09. Moving from conversations to action
The collaborative action of people is able to achieve seemingly unachievable goals: experiences such as ZooGalaxy and Wikipedia show that mass collaboration can help achieve disruptive innovation. Yet too often web-based collaboration is confined to complaints and discussions, rather than action. As one blogger put it, paraphrasing Marx: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world: the point is to complain about it”8.
For example, the recent Italian elections saw an explosion of activity in social media discussing about the different candidates. This energy then failed to translate into concrete action in the aftermath of the elections.