Alex came home from a talk by Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, and she was in a soul-searching frame of mind. How does the web support meaningful social change? And is there a particular kind of change the web does an especially good job at?

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It's easy to get fixated on the shiny toys of the Web 2.0 world: the latest invitation-only beta of the hottest new collaborative technology using the coolest whatever. Nothing wrong with that; our natural affinity for cool and new helps provide a built-in audience for technological innovators.

But the bright glare of technological promise can obscure its social impact... and not just the negative effects that technology's critics are fond of citing.

The social web holds enormous promise for social transformation. Alex recently posted about how you can help steer the web toward that promise, but it's also worth asking: just what makes us think the social web could be so transformative?

Bear with me for a minute, because answering that question isn't as easy as it might look. Before you can say whether a particular technology can bring about change, you need to have an understanding of how social change happens... an understanding that's likely to evolve throughout your life.

And one way my understanding of change is evolving is through the 2006 book Getting to Maybe by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton. The authors take an in-depth look at several cases of social innovation from a range of perspectives: chaos and complexity theory, behavioural psychology and even biology and ecology.

Drawing on examples from the so-called Boston Miracle to Brazil's fight against HIV/AIDS to the creation of the Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network*, they found tremendous diversity – but also important areas of common ground. And that led the authors to offer a series of recommendations (framed as advice to a philanthropist looking to support social innovation).

Have a look at them... and see if you aren't as struck as I am by their alignment with the social web (italics are my comments):

1. Support vision, people with a strong sense of calling, and emergent possibilities.

One of the most powerful characteristics of the social web is the way it has tended to give the highest profile to those who combine passion with clarity, and transparency with authenticity. And the recombinant possibilities of features like tagging, RSS, aggregation and social networking create an environment where complex interactions can lead to emergence.

2. Support intense interactions, networking and information exchange among those who have the potential to tip a system in a new direction.
3. Remove barriers to innovation [and facilitate new interactions].

Conversation, content, connection and collaboration are the lifeblood of the social web. It offers tools to discover others who share your sense of calling, communicate with them across barriers of time and distance, and share ideas along the entire spectrum of media, from the crispness of text to the richness of video.

4. Speak passionately about the things that really matter to you. Give voice to those you serve who live the problems you want to attack.

The social web's killer application is self-expression – in particular honest, passionate self-expression – and the way it extends the ability to speak and be heard to a larger swath of the human race than at any time in history.

5. Practise expressing your vision and calling in a way that helps you attract others of like mind and commitment. Be mindful and attentive to the reactions generated by what you say, and use those reactions to form powerful alliances for change.

Take the emblematic medium of self-expression the social web: a blog. Its simple interface allows you to post quickly and easily; its culture encourages you to speak not only with facts and statistics, but with stories and self-revelation. Its newsfeed allows people to subscribe to your blog and then follow it – again, quickly and easily. Tagging allows your content to be discovered by like-minded people. And commenting, trackbacks and keyword search feeds provide a network of conversation and reaction.

6. Watch for the simple rules that sustain and hold in place the existing system, and work to understand the attractors that will need to change and be confronted in the processes of social transformation. Expect that when real change starts, your own interactions as well as those of others will change. Expect this to feel risky.

The disruptive effects of Web 2.0 technologies have already caused waves in fields like the news media, entertainment and politics. (Ask George Allen how he feels about video-sharing sites some time.) I wouldn't claim for a minute that social media's disruptive impact is predictable, or that they are without their own hierarchies and power structures. But their potential for traversing those structures is enormous.

7. Support social innovators in getting to maybe by helping them articulate their passion and commitment. Don't prematurely force the passion and commitment of social innovators into the boxes of operational goals and logic models. Rather, stimulate and capture the early articulation of the problem as a baseline for use later, when more formal evaluative thinking becomes appropriate and helpful.

One of the things I love most about the social web is the space it leaves for innovation, and the value it places on an interesting failure. Combined with its cultural openness to self-expression and self-revelation, and you have a space that, at its best, is especially well-suited as an arena for experimentation, floating ideas and honing your vision.

