Saturday, March 01, 2008

My Audacity of HOPE


The darkest hour is just before dawn! The first time I heard this lyric I was a teen listening to the Mamas and the Pappas. I came of age in the turbulant dark hours of the late 60s and early 70s.

Still in the chaos and darkness of assisination and riot, I believed that dawn would arrive. My generation would usher it in! We would end war, poverty, racism, sexism, and wait quiety for the second coming! Well, perhaps I wasn't that optimistic, perhaps, I only had the audacity to be hopeful.

Today in the world of Web 2.0, I feel that same rush of hope that dawn is just over the horizon. In the darkness before this dawn several librarian friends and one technology coach have met for dinner during the deep months of winter to share food, company, and technology. But as I think about the dawn, I am forced to wornder what the light will reveal. How much of the landscape will I recognize?

Fifteen years ago, when I first began to use the Internet I thought about the changes hyptertext made in the way we understand text. The linear tyranny of the author is gone as readers construct meaning in their unique way.

Today, I am stunned by the Web 2.0 tools that speed up the disintegration of the old ladnscape. Then today I ran across this little video on You Tube - http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

In a virtual world what will dawn reveal?

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