Charles Leadbeater, online evangelist, at home in London. Photograph: Sonja Horsman for the Observer
Charles Leadbeater is an online evangelist. The former Financial Times journalist has moved away from politics into a world of social entrepreneurs, amateur activists and grassroots campaigners who are exploiting digital technologies to develop solutions to problems that lie outside the interests of commercial and state institutions. He believes that online tools can be used to organise and galvanise. He produced a call-to-arms in We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity (Profile), a book that documents the rise of amateur activism in a time of information revolution. His research with digital activists who work with people in some of the world's most impoverished places shows how the web can galvanise support from around the globe – using new applications, devices and social networks – and what needs to be in place for this to happen.
What exactly does a social entrepreneur do?
Social entrepreneurs act to attack big social challenges that have been left unaddressed by the private sector, because there's not much money to be made, or left by government because it overlooks them or doesn't have the resources or interest to tackle them, or fails to create new ways of tackling issues such as providing clean water, inoculating babies, providing education and child care, or collecting refuse.
What aspect of digital technologies facilitates social entrepreneurship?
It's watching a video of Edmund Phelps accept the Nobel prize in economics, thinking: I didn't understand that, looking him up, emailing him and having a conversation with a Nobel laureate an hour later. That's staggering.
It's also the simple associative link: in three clicks you can start somewhere and end up somewhere you never dreamed of, with information, perspective or insight that you'd never have found. One of the joys of the internet is finding and reading something you think is wonderful that you'd never have found without it.
How often are digital tools such as the web used by social entrepreneurs?
The number using digital technology is low compared with non-digital technology. In the developing world, people often use quite basic technology. Many of the most imaginative schemes are using what we'd count as old tech. But you have to hope that in 10 years, when digital technology is all pervasive and meets both the huge need in the developing world and a body of social entrepreneurs, we will witness some flowering of social innovation to, for instance, provide education in new ways, to mobilise people to critical action in new ways, or allow poor people access to markets.
What needs to be in place – socially, technologically or commercially – to ensure that this future occurs?
Technologically, you have to have capability and openness. If you create open technology that people can use, adapt and play with, it builds capability and they teach themselves. But if you've got closed systems, where all the end-user can do is to use it to download stuff, that doesn't build capability. The significance of open systems is that they allow people to learn how to use them and to adapt them for their own uses. That is a really important connection. We're seeing people able to mobilise forms of knowledge and take action, finding other people without needing high-cost professional networks.
One example is an HIV/Aids activist network in Africa called Mothers to Mothers. It's HIV-positive mothers advising other HIV-positive mothers about how to take anti-retroviral drugs and how to cope with the stigma of HIV and Aids. In a way that will allow them to live a more normal life. It's not terribly technology-enabled – it's organised using mobile phones and networks – but it's completely peer-to-peer: it's mothers advising mothers.
It's just one example, but it demonstrates how technology is facilitating the power of the lateral connection: the important knowledge won't come from the professionals, but from other mothers who have had a similar experience or share a similar vantage point. That's becoming more possible. We can get things done together – get knowledge, get advice in ways that in the past relied on very big, formal, often professional systems.
Commercially, companies will have to have an understanding of how you allow people to share stuff and make money from it. Only a small number of people will make money by completely controlling everything. Even Apple has allowed a limited amount of sharing, but I don't think it gets the open web. Google is an open world, but with a monstrous manipulation of advertising around search. Google will have to share revenue with content creators for the open ecology to continue to work.
How will the developing world create its own amateur activist culture?
It's all about access: the right tools, the right institutions, the right culture. Ten-year-olds are alike wherever you go; they just gobble this stuff up. I went to a school in a village three hours outside São Paulo, Brazil, 20km down a mud track. The parents of half of the kids in the school were illiterate, but I watched the kids make videos for YouTube. It's waiting to explode, but if it arrives pre-packaged or tied up or fenced off, then you won't get that.
The author Andrew Keen argues that amateur practices are detrimental to society.
They could be if they become the only way to do things, completely replacing professional knowledge in places where professional knowledge is needed. But what Keen does is to paint an overly romantic picture of a nostalgic past.
You can go online now and find really thoughtful, in-depth, considered, well-informed communities around virtually any issue. If it's your issue, there are now new ways of mobilising knowledge that weren't there before. There are real bodies of significant knowledge on the web that are valuable that we haven't done nearly enough with.
How can we ensure that the participants in this culture aren't exploited by commercial organisations or governments?
There's a basic trade-off that's still important. The first precondition for survival is to be seen to do stuff well. But this raises an issue that demands an activist consumer culture. People may be prepared to buy services from Apple and Amazon if they feel these companies do a good job, but we need to ensure that we can speak up when our content is used by other people for their profit. An activist amateur culture will constantly challenge and say, "This is mine, you're not doing that with it".
The second precondition is that we'll need more effective forms of regulation to understand the web. Regulating a television company and regulating Facebook are completely different challenges, and Facebook may be our most important intermediary of information in 10 years.