Blog Archive » The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head
With this post I bring to the close my first “blog book. It began with the post referenced above. My first book reflects the somewhat raucous history of three years and seven months in the bloggosphere. With the next post I start a new era in my life and in this blog, devoting myself to the exploration of OPML and new forms of computing made possible by large-scale networks of XML web services. These are inventions that I believe are as revolutionary to the web of today as Hypertext was to the early days of personal computing.
Three years and seven months ago, on March 29, 2003, Dave Winer and I sat at the Berkman Center and fired up my new blog. We were both Fellows, and we shared a very small office on the third floor of the victorian building on the Harvard campus that housed the center.
On April 1, the next day, I made the above post linking to a small paper, a work-in-progress, about how citizens are joining together to become a force in international relations, the governence of the world. In short, how people are working together to shape the future. I focused on (1) informal networks of people who care, (2) the web and interactive media “neurology” which is giving these networks a kind of collective mind and ability to act, and (3) the advance of international institutions and international law, which provides a venue or a forum in which these networks join with sympathetic allies to advance specific causes.
I am commited to digital entrepreneurship in developing nations, as well as to public health and health care initiatives. The bloggosphere, now that I was a part of it, played a rapidly growing and ultimately profound role in everything I was doing.
In 2003 I joined Howard Dean’s campaign for president.
I also continued to worked on human rights action on the web.
In Spring of 2004 I helped start a web-based campaign–still unsuccessful but still alive and growing–to stop the genocide in Darfur.
That campaign was inspired during a session hosted by Joi Ito and Ethan Zuckerman at the first Blogger.con, in response to a challenge by Brit Blaser that each of us take a nation and help get the bloggosphere focused outside of itself.
Through these experiences and more, I was provided some priceless opportunities to join with other creative folks and experiment with social and technical innovation on a large scale, with a fast pace, and with a relentless dedication to pushing the social and the technical orders to their limits.
I continue to be involved in social and cultural change projects. Like many others, I see the latest US election as a positive result of the continuing creativity and effectiveness of progressive socio-technical visionaries and organizers.
However, my main work these days is inventing technology. This is technology for activists, technology for the mind of the second superpower. But it is technology per se. My days are spent designing plumbing and plumbing fixtures (metaphorically speaking) for the web.
Thus I want a blog where I can consider technology visions and challenges and develop a conversation with people who share this interest. This address seems a good place to start it. Guy Kawasaki says that the first rule of blogging is to envision what you are doing as “writing a book.” So this will be my new book!
I hope those of you who are current subscribers stay with me, as I have truly enjoyed our journey together. Even if you do not consider yourself a technologist, please stay if you find yourself at all interested!
I plan to start another blog to focus on human rights, health care, and other primarily social topics, so some of you may want to join me there. I will let you know that address in the next few days.
Thanks, all! Thanks so much for the memories, for the support, and for the criticism. It was all good.
Much love (yea, that is how I feel, so I will say it), Jim