8. Watch and listen for those who articulate a vision that you share, who are acting on a calling that inspires you. Watch for individuals from whom you can learn [...] Consider your own calling. Perhaps you, too, will find yourself called to social innovation.

Moving almost seamlessly from passive surfing to active participation is one of the most common stories I hear from the social web: you start by reading blogs, wind up commenting on a few, and before you know it you're starting one of your own. You watch YouTube videos, feel moved to leave a few video comments with your webcam, and start to find your own voice. That, and the ability to discover like-minded potential collaborators, can create a powerful upward current for participation.

9. Allow for imperfections – in yourself and others.

Just off the top of your head, how many Web 2.0 sites have been in beta, oh, forever?

Much of this, I'll readily admit, is still in the column of potential. And the coin is still in the air as to whether Web 2.0 remains a venue for freeform collaboration and creation, or succumbs to the drive to transform it into a rights-managed, closed-platform equivalent of cable TV with a mouse.

But the potential is there. And I suspect the social web broadens the field of potential social innovators well beyond what even the visionary authors of Getting to Maybe had imagined. That's critical... because with humanity facing a bewildering convergence of global-scale challenges ranging from climate change to poverty to peak oil, we need all hands on deck, and the full innovative and imaginative power of our species brought to bear.

* Full disclosure: PLAN is a client of ours, and Getting to Maybe was a gift to us from them.

Does YouTube make people into exhibitionists? Does Facebook stunt teenagers' social skills? Does 43Things help people realize their dreams?

Journalists, academics and web surfers have been arguing over whether the Internet is Ultimate Good or Ultimate Evil long before the social web (a.k.a. "web 2.0") came along. But blogs, social networks and other kinds of online communities have raised the stakes and intensified the debate. Social web sites are more intensively interactive, and more socially connected, so they offer users an experience that is potentially more compelling (or in the view of Internet skeptics, distracting/disengaging) and (in the view of Internet boosters) more elevating, because they realize the Internet's potential for forging and deepening interpersonal and community connectedness.

As online community strategists we spend a lot of time thinking about the Internet's impact at this level: the meta level of community design and planning. We try to create sites, tools and communities that deepen community members' connection to one another, that offer meaningful outlets for expression and conversation, and that build social capital. We think about communities as whole systems, and try to create conditions to make those systems socially constructive.

But I recently read a book that inspired me to think about how individuals can shape the social impact of the Internet. The Soul of Money, by Lynne Twist, looks at money as a social system, and suggests how each of us can transform our relationship to that system, and our relationship to money itself, by acting with integrity in all aspects of our relationship to money -- whether it's in how we earn it, spend it, or give it. It's a book with a profound and powerful vision for social change, and an equally profound vision for personal change, both of which can be accessed and catalyzed through our individual mindset and actions in relation to money.

The moment I finished reading Twist's book, I saw that her perspective on money -- that each of us must "be the change we wish to see in the world ", in Gandhi's words -- applies equally to the Internet. Twist writes that "money is like water. It can be a conduit for commitment, a currency of love." I would say say that the Internet, too, is like water: we can direct its flow towards our most craven instincts (spam, porn, gambling) or towards our vision of what the world can be like (online volunteering, e-giving, digital art).

The Internet may not yet be quite as pervasive or all-encompassing as money. But as it structures or touches more and more of lives -- our personal and professional communications, our ways of meeting or staying in touch with people, our financial, information and sexual transactions, our creative outlets and our entertainment consumption -- our relationship to the Internet becomes a powerful expression of our personal and social values, and a crucial opportunity for both personal and social change.

Just as the soul of money, or the role of money in the world, is the product of individual decisions as well as systemic forces, the soul of the Internet can be shaped by how we individually engage with the online sphere. Whether the Internet alienates and isolates us, or connects and enriches us, is not just determined by web developers and social media strategists.

The social value of the Internet is determined by how each and every one of us uses the Internet as a communications medium, social space and support tool. How we experience the Internet in our daily lives -- whether we experience it as a dehumanizing void in which e-mail replaces face-to-face interaction, or as a meaningful community in which we discover new commonalities and connections -- is a choice we make every day, with every message we send or browser page we load. Those choices can add up to personal and social alienation, or personal and social transformation.

