trusting the lipless.

This semester I'm taking a class called Globalization, New Media and Social Activism. Its title reflects the audacious ambition of its syllabus. We're only 3 weeks into it and already, I'm tempted to skim the reading and soothe myself by humming a quaint "It's a Small World" lullaby.

I think part of the reason I've bristled at the reading/in-class discussions is that I wonder why we're discussing these issues as if technology is the panacea to all our ills. The source of my skepticism isn't apathy (did that sound defensive? probably). I actually do care a great deal about the inequities of money and resources and fucking time that exist among the people on this planet. But it seems to me that our goals for improvement are moot without the presence of trust.

So what if new media has produced ways to communicate that we never before imagined? If a Facebook group forms in the woods, and no one is around to join it...

Wait: back to my point about trust. And how to generate that on the Internet. And how to translate that online trust into embodied activism.

By (dis)trust, I don't mean the type of identity-thievery we see in those Citimortgage credit card ads. I mean the type of trust popularized by Robert Putnam’s discussion of social capital.

Definitions of social capital vary widely, but here are a few I've been mulling over as I do my reading for this class.

‘the process by which social actors create and mobilize their network connections within and between organizations to gain access to other social actors’ resources’ (Knoke 1999, p. 18).

‘the web of cooperative relationships between citizens that facilitate resolution of collective action problems’ (Brehm and Rahn 1997, p. 999).

‘features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit’ (Putnam 1995, p. 67).

Is activism more/less effective if it is embodied? e.g. are in-person protests more likely to get a response than online petitions? And: does this matter? If an online petition doesn't achieve its desired persuasive outcome (encouraging a congressperson to vote a particular way, expressing displeasure at a new Wal-Mart practice), then has it still succeeded at generating an intangible, unquantifiable amount of trust that can be used for future activism or stored in a giant community bank? (full disclosure of my position: yes).

In order to focus my wayward thoughts in this class, I'm choosing to concentrate on this notion of trust because I think its presence can help to narrow the gap between the virtual and the embodied.

We spend so much time arguing about technology in polarized terms. The object/tool in the argument du jour is either feared or revered. Let's just shoot our load on this one and admit that technology will no more solve all our problems than it will create them.

So: trust: how do we produce it, maintain it, and capitalize on it?