TWEETING HILL

So I am a bit behind on the story (from Monday), but I did want to cover this because it seems to me it is a big step in engaging this new technology to move us forward. Well, at least move Iraq forward.

This past week Hillary Clinton, our esteemed Secretary of State (yes, I am a fan) invited new media tech gurus to Iraq to advise on how these new tools could help the fledgling nation move towards a transparent and engaging reality.

These new steps towards using technology to help society with real needs is exactly the type of engagement this blog set out to find. If it works in Iraq, we may very well see it being used here. what's good for the goose, afterall. In fact, Hillary already employs some of this by writing on the State Department's blog, which I just checked out myself. Pretty cool stuff.

In any case, it is nice to see Twitter applied to something as large as foreign policy and transparent government. It gives me new faith that the technology that is developing and changing the way we live has some potential significant and positive consequences. It'll take some time to see how it really works, by it is certainly a step in the right direction.

THEY GROW UP SO FAST

I have come across two articles in the past few days on CNN and the NY Times that talk about the problems that both facebook and twitter are having with growing as quickly as they both have.

The NY Times article by Brad Stone discusses facebook's growth in terms of numbers, and in terms of growing pains. It covers the recent controversies with users over advertising and terms of service, and quite aptly speaks about how users are in a unique conundrum: do they stick with the technology that they have learned to love even though they don't like it as much, or do they leqave it, causing a void in their lives that never existed before? It seems that the former is winning out.

It is also interesting when they quote a facebook executive saying facebook is, "not a democracy." I thought that was the underlying philosophy behind all of this new, user-owned media. But apparenty it is "to build an Internet medium for communication," and about the creators and keepers of the site, "we think we have enough perspective to do that and be caretakers of that vision." It is also interesting when Stone covers how facebook is breaking down traditional, sometimes arbitrary boundries, like those between parent and child, and how this may cause said kids to leave when their parents find pictures of them drinking.

The CNN article discusses a more technical aspect of Twitters explosive growth, showing how it is often overloaded with traffic and shuts down. This is a bit more straight forward with the exception of the "early adopters" angle: basically that the early adopters of Twitter are getting annoyed with new users.

It is not lost on me that both articles are published by large, traditional media outlets. Is this an underhanded attempt to chip away at facebook and twitters' collective popularity? Probably not.

It is also interesting to me how both articles cover how these technologies are changing behavior, as that is the topic of the blog. What it does not do, however, is form a value judgement on whether it is for the better or for the worse. I guess that is my job, so here it is (and it is not a new point to be made):

I think both have tremendous potential to help us along in our quest to work better and connect more deeply with our friends and family...as one interviewee in the Twitter piece says, "we are humans, that is what we do." But I am not sure it is great if this is replacing good old face-to-face time (see my post from yesterday). What I found fascinating is at the close of the NY Times article, when one user talks about the new kind of pressure she got from friends when she quit facebook in frustration. Ms. Doherty states, "Everyone has a love-hate relationship with it. They wanted me to be wasting my time on it just like they were wasting their time on it."

Maybe that answers my question.

TWEETING THE KIDNEY

So I came across this article today during my lunch that I thought was particularly appropriate for this conversation. I know the blog started out to be about social action, and while I still hope to exlore that subject matter, this was an interesting piece on CNN.com that I read today about doctors tweeting their surgery.

The purpose is to not only keep family, friends and those watching updated on what is happening, but also to demystify what is otherwise a scary operation (removing a tumor from a kidney). During the course of the surgery it came to the surgeon's attention that he may have to remove the whole kidney, which he had not intended to do and which in the end was not necessary. This, of course, raises some new questions about this practice: whether it is actually a good thing to have family get a play-by-play of a loved one's surgical procedure.

But nonetheless, I think this is an incredibly interesting, creative and progressive way of using this type of technology, and I would say a move in the right direction.

BRINGING IT DOWN A NOTCH

I came to a sudden realization this weekend, while visiting my home town for the first time in about 5 years, that maybe I am being too serious about this stuff. So what if the new world order doesn't launch on facebook?

I decided to use my recent subscription (is that what you would call it?) to yelp to explore my home town and all of its fine offerings. I live in New York and expected to find plenty on Chicago proper, but I wondered how much "yelping" people could actually do about Barrington, IL. Well apparently a lot.

Everything from the little hole-in-the-wall diner where I would indulge my teenage overeating tendencies after school, to the cracky movie theater we used to visit for a dollar (it is now five), to The Yankee Doodle Bar next to the train station, where I have been told is the place drunks go to die, was reviewed on Yelp. In fact there were more than nine pages of reviews. I am not exactly sure why I am shocked, but I just thought that nothing there was interesting enough to review, really.

So while reviewing "By the Tracks" and the quality of their Chicago dogs is not starting a revolution, it is bringing people closer together, and this in and of itself changes the world. I have not been to the town I grew up in for 5 years, but I could plan dinner with old friends by reading a review by a 21-year-old that never left (though I do feel bad for that person). So while you may be thinking, "duuuuuuuh," I am pretty excited about it, and I do think that this is a small sign of a big deal.