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The Right to Communicate

This APC review of the digital divide issues raised at the World Social Forum in Venezuela represents a critically important change in the terms of the digital divide issue. For a long time, I've heard most digital divide conversations framed in terms of access to information, education, and services. But as this piece points out, it's far more powerful to speak about a Right to Communicate. Posted: 3/30/06; 11:37:43 PM #

ENTECH's First 50 Assessments
	Milwaukee's ENTECH (Empowering Nonprofits through Technology) program has published a review of their First Fifty Assessments (14 page PDF). They don't entirely escape the trap of technocentrism, but their approach has a certain revealing rigor nonetheless and is well worth the read. Posted: 3/30/06; 11:31:21 PM #

Investing in Ideas
	Chip Berlet's June 2005 article on Investing in Ideas is a short and painful documentation of the failure of the funders and organizations of mainstream civil society to develop the intellectual resources needed to fight the radical right, highlighting in particular some decisions made in the mid-nineties. We're now paying the price of that failure. Posted: 3/30/06; 11:25:17 PM #

Realistic Review of Web 2.0
	With all the hype, even in the nonprofit sector, it's great to have a realistic review of Web 2.0 by Paul Boutin. Although I have long been an advocate of many of the ideas that are being claimed as part of this new term, I share his perspective that it is imprecise and does more harm than good. Posted: 3/30/06; 11:20:31 PM #