This post on the crazy new math of the modern era drives me crazy.

Just like I don't believe in heroes, I don't believe in genius. I believe in community.

The long tail is everywhere, even poetry. The age of the elite creator is replaced by your neighbor the poet/journalist/insert-craft-here. Is there really a problem with anyone being able to write a poem? more

Cynicism is for cowards.

Someone I don’t even know very well recently challenged me to name three leaders who were true to “public service”, suggesting there weren’t any and that “those who might have the ability and resources to "change our world" put their professional and personal agendas before the need of those they might help, and therefore the world is screwed and there is no reason for anyone to think they can make a difference.” more

In December of 2007, I spent 10 days in Haiti. Most of my time was spent up in the Central Plateau in a town called Thomonde, near Hinche. I spent a day or two on either end in Port-Au-Prince. I was working on a solar power project with the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, which had paired each church in Diocese with a church in Haiti. more

Between my work on NewsJunk and PDF last week, I’ve been mulling over the state of political campaigning and technology. On the Dean campaign, the campaign’s blog – Blog For America – was a critical communications implement. We built a big daily readership and we thought of it like our own cable channel or major newspaper. more

I've been working on a new project with Dave Winer -- Newsjunk.com. For the last few months, I've been annoyed at how hard it is to follow the political coverage. News pops up in a lot of different places, and having single source to follow what's happening throughout the day has been an itch that needs scratching. Dave remembers the briefing books we had on the Dean campaign, a fixture of many campaigns. So NewsJunk.com started as a way to scratch the itch of the political news junkie, and a way to begin to build an open briefing book.

The eight ways to follow NewsJunk: more

As a follow-up to my last post on teaching, let’s fast-forward a few decades: from the youth to the “wise”. A couple days ago I had a long compelling conversation with Jim Moore and his son Graham about the elderly and technology that got me to thinking: how can we use technology to connect the un-connected elderly with those of us living a more digital lifestyle? Then I saw this post about the Nintendo Wii in nursing homes and it’s clear: technology offers oblique opportunities to engage the elderly. more

I started my professional life as a student teacher at James Blair Middle School in Williamsburg, Virginia. Teaching has always been in my blood; I absolutely love learning, which is the other side of the coin. My grandmother was an amazing teacher; you can still buy her textbooks on Amazon. And for the last year and half, I've taught a class in the Johns Hopkins University Graduate School of Communications on digital communications. This semester, I'm teaching the class entirely online, remotely, with no face-to-face meetings. more

I don't know about you - but I'm overwhelmed by our social media. So many blog posts, so many friend requests on Facebook and LinkedIn, so many emails. In the month of August, I received 2,960 emails directly addressed to me – that’s excluding spam, excluding bulk email lists, and excluding emails where I was CC:ed. I replied to 1,231 of those emails.

I vaguely recollect somewhere reading that the average human being can process approximately 150 relationships. I have 329 friends on Facebook, 15 pending friend requests, and 25 group invitations. Am I anti-social, or is this just crazy? more

For a long time I've been skeptical of the role of video online. I always felt like people just liked watching videos on their television sets - not their computers. Evidence about online video use seemed to support my anecdotal conjecture.

But the last few months have delivered some major blows to my theory. Apple introduced the video ipod and started selling television shows through the iTunes store - and people took to it in droves. At the same time, YouTube seems to have become completely ubiquitous, allowing video publishing and video sharing to completely explode. And I was with a friend recently who now watches the Daily Show via his cell phone every day using Verizon's V-Cast. more