Looking back over the past year it seems my main platform and focus for exploring/improvising democracy has been within the web 2.0 world ... facebook, twitter, linkedin, plaxo, delicious, biznik.com, couchsurfing.com ... some good slow learning and insight about the kinds of people who show up on these forums, what they post about, what inspires them to take action (if they do at all) and maybe thus develop a voice,
I've watched my own levels of interest and engagement wax and wane (especially on twitter) as 1: my 'community' changes and grows and 2: i get more confident in my writing and learning to capture the essence of an idea that somehow inspires me.
In the end i do think it's how our online interactions end up translating into real world actions that most inspires us to engage and continue to connect,
For example, couchsurfing.com to me ends up being one of the best examples of online connections opening, often quite spontaneously, to real benefit and result for all involved...
And so i think a lot about ways to better facilitate all the great web 2.0 connections we end up with into actually useful face 2 face time.
It's often surreal for me to walk into a coffee shop with so many people focusing on their laptop screens, chatting, im-ing, facebooking, twittering, etc. almost completely unable to make the same leap of connection to the people sitting all around them,
What makes us so literate online and yet still so ignorant of one another in person? what makes us somehow more curious and compelling to one another online than in actual life?
Well, i suppose we have devised ourselves a lot of interesting and quite useful online networks, groups, forums, tools and links to learn and interact from, the web has become an endless world of learning...
Ok, so now it's time to translate some of this learning, bring some of it back into the real world, maybe to the coffee shop, to the street somewhere, to your neighborhood...
It's time we learned to apply some of these online experiences and tools to our more immediate worlds, making some real and necessary connections with one another to change what's right in our faces, to change some of what we've been ignoring or simply just given up on....I've watched my own levels of interest and engagement wax and wane (especially on twitter) as 1: my 'community' changes and grows and 2: i get more confident in my writing and learning to capture the essence of an idea that somehow inspires me.
In the end i do think it's how our online interactions end up translating into real world actions that most inspires us to engage and continue to connect,
For example, couchsurfing.com to me ends up being one of the best examples of online connections opening, often quite spontaneously, to real benefit and result for all involved...
And so i think a lot about ways to better facilitate all the great web 2.0 connections we end up with into actually useful face 2 face time.
It's often surreal for me to walk into a coffee shop with so many people focusing on their laptop screens, chatting, im-ing, facebooking, twittering, etc. almost completely unable to make the same leap of connection to the people sitting all around them,
What makes us so literate online and yet still so ignorant of one another in person? what makes us somehow more curious and compelling to one another online than in actual life?
Well, i suppose we have devised ourselves a lot of interesting and quite useful online networks, groups, forums, tools and links to learn and interact from, the web has become an endless world of learning...
Ok, so now it's time to translate some of this learning, bring some of it back into the real world, maybe to the coffee shop, to the street somewhere, to your neighborhood...
More on maybe creating some of this social space/place ontime (as much as we have it online) in my next posting...
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