The Pros And Cons Of A YouTube Democracy

Here is an NPR story about President Obama planning to start on Monday to answer questions submitted via YouTube as part of a project called Citizen Tube. The story points out that "YouTube democracy" isn't without its problems, there are always questions about UFOs and the price of marijauna mixed in with valuable questions about health care and the economy. Clay Johnson of the Sunlight Foundation talks about effect of integrating social media into the democratic process.
This is a really macro scale of what can happen in schools. Is it valuable?

Rest in Peace Howard Zinn

"There's no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete. My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times."
While not directly related to web 2.0, the death of Howard Zinn encourages me to reflect on the power of the collective voice of the common man. We can utilize and develop web 2.0 tools which can help us bypass the major media outlets that spoon feed the corporate dialogue.

Think Blogging is hard: Try being the Pope....

I really enjoyed this story on NPR this evening. The story is partially tongue in cheek, but somewhat serious about the potential use of blogging in spreading the gospel, so to speak.
I thought this was a useful quote for us new bloggers: "Putting a message out over the Internet is exactly the same thing as losing total control of your message. People take it up, they republish it, they make fun of it, they contextualize it. The simple message becomes incredibly complex because of all the ideas that are pulled out and linked to it. That means that the very thing that you wanted in your message was control and what you ended up with was the opposite of control."

The World Tech Podcast

Those of you who know me from last semester might remember my many references to PRI's the World, and The World Tech Podcast. The Tech podcast is hosted by Clark Boyd, and is a compilation of tech stories from the PRI's the World podcast and radio show. The podcast gives excellent insight in to how technology is impacting world events, and is being impacted by world events. I really appreciate the scope of this podcast, how they cover such a broad range of topics. In addition, they can take the time to cover these stories in amazing detail. You can find the website here. You can listen to the January 15th show with some great stories on the technology aspects of relief efforts in Haiti, and two interesting viewpoints on the Google-China situation.