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.