My friend Allison Fine is a senior fellow at Demos, editor at TechPresident, and author of the award-winning book Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age. She writes frequently about the Internet and its impact on society and the promises it holds for democratic renewal. Allison has recently written Social Citizens, a discussion paper about how Millennials will use their Internet skills in civic engagement. The paper makes the case that this generation has unique potential to make impacts on the civic landscape.

The Case Foundation had asked Allison to write the paper, and as she wrote on the Social Citizens Blog, they decided to go deeper than just listing a litany of different ways these young people are using the tools of Web 2.0 to share information about their favorite causes. They wanted to know what the impact will be of Millennials having "…the ability to become an advocate for their cause instantly, broadly, inexpensively, and what does their ability to do so mean for the rest of us?" Fascinating questions.

Allison and the foundation invite everyone interested in social change and how technology can be used to foster it to join the conversation in an effort to define what it means to be a "social citizen." Do it.

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Fascinating piece from millennial makeover entitled Millennials Are About to Give America an Extreme Political Makeover.

Right here in Hollywood, a dedicated group of over one hundred Millennials, gathered by mobilize.org, met the weekend before New Year’s Day to finalize their own Declaration of Independence, entitled "Democracy 2.0." Citing a need to "upgrade" our nation’s system of governance, the gathering identified the challenges that previous generations had failed to resolve, especially "economic inequality, America’s role in the world, and the effect of money on the democratic process." But then, instead of condemning those in power for the nation’s problems and walking away as Gen Xers might have done, or attempting to tear down the political system as some Boomers did, they asserted the need for their generation to fix each of those concerns. Their manifesto declared, "Our generation…is uniquely positioned to foster community engagement through social networks… It is our responsibility to use information and technology to upgrade democracy, transform communication, and advance political engagement and civic participation."

Thanks Micah for passing it along.

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