Digital Authenticity—Does Anyone Care?

Mark Schaefer, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, reposted a blog entry asking, "Can you outsource authenticity?" He writes:

To be successful on the social web, you need meaningful content … and LOTS of it! Some debate whether you need quality or quantity, but fact is, you need both. Five excellent blog posts in a month is better than one excellent blog post … and 10 is even better than five! And every company and non-profit is jumping on board. So where is all this quality content going to come from? [Emphasis mine.]

In other words, as long as the source is accurate, does it matter who produces it?

The Future of Thought

I had the immense pleasure of hearing Sherry Turkle speak on a panel concerning the emergence of a digital class and what it means for our social order. One of the questions raised during the discussion concerned the future of thought: As we become immersed in virtual worlds and digital media, what will happen to the structure of thought?

Outsourcing Organs: Organ Dealing and Transplant Tourism

According to a survey by Donate Life America, 43% of people are undecided, reluctant or do not wish to have their organs and tissue donated after their deaths. As a result of the shortage of organs, a black market has grown and thrived—particularly in impoverished corners of the world.

Online Interactions and Your Life Offline

Science Daily reported on a new study appearing in American Behavioral Scientist this April that suggests that online interactions have a positive effect in real life in that they serve in part to reaffirm connections to local communities. Authors Caroline Haythornthwaite and Lori Kendall, professors in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Illinois, indicate that the extensive reach of online technologies utilized for communicating and networking, creating and distributing content, and for storing, sharing, and retrieving files are creating ties that bind for offline communities:

"Research on who people communicate with online [technologies] shows a lot of local activity," Haythornthwaite said. "So online communication always reinforces local relationships and local identities that build networks of interacting individuals who are mutually aware of each other. Together, this demonstrates a continuous change in how we maintain local community, while also emphasizing the importance and significance of our attachments to local places and spaces."

Are we defining community too narrowly?

Death 2.0: Digital Mourning

As today is Good Friday, perhaps it's a good time to talk about death in the digital world. While millions of Catholics engage in rituals of remembering today, I'd like to talk about how Web 2.0 technologies are changing the experience of death for those charged with remembering.