Max Gladwell

“There is this amazing confluence of technology and opportunity at a time where we really can change the world. And there are some big problems that need to be solved.” –Tim O’Reilly

The Web 2.0 Expo took place this week in San Francisco. We attended virtually through Twitter, blogs, and Blip.tv. The keynote from Tim O’Reilly speaks to the larger Web 2.0 trends in the first two thirds i.e. the web as a platform, the potential on the enterprise side, mobile, and cloud computing. He ends with a nod and a plea to innovators and entrepreneurs to leverage the power of Web 2.0 and social media to solve big problems including climate change, government transparency, deforestation, energy efficiency, disease, and the deterioration of our local communities. He asks rhetorically, “Are we done yet?” Indeed, we’re just getting started.

O’Reilly highlights a few of the web efforts in this space:

EveryBlock is a new experiment in journalism, offering a Web “newspaper” for every city block in Chicago, New York and San Francisco — with more cities to come.

InSTEDD is all about humanitarian collaboration through technology innovation. We are looking carefully at the problems faced by those involved in disease tracking and disaster response, and we’re moving forward in focused ways to help them.

Earth Day Network was founded by the organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network (EDN) promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide.

Wattzon.org hosts a document that gives us a framework for thinking about these challenges, and how we might change our behaviours as individuals as well as our collective behaviour as societies and global citizens, if we are to meet the great challenge of the 21st century - how to live in a world where we increasingly understand the resources to be finite, and the consequences of our actions complex & inter-twined.

O’Reilly concluded the keynote with this poem:

The Man Watching

by Rainer Maria Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Related Posts

• No Related Post