Web 2.0 has given us the tools, why are we squandering them?
April 28, 2008 by Tris Hussey
Filed under Business
My friend Deb Schultz is a deep thinker. Something I love about talking with her. Okay that and she makes me laugh really hard. She has one of those 30,000 foot views of the world. Perspective. Something that we often forget as we write about the latest machinations of the Web 2.0 world.
Recently Deb, and others, have challenged us to do more with the tools we’ve been given. Take this amazing stuff and push the boundaries a little, do cool things, see what we can do beyond say how nice a day it is in 140 chars or fewer.
Deb being Deb, as humble as ever, ends her post like this:
Now, I am not saying we have all the answers or even know how any of this will pan out. Existing infrastructures [technical, financial, organizational and cultural] mean certain changes will be slow while others will circumvent the roadblocks that stand in their way.
What I do know is that if you do not ask the right questions up front and reach for the sky – well – you just ain’t gonna get very far. Source: Deborah Schultz: Seriously, we can do MORE
Which we should all take as a personal challenge to step back, look around, and see WTF we can do with all this stuff.
Now, let’s get to it.
Well, the following is a rather specialized niche application of social media tools to a project, but have you seen the Diigo & OpenDemocracy project to annotate Jonathan Zittrain’s new book?
It’s slightly heavier (in terms of furthering knowledge, eg.) than twittering about being stuck at airports, that’s fer sure! :-) …Although it’s probably not quite what Deb Schultz had in mind, either.
See Tony Curzon Price’s post (he of OpenDemocracy) here and see Maggie’s Diigo thread here.
Oh, PS: Mark Marino of Writer Response Theory blogged the Zittrain project as Diigo and CommentPress go Head-to-Head, although that title/ thrust is hyperbolic (as Curzon Price points out in comments).
Am I way off topic here? Hope not… :-) Seems like good tools (Diigo) put to good purpose though…
Yule, I think that is actually a great start. So take that as a seed and let it bear fruit … I think we’ll start seeing cool things. Like the project Gels is working on at UVic. We’re getting there.
Tris – I am flattered – I have goten a lot of response to that comment and I say keep em coming. Funny how a lot of folks thught I meant go save the world –heck go make money – just let’s really do some cool stuff! more than just tawking amongst ourselves. go discuss..;)
Deb you’re very welcome! I agree, make money, save the world, have fun … but let’s do something really cool.
I’m trying to try all kinds of new things here at b5 to help the bloggers … screencasts, bookmark groups, twitter. This is just scratching the surface and not even very creative.