Hacktivists

Whether you think they are activists, hackers, wide eyed dreamers or just pure kids with a mental picture of the world that revolves around make belief digital games, there have been interesting pockets of innovation in bringing technology to the reach of the masses.

New generation hacktivists like Heap (open-source interactive mapping) and Haystack (internet security) claim they are not seeking silver-bullet solutions but scalable technologies that will unlock the one advantage the people always had—the sheer power of their numbers. “The technology variable doesn’t matter the most,” says Patrick Meier, director of crisis mapping for Ushahidi, “It is the organizational structure that will matter the most. Rigid structures are unable to adapt as quickly to a rapidly changing environment as a decentralized system. Ultimately, it is a battle of organizational theory.”

However, as Haystack's rise and fall showed us, there is complexity in these technologies that is often non-obvious.