Going Public: The Connective, Collective Power of The Social Web
I think the internet is a connection machine. It connects us with information and transactions and actions, but especially it connects us with each other…If you don’t start from an assumption of faith in your fellow man and woman, then I don’t think you believe in the value of democracy or free markets or reform religion or, for that matter, journalism, education or art.
This challenge – or rallying cry – comes from Jeff Jarvis, author of Gutenberg the Geek and a longtime journalist who, unlike many in his industry, is a digital optimist.
According to reliable sources, the sky has been falling for about a decade now, as news aggregators like Huffington Post have scrambled to survive by becoming content (CON-tent, if not necessarily con-TENT) octopi – sucking up Kardashian articles on the cheap from every available source and pumping up the page views for advertising dollars.
Yes, that’s happening, Jarvis acknowledges. What’s also happening is that the Internet and social networking are opening up unprecedented opportunities for creative collaboration and collective action. “Technology is agnostic,” says Jarvis. The question is what we want to do with it.
