Facilitating Change

Blogging for Good Governance

This week I was in Kampala and had the opportunity to meet a friend-of-a-friend, John Gattorn, a super-cool dude who does human rights and democracy work. As I’m obsessed with finding practical ways to use technology for social change, I told him about Global Voices Advocacy and their guide to blogging anonymously. Two days later, [...]

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Polarized and paranoid

Polarized and paranoid. This is how I’ve been describing public discourse for the last few years now. I’d like to see it change. This post will explore what I mean by this, why I think it’s happening, and what we can do to reverse this dangerous trend. Learn why this post is incomplete.

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Can’t focus anymore? Neither can we.

"Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." Nicholas Carr has written a wonderful article — Is Google Making Us Stupid? — on how consuming content online may be imparing our ability to concentrate.

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Social networking sites, self-definition, and connectedness

Online social networks have become so popular because they allow us to define who we are, where we fit, and connect with others. This is also true (to a lesser extent?) for online communities — Slashdot, Boing Boing, Wikipedia, Global Voices — places people go to identify as members of a particular community.

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Pimp my Firefox

Check out Hyperwords. It's a free Firefox plug-in that transforms anything you select into a hyperlink (see demo). You can then google it, pull up in-depth information or related content, translate it into the language of your choice, blog about it, and more.

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