What kinds of choices can create a relationship to the Internet that supports positive personal and social change? Let me propose a starter list of principles:

• Give your attention to sites, people and organizations that reflect your true values. When I talked about the Soul of Money with my husband, he summed up his own approach to values-based spending with the following: "every dollar you spend on something is a vote to have more of that thing in the world". On the Internet, every page you load is a vote to have more of that kind of content, or more of that kind of interaction. That doesn't mean a diet of digital granola: you can have your virtual froot loops, too. But try redirecting your video surfing to indie films instead of gossip clips, or sending a personal hello instead of a generic Facebook poke.
• Find love online. Love online can't be relegated to match.com. We need to bring the very highest qualities of empathy, respect and affection to our online interactions...in as many contexts as possible. The Buddhist practice of metta -- meditation to foster loving kindness in ourselves and the world -- counsels us to begin by meditating with love towards ourselves, our family, and our dearest friends, and gradually expand that attitude of love to encompass a larger and larger circle, and eventually the world.
  
  We can use the Internet to entrench and amplify our confrontational and hostile social dynamics. Or we can make our online interactions a practice in loving kindness by approaching each online interaction, even writing each e-mail message, as if it were an affectionate encounter with a dear friend. Yes, we need to be sensibly discreet and protective in an environment that is currently rampant with abuse, fraud and predation -- but caution can co-exist with connection, and even hostility can be met with empathy and kindness. Indeed, with the amount of time we now spend online, we can't afford to spend it in a mindset of suspicion; we must find ways of experiencing our online hours as a practice in forging and deepening relationships.
• Let down your guard. We live in a fairly guarded society. From locked doors and car alarms to invitation-only parties and call screening, our physical spaces and social practices often serve to keep people out rather than bring them in. The anonymity of the Internet, and many of the emergent pathologies that anonymity makes possible, have led many Internet users to be even more guarded online than they are in their offline lives. Guarded equals disconnected; every wall we put up makes it harder to discover new people, ideas or experiences.
  
  But anonymity affords a certain kind of safety, too: a safety in which new levels of candor and connectedness can thrive. Indeed, if you talk to people who enjoy spending a lot of time online, they will often tell you how much they treasure anonymity (or degrees thereof) because it frees them to have honest conversations or forge deep friendships in the absence of superficial social judgements. Experiment to find out whether your truest self emerges from anonymity, or from disclosure. Embrace the Internet as a place where you can be more honest (but with kindness) or more transparent (but with some discretion) and thus experience a new kind of social intimacy. Put more of yourself out there, and let in more of other people by absorbing other people's blog posts, videos, photos and ideas without the social filters that often shape our in-person perceptions of others. Personal transparency builds interpersonal trust, and interpersonal trust builds social capital.
• Give as good as you get. There's a reason a lot of people describe social media or Web 2.0 as "user-contributed media". A lot of the sites you now enjoy -- whether it's Flickr, YouTube or Boing Boing -- are driven by regular folks (or at least, one-time regular folks). That spirit of contribution is the cultural shift that we need social media to nurture; to transform us from a disconnected culture of passive TV consumers to an awake and alive community of creative expression. So don't engage with the Internet as a passive consumer: embrace and nurture the spirit of expressive and contribution by participating actively yourself.
• Fuse the power of money and technology. The soul of the Internet is not just analogous to the soul of money; they're interconnected. The Internet is our bank, our shopping mall, our charity box. Taking our financial transactions, shopping and giving online is an opportunity to transform our dysfunctional experiences on those fronts into more meaningful and effective interventions. You can shop at Etsy instead of Overstock, or supplement habitual workplace charitable giving with personal investments on Kiva.

I expect that these principles will feel most alien, and most challenging, to people who currently experience the Internet through a filter of mistrust, hostility or simple frustration. Many of the people who talk to me about their concerns about the Internet are people who are passionate about our very fragile and very beautiful offline world, and see the Internet as a distraction from the real-world relationships and challenges that need our attention.

