the inevitability of ubiquitous information access and focus on how to use that access to teach, organize and create global communities of people who want to do something about the problems they face. End. Rant.