If you’re interested in following a revolution for freedom in real time, one in which people risk their lives to stop oppression, follow what’s happening in Iran via Andrew Sullivan’s blog. The response to the hijacked election is among the most moving news events I’ve encountered, largely because much of the coverage comes directly from people risking their lives.
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I’m prone to distraction. Part of this stems from many years working in newsrooms, mostly as an editor who thrived on the dual high of daily deadlines and the unexpected. Loving all things web-based hasn’t helped either.
Now comes Maggie Jackson’s book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, which examines the effects of our increasingly fragmented ability to focus.
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Anyone doubting the grassroots power of online social media should consider this story, which I wrote for today’s edition of The Oregonian.
Without Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, a son’s heart-warming attempt to help his mother’s financially ailing bookstore would have never reached and connected with so many people so quickly.
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Looking at my junk email folder, I feel unloved. Normally jammed with obnoxious, fraudulent, and salacious offers, it’s received only eight spams in the last fifteen hours.
That’s a shockingly small number, even with the typical weekend slowdown in such traffic. It’s also low considering that spam has rebounded since a dramatic drop worldwide in November. That drop came when a cybercrime-friendly Internet service provider was shut down.
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What Google search term do Oregon residents use more often than people in other states? That’s what I wondered as I tried out a search application that ranks popularity of queries by state.
Rainfall immediately came to mind, but Oregon ranks third behind Hawaii and New Mexico. Bicycles is a sure winner, I thought. Nope, second behind Colorado. Sustainability? Second to Vermont.
No way any other state’s residents are more interested in all things organic. Damn that Vermont! Oregon finishes second again. Same goes for marijuana. Vermont also finishes atop all states for peace, climate change, hippies, granola, recycle, and farm. You get the picture.
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One of my favorite web sites is proof once again that simple ideas can produce breathtaking results. The Big Picture, a seven-month-old photo-journalistic blog of the Boston Globe, demonstrates how so-called old media can do a much better job via new media. Too bad that truth has taken so long to sink in. (I worked on the print side of newspapers for many years before moving to the online side in the heady, pioneering days of the 1990s.)
Two recent features, each with more than two dozen stunning photographs, are stark reminders that the United States is waging two wars in distant lands. The pictures make real what for most of us are distant abstractions in Iraq and Afghanistan. These collections of well-composed single images pack more wallop than any video. They create a lingering truth, a truth not easily blinked away.
I’m twittering about Twitter.
Skeptical is the best description of my initial reaction to using this social media service. I was skeptical about sharing observations, random thoughts, and general announcements of what’s happening at any given moment in my life — in only 140 characters. (See examples on the right side of this blog’s home page.)
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