I was just reading through the Wired article on Facebook’s role in the Burma protests.

The marches, organized at a lightning pace by volunteers using Facebook, show the increasing power and reach of a social-networking site originally designed to help college students find drinking buddies.

An interesting theme which runs through the article is that of a “longstanding Burma Campaign UK” and a “fledgling Facebook group” - a theme of mature activism and immature activism. This theme is brought to the fore in comments made by the Burma Campaign UK’s acting director:

They’re able to do things that we can’t because we’re a small organization with a small capacity — they’ve been able to mobilize people, and there’s been a division of labor.

That there has been a division of labor in activism is an interesting thing to ponder. This narrative is not uncommon, in fact the article’s description of the facebook liaison getting a desk in the Burma Campaign UK office parallel’s Joe Trippi’s (Dean for America campaign manager) description of the creation of a MeetUp liaison desk at their headquarters during the 2004 presidential primary.

In Education and Democracy, John Dewey spoke of the need to bridge this critical disconnect between mature and immature experience. This begs the question of how to create a historically informed yet innovative and original activist movement for the so called informational society?