Useful, thank you!…

For some things I do sincerely believe we *need* the perspective of hindsight to truly appreciate their impact/value, and I for one do value the insights that will be provided by the long view, even though I’m not bold enough to really imagine very clearly what they might be. Maybe people in the future will think it very twee to see all the excitement and backslapping taking up time that could have been spent using the technology to mind-bending world-changing effect, saving lives, changing minds, doing real good. The nature of such things mean that they will leave an indelible trail anyway, so there isn’t really such a great need to document how great it all is. Psychological impacts nothwithstanding. I think there should be more chronicling in that department, but I lack the brain-power…

I think that’s where a lot of this ‘meta-blogging’ (i.e. blogging about blogging) comes from. I think people sense the emergence of a new innovation that will chnage society, and we naturally want to chronicle that change and how it happens. I’ve often likened the Communications Revolution to the Industrial Revolution, suggesting that the use of technologies will affect a societal change.

More links and comments in the grandly titled Internet Philosophy section, and at certain places on my blogroll, chiefly Clay shirky.

Post hoc, I guess we do make a fuss about the printing press and the impact it had on the dissemination of Luther’s 95 Theses and what that did to the Catholic Church at the time. Maybe I am making a non-point. I guess what I’m thinking is if it’s such an exciting development then may the proof of the pudding be in the eating - anything else is premature.

Crucially, you don’t actually need to know what Web 2.0 is to actually use it! You do already.

The point of the post that I linked to was not that the Free Alaa Campaign could be used to promote Web 2.0, but simply noting the extent to which those technologies are being used for campaigning. This is interesting precisely because it enables people without sophisticated technical knowledge to still campaign effectively.

“Bloody Nothing”, or something close to it. People are too busy to worry about the culpability involved in knowing and doing nothing, and some people like Tim Whatshisname seem to be opposed to guilt per se. Not to mention the fact that the internet is awash with people who are not as technically literate as they might be, don’t know what Web2.0 is, and want things to be easy for themselves, but maybe still have a social conscience of sorts. All this technowotsit is fine and fancy, but I fear it is divisive, even as it pretends to be inclusive. The people who are proficient in it actually have a duty to make protest easy for people who aren’t.

Which is why, after peeping at the bbc website and finding it silent on both subjects, I’ve casually asked them to point me to their world-leading news coverage of the Alaa Abd El-Fatah story by going to this page here.

Hooray for Pickled Politics.