Hello! Is There Anybody Out There!

I read an article online today. If you care to do the same: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/opinion/06mathias.html

It made me think: Do we really communicate when we use Facebook or MySpace? It seems like we do. It would appear that there's a dialogue between people, that it is conversational. On person posts a wall post, then someone else does the same back. But is there real interaction?

Maybe not. Maybe we just post on people's walls so that we'll look cool ourselves. How many birthday greetings can you read, really? Is there any value in reading what somebody ate for dinner last night?

Facebook and MySpace make people stars in their own little worlds. That world is a world of voyeurs. People aren't speaking to each other; they're speaking at one another. I would say that the majority of the time a spend on Facebook, I'm just looking at other people's pages - anonymously - and absorbing what they have posted to their page. It's not interaction. It's entertainment. It's like TV, only the people on the screen you know and have met in your life.

It may be that Facebook is another way to hide from social interaction.

Anyway, there are 6 days left to enter Knight News Challenge. Your idea could be the solution to the problem I've detailed above. And it could be worth a lot of moolah, too. http://www.newschallenge.org

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

I was thinking today. Scary, right?

I was thinking about what it would have been like to be the town crier way back when. The bearer of news, both good and bad, for the people of your town. Now he was really a 'citizen journalist', to use a popular phrase. Walking the beat, ringing the bell, shouting out the days news:

"Stanford upsets No. 2 USC 24-23; king declares rematch."
"Monks protest in Myanmar; Marco Polo commissioned to find Burma."
"Halo 3 released; X-BOX 360 found guilty of witchcraft and burned at the stake."

Now those are some headlines.

These guys probably also brought bad news, too. Like something along the lines of:

"King raises taxes, again; removes all tomatoes from kingdom."

and

"Scurvy ravages town; tomato crop returned to townspeople; king takes annual bath."

These guys were protected by the law. Heckling the crier was a crime. Hurting him or her (they were often women) was an act of treason against the local monarch.

Do we afford this kind of protection to our journalists nowadays? Something to ponder. Yes, and no, I would say. But that's for another blog post.

We have come a long way since the days of the town crier. Someone will invent a brand new way of delivering news, and that person should be you.

You have 9 days left to enter Knight News Challenge. Do it. Wait no longer. http://www.newschallenge.org