Category: Social Change

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The Web is Us/ing Us

My apologies for the long delay between blog posts… things have been a bit upside down in my world lately as I deal with a little more change than I can comfortably get my head around.

Speaking of change, I can always rely on Karl Fisch’s blog to link me up with amazing resources that make it just so obvious why the world is changing and why our schools must start to embrace that change. The more I see of the schools I have worked in, the more I worry about just how much we don’t “get it”, and how dangerously irrelevant we are becoming to the digital generation.

This video in particular just gave me goosebumps when I saw it…

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Person of the Year? Moi?

timemag.jpgTime magazine recently announced that the person of the year for 2006 is in fact… me! And you. And all those other bloggers, podcasters, and users of the ever expanding range of Web2.0 tools. Apparently, Time magazine thinks we are having such an impact on the world that we have been collectively recognised as “Person” of the Year. Thank you, thank you very much.

When Time produced this issue, they wanted to have a mirror on the cover to reflect back the image of the person holding it. To this end they had a supplier in Minnesota provide them with nearly 7,000,000 pieces of reflective Mylar to stick on the cover. That’s a lot of Mylar! (Ironically, the people about whom the article was written are probably more likely to read it online anyway.)

Of course, if you happen to own an iSight-enabled Mac, not only do you have obviously better taste than your Windows-toting brethren, but you can take advantage of a very neat little trick that only iSight enabled Macs can do. Head on over to Dan Woods’ blog and you can see the Time cover the way it really ought to have looked. With you on it!

Congratulations fellow bloggers!

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Understanding Flatness

friedman.jpgI’ve been reading Thomas Friedman’s book “The World Is Flat” and have been finding it a compelling and interesting read. I think he has really clearly identified and explained the trends and convergences that have brought us to what is arguably one of the most important inflexion points in world history.

If you get a chance to read the book I suggest you do so. In the meantime, you might like to have a look at this video (http://mitworld.mit.edu/play/264/) of Friedman giving a speech to a group of students and staff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this talk he gives an excellent overview of the book and explains some of its key ideas. The speech lasts about 75 minutes in total and its the sort of thing you need to really sit and watch in its entirety, but well worth it. Maybe watch it instead of TV one night…