What Comes Next?

I spend a lot of time wondering about "what comes next," not so much to catch the wave, but to be inspired by what we might do in the future. Guy Kawasaki has an interview on the I Am Paddy blog about Twitter and business and connections. It's an interesting read, but as I scrolled through it a week ago, the one question that caught my eye, and mind, was this:

Paddy (interviewer): Will we still be tweeting in 5 years time?

Guy Kawasaki: I hope that I’m not. Or at least that I’m just tweeting for the sheer pleasure of it–about stuff like my cat rolling over and the line at Starbucks.

It's an innocuous comment, of course, but it got me wondering, "What comes next?" Are we bound to continue using Twitter for microblogging/marketing/discovery/etc. for all time, or will it be replaced by a more glorious service? Will Twitter become blase, and be discarded for something more personal or shiny? It's an interesting thought. 5 years ago, few of us had any idea that the net, and indeed the world, would look like it does today. Without Facebook or Skype, things would be vastly different.

So what comes after Twitter? What's the next big thing?

future, technology, twitter

A Statement on Gaza

This post appeared originally on the University of Denver Interfaith Student Alliance blog:

In light of the renewed conflict in the Gaza Strip, the University of Denver Interfaith Student Alliance (DU IFA) wishes to extend our condolences to those who have suffered as a result of the recent violence. Both the people of Israel as well as the Palestinians living within Gaza have lost family members, friends, and fellow citizens. For years, many innocent lives have been lost due to the complexities of a region long fraught with violence. There are no easy answers to the questions facing the people of Israel and Palestine. A long history of violence plagues the story of this region, as well as the story of all of humankind. The pages of our collective past are riddled with accounts of conflict and hostility, hatred and fear, war and genocide. Much of this hostility is a result of our tendency to react rashly to difficulties that we all face. As humans we too often view violence as a viable solution to the problems we face living together in our ever shrinking world. We must not succumb to the all too human error of failing to see that we all share these problems, that we are all merely people trying to live together in peace, and that we are all subject to our own prejudices and misconceptions about our fellow men and women.

The members of the DU IFA believe that the wisdom of our collective faith traditions compels us to call for peace, understanding, and compassion. As an organization, our mission is to promote understanding of the full diversity of religious expression. We seek to achieve this goal by promoting dialogue among our members of different faith traditions, with the belief that understanding leads to tolerance, tolerance to acceptance, acceptance to compassion, and compassion to peace. Dialogue is not a debate; dialogue is collaborative discussion that can educate us and enlighten our attitudes. In this way we hope and pray that the parties now entrenched in violence abandon their hostility, and embark upon the seemingly difficult road to peace through dialogue and diplomacy.

The University of Denver prides itself on its diversity. The Interfaith Student Alliance welcomes this diversity in all its forms, whether it be cultural, ethnic, or (especially) religious. Many of our students are Jewish and many are Arab or Muslim. That's not the whole story, of course; DU has many different student faith communities. But whatever religious or faith tradition we call our own, wherever we hail from on the globe, and whatever our political persuasions may be, we all have at least one thing in common here: We are all University of Denver students. We are committed to leaving this school and making a difference. We are the practical idealists and the future leaders. We are all in this together.
Only by talking to one another can we achieve truly rewarding happiness in this life.

Continued violence can only lead to suffering in a region of this world that has already seen too much human hatred. In the words of one of this country's wisest citizens, the Honorable Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we must remember that "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars." The Interfaith Student Alliance invites all students, faculty, and staff to recognize that whatever might be occurring in the Middle East or indeed, anywhere, we must all continue to learn and grow together in a spirit of fellowship, academic excellence, and above all, peaceful dialogue.

interfaith, gaza, israel, palestine

Spines and Pages and Words and Phrases, pt. 2

I went home for Christmas and set myself to organizing my old books. I brought home two boxes of older political science texts from Denver, so I managed to at least make a small dent at my apartment. Looking through my room back home, though, made me want to reconsider the entire endeavor. There was, quite literally, nowhere to walk.

My bed was clear, but only because I had to have somewhere to sleep! I spent the better part of two days going through my many boxes and bookshelves, placing things into three categories:

1. Give to local library - I don't need it or I don't want it. Seriously, how many 1950s criticisms of Hegel does one really need?
2. Give to Mom and Dad or other people in my life - These books can be moved immediately to new ownership.
3. Keep - I either need them or really can't bring myself to give them up. My rare/old books will stay, as will many of what I might refer to as seminal texts in my personal/professional development.

So once that was all done, I packed up the Taurus and headed into the Franklin Grove Public Library. My mom used to be the librarian there, but that was years ago, and the place has since expanded and moved into a brand new building in the center of town. I started dumping the books in the storage room, and I think after the 20th box, the librarian might have had second thoughts! After I had finished that (first!) load, I stopped into my storage unit, still full of stuff from my old apartment in the Chicago suburbs. I ended up with another dozen or so boxes in the back of the Taurus and headed back to the library. I unloaded all of them - 35 boxes in total. My best estimate of the total number of books is somewhere between 900-1400. That's a lot. I was thanked for my donation and I drove my broken back on home.

Even by the low numbers, the amount of books that I dropped off at the library is extreme - it's more than many people will even see in a lifetime. And as much as I wanted to send them to some developing country where students truly hunger for new texts, such things are cost and time prohibitive. I was on a time crunch and I already work for a nonprofit that does its best overseas. Those aren't excuses, merely my frustration. Ideally, I would have taken off another week of work and transported the books to some organization in Chicago that could have helped.

