I'm currently about 150 pages in. The book is starting to be a bit redundant. He seems to tell a story, then give his only little bit about how revolutionary web 2.0 is, then get into another story, then rearrange his own words to reiterate how revolutionary web 2.0 is. The stories are interesting, though.
Apparently the web is what finally caused the pedophilia of several catholic priests to be exposed on a large scale. There have been several instances of priests (particularly in the Boston area...hmm) molesting many young boys over a large period of time. Before the web was available as an effective collaborative tool, parishioners would only find out about these issues from a local newspaper, if they even covered it. People can share newspaper clippings, but this involves physically delivering the clipping or mailing the clipping. But that is only if the original person doesn't want to keep a copy for themselves. If they do, they must take the additional step of making a copy of the clipping then sharing it. Each person that wishes to share the clipping must take similar steps.
With the web, someone will get an email of the news story from a local or a national paper, then all they must do to exponentially increase the awareness of the event is forward this message to a group of people. Then all of those people forward the message to another group of people. News obviously spreads much more effectively this way. So, whereas before, the story would start to expand out from its origin (Boston) but reach a limit where people no longer wanted to take the time to make a copy and bring it to their friends, now the web lets the message expand out infinitely to people all over the country and all over the globe.
People need to know about things to change them. I believe that the web is one of the reasons this presidential election is so incredibly exciting. Everyone knows almost everything. Even people who have almost no interest in politics (or previously felt without access) are hearing how strangely attractive Gov. Palin is. They know that John McCain was a POW during Vietnam. They know that Barack Obama can play a pretty good game of basketball. I'm not all that certian if this is all that great of a thing. From my political viewpoints it is beneficial, since more young people will (hopefully) get out there to vote, and most likely vote the way younger people tend to vote. I guess we will find out come November. That is all for now.
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I think it'll be interesting to see where things move as the internet continues to dominate nearly every facet of life. I'm happy that perverts (both in and out of the fold) are getting caught and their misdeeds are being made known. I'm not too into politics, but it's nice to get on YouTube and watch clips from speeches when I don't want to sit through the whole thing. -Jono P!
Dan says that the internet is making people more politically informed, which I think I can agree with, to a certain degree. One thing to be considered though, is the informational smog/overload. There are so many sources to go get information, where do you really start? More tech-savvy people can have their google reader feed them just want they want to read, but for those newcomers to the internet who are trying to understand personal information management, becoming politically literate may be more complicated than we think.
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