Inspiration Overload

To quantify our changing reading and writing habits, we plotted the number of published authors per year, since 1400, for books and more recent social media (blogs, Facebook, and Twitter)

Electronic democracy is about blogs, spam, flame wars, rather than the responsible participation in society. Sharing music means destroying the music industry. Digital artisanship means precarious employment. Dot com starts ups means existing monopolies on the ground and occupational forces that can’t establish functional governments. E-banking means financial panics. It’s endearing but flawed.

Keen gelooft dan ook heilig in culturele poortwachters. Hij pleit voor mensen met kennis en smaak, die het kaf van het koren scheiden. Bezoekers van dit symposium. Zij moeten het lef hebben om te zeggen: 'I do know more than you. It doesn't make me go to heaven, but I do know more.'

In the last five years, early adopters have received a stage to influence others. Social Media gave them the screen power.
Early social media users have grown to be the main influencers, and their influence is far beyond technology. They have become the new celebrities. As part of their positioning, they are expected to act as early adopters, much the same as celebrities are needed to keep updated with fashion.

That got me thinking about the other limits to the influence of social media: privacy worries, intellectual property concerns, workplace regulations and the digital divide, just to name a few. While there isn’t much most of us outside of Iran can do about that country’s Web policies, we do have the power to address these other issues through advocacy, entrepreneurship and personal choice.