But these -- you! -- are the people who most need to shift their approach to online interaction towards a paradigm that is both personally and socially productive. The Internet is too powerful and too pervasive to be left as the province of people who don't need or value interpersonal conection. Every online encounter that dispenses with personal affection in favour of brusque efficiency or places self-protection ahead of empathy for others, pushes the Internet towards an online culture that is as pathological as our worst offline moments.

The answer, both personally and socially, is to consciously embrace the Internet as a new frontier for community and connection. The Internet can be abandoned to those who see only its commercial opportunities. Or the soul of the Internet can be forged, and found, by those of us who care about the quality of human connection and community.

If you believed the soul of the Internet was crucial to the future of our planet, how would that affect the way you spend your time online?

What principles guide your use of the Internet -- and what principles would you suggest for others?

Just as you can never really tell if an online community will really take off, you also really don't know what form that success will take. And ChangeEverything.ca has proven that in spades.

First there was the out-of-the-blue thunderbolt of site moderator Kate Dugas' "Got Hats?" initiative.

Now comes the runaway success of community member EnviroWoman's blog about her resolution to live plastic-free in 2007.

Each post tells the story – often hilarious – of her attempts to find non-plastic alternatives to a product many of the rest of us take for granted. Her blog posts invariably foster lively comment threads that become little resource libraries, pointing to plastic-free options and information.

Beneath the self-deprecating humour, there's a serious determination to live up to the commitment she's made, and she now has hundreds of fellow community members pulling for her. (ChangeEverything.ca just signed up its thousandth member.)

But that's only the tip of the iceberg: EnviroWoman's saga has struck a chord across the blogging world. Treehugger, the 800-pound gorilla of sustainability blogs, picked up her story; across the Atlantic, her blog has become one of The Guardian's "sites we love".

It's another example of how passion, transparency (check out the deodorant thread) and practical relevance can combine with a distinctive, engaging voice to
yield real power. With a dawning awareness that we'll have to make profound changes in our lives – and that switching to compact fluorescents alone won't cut it – EnviroWoman is steering a deft middle course of change between the daunting and the incremental. And a growing number of people are hopping on for the ride.

Think "financial institution", and you likely think of pinstripes, vaults and armed guards. Oh, and a powerful, deep-seated aversion to change.

So it'll probably startle a lot of people to see the latest project from Vancity, Canada's largest credit union. ChangeEverything.ca is an online community targeted (but not limited) to residents of Vancouver, Victoria and B.C.'s Lower Mainland. We spent the past few months building it, and launched a few days ago.

Here's how it works: Once you register, you can begin listing changes you'd like to make: as personal as changing your hairstyle or getting your bike out of storage, or as broad a global transformation as you can imagine.

Then you start blogging about your progress toward making that change. But the real substance of the site happens when someone comes across your change and gets inspired; they can join it. Now both of you are blogging, discussing, and potentially collaborating on making the change happen. 

This is one of those cases where building the site is only half the battle; you have to work ceaselessly to foster a thriving online community. Fortunately, Vancity has hired a terrific moderator for ChangeEverything.ca, Kate Dugas. And we'll be working closely with Kate and Vancity in the months to come to ensure the site's underlying functions and design give the community it needs to take root, grow and, yes, change.

The feedback we're receiving, even in these early days, is wonderful. The blog OpenSourceCU (home, by the way, of the best list of credit union blogs you'll find anywhere) calls ChangeEverything.ca "the best example of any financial institution successfully using the social web (blogging, user-generated content, building a true online community). Wells Fargo should be taking notes along with every credit union with a culture open enough to participate in social media with their members."

We're also getting some constructive suggestions from folks like Darren Barefoot, Vancouver's leading blogger and the one-half of the tech PR duo Capulet Communications.

In a blog post where he compliments the design (thanks!) and advises some changes to make the information architecture easier to understand, he says, "Also credit Vancity for a taking a big risk on this project, which really has nothing to do with them besides their brand in the banner." Agreed.

We'd love to see you at ChangeEverything.ca. As OpenSourceCU says, "You must visit the site and see for yourself.It’s exactly how the brand of a 'credit union' is supposed to be represented. Efforts like this can change the entire industry/movement/whatever-you-care-to-call-it."