Still, it felt really, really good to get all those old books out and into the hands of people for whom such texts might hopefully be an inspiration and educational resource.

books, library, feelings, writings

Spines and Pages and Words and Phrases, pt. 1

It's been a long time coming, I can say that much. After years of wanton book collection, my "library" has swelled to such a size that I am forced to keep it in three separate locations. My apartment in Denver holds around 400 or so books - these are good ones that I have to hang on to. There's my old room back at the farm in northern Illinois - I can't rightly say how many hundreds are there. And of course the storage unit a few miles away in town holds many more boxes.

The time has come for me to cull my collection, to bring together all my texts and make some (tough, maybe) decisions about which ones will stay and which ones will go. It will be a process, I am sure, but one that will undoubtedly free me of much that I don't need.

Someone else can use these books.

books, library

The Weather and Us

I'm home for the holidays, which means that I've traveled from a land of rapidly-shifting weather (Denver) to a place where the weather rapidly shifts to terrible (Northern Illinois). Last night, my family and I were going to have a nice dinner at a local Thai restaurant some 8 miles away. A great fog had come upon the land, so we cancelled the excursion.

This morning, I set out from the farm to head into Chicago for a visit with an old roommate and some other friends. The radio barked on and on about visibility being 1/4 mile. I put it at about 200 feet! It was horrifying. The creek that runs through our property was nearly overflowing the bridge. The hour-long trip to the suburban trains was unusually long - I couldn't go much over 50 mph. It was like everything, air and land both, had turned into water.

It got me to thinking about how important "talking about the weather" really is to us. It's a cliche, really, when you think about it. Asking about the weather, making fun of it, praising it, etc., are all vital parts of how we have made, make, and will continue to make conversation.

We make fun of how we "talk about the weather," but are such disparaging remarks simply a cover for not having anything else to talk about, or is it something that we have to do? I'm betting on the latter.

My guess is that if you look back far enough, to the Epic of Gilgamesh or something similarly cuneiform, you'll find somebody gabbing about the weather. It's always available for dialogue. And since it is an unmovable, non-responding thing, it is frightfully easy for us to deride it or compliment it as we see fit; it can't talk back and we can't change it. So we'll continue, on and on, until we either find a way to "fix" the weather or we get our heads on straight and talk about the important things. The weather is an easy target - we need to set our sights higher.

weather, feelings, language

Rick Warren, Interfaith Dialogue, and Obama

Barack Obama has selected Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church to deliver the invocation at his inauguration ceremony in January. Not everyone is happy. The furor from LGBT activists (many of whom supported Barack Obama) is especially understandable. Only a few hours after the announcement, the Human Rights Campaign's Joe Solmonese had released a letter expressing HRC's frustration. Warren is a very important figure in the religious life of America, and indeed the world. I've talked about him at the University of Denver's Interfaith Student Alliance blog. The post I refer to mentions Warren as being a powerful mobilizer for Christian youth worldwide. He spoke of "armies of compassion" that could perform services for others. He is also very vocal about AIDS and poverty relief.

The guy is exceedingly influential. Obama's choice of Rick Warren to invoke in January is thus a nod to the President-Elect's acknowledgment of the importance of religion in the lives of Americans. But not all Americans subscribe to the Christian faith, and not all American Christians are in step with Warren's admittedly conservative views. What does this all mean?

Some say that Obama and Warren see eye-to-eye on social justice issues, which is true, and that they both recognize the important role that faith plays in America. But Warren's selection is seen by many as an exclusionary choice, one that Obama, for all his talk of "bringing everybody together" has apparently missed. As an interfaith activist, I am perturbed by the choice, to be sure, and I hope that Obama will prove to be a fierce advocate for building bridges among our nation's diverse religious communities. On January 20th, the world will be watching.

christianity, human rights, rick warren, barack obama, inauguration, interfaith

Social Magnetism: Gravity, Guys, and Gals

I spend a lot of time working on hypotheticals, constructing "what if" questions about the future. This is part of the curse of being a political science guy - it's up to us to figure out what's going to happen in the future (I say this to anger my historian friends - Drew, that's for you). So in my latest WHAT IF, I thought about what might happen if someone quite famous, say Al Pacino or @Kofi Annan were to hop on Twitter tonight.

I refer to @THE_REAL_SHAQ to further my what if. The guy tweeted for the first time back on November 18th, largely to tell the world that he was, in fact, the real Shaq. That's less than a month ago. As of right now, he's being followed by 21,356 people. That's insane. Once we get enough case study data, I'm sure we'll be able to chart exactly how quickly big names expand their follower count. So let's say that Pacino hops on Twitter tonight and starts tweeting about whatever strikes his fancy. Within a few days he will have thousands of followers. We know that this happens, but it can't be just as simply as celebrity worship. I follow @Ban Ki-moon, but I'm more interested in what the Secretary General of the UN is up to than merely curious about a big name's daily plans.

In much the same fashion, once someone creates an especially engaging blog post/article (more than likely a list!), it circulates wildly throughout the social web. If we're not keeping up with ourselves, it is almost impossible to figure out where our content ends up. People will cut it up, give credit where credit is due, and repost, retweet, and reshare it ad infinitum. It's like casting a satellite out into space. Even if you point it in one specific direction, it's still going to be affected by the gravitational pulls of other objects, i.e. stars, asteroids, planets. Its course will be determined by the larger (and smaller) bodies that inhabit space. In the social web, the role of gravity and social magnetism cannot be ignored. If we don't pay attention, we may end up floating out into the social web alone.

social media, technology