Here Comes Everybody

As someone who works in a career sitting at the crossroads of Television and the Internet, Clay Shirky’s talk and essay elicit both nods and hand-wringing from me.

Nodding because a lot of my personal “free time” is spent blogging, playing World of Warcraft, twittering, uploading pics to Flickr and contributing, albeit infrequently, to WikiPedia. Wringing my hands because the most common question I’m asked when explaining blogging & Web 2.0: “How do people find the time to do this stuff?”

Until now I didn’t have an answer. I tended mainly to focus on ease of use, democratization of tools and the fact that people are social animals and want to participate.

Clay Shirky’s answer is better.

Please, please, please if you enjoy the internet as it exists today and you understand the ways in which the world is changing the media (and vice versa), watch or read what he has to say.

[Via Warren Ellis]

And as someone who does work in the “old media” I can assure that while not everyone has fully internalized the sea change of the internet – specifically Web 2.0 – they know things are changing and they realize they need to listen to folks like me. Which is good for you and hopefully good for my future gainful employment.

Enjoy!

Also, I don’t own the book Here Comes Everybody just yet, but it’s on my “to buy” list.

Muxtaped

So this is a little train-of-blog that I hope you’ll indulge me in.

I spent a small fraction of my morning updating a “Web 2.0” document that basically categorizes and catalogs sites that fit into the “Web 2.0” mold. I taught a class on the topic yesterday (similar to my blogging presentation) so I owe folks here 2 PowerPoints.

I know.

Anyhow, one of the sites I added to my list was Muxtape, a cool, retro-themed, one-hit-wonder of a Web 2.0 site that I’d heard about and even visited but not used.

Then Kottke’s post showed up in my feed reader and I spent some of the best 2:42 of my life. Several times over, indeed.

Minutes later I saw Thomas’ post and now I’m hooked. Incidentally, Tony had somehow dropped off my reading list. Rectified now.

The proposition, interface and site are simple. That’s the appeal.

It speaks to those of us who made mixtapes (and CDs) and want to perhaps share our abiding musical love but aren’t willing to start a music blog and get snarfed up by The Hype Machine.

As a side note, I’ll be using The Hype Machine to find the mp3s for my own as-yet-undone Muxtape. Wish me luck.

Anyhow, try the site out. It really does give you that mixtape/CD comp feel despite being all “social media”/”Web 2.0”.

Enjoy your Wednesday!