A really great article over at Salon (Furl it!) that talks about this whole reading what others read concept and the Web of connections that is being born. Here’s a great quote from Howard Rheingold that I think pretty much sums up the concept:
“I look to see who the other people are on del.icio.us who tag the same things that I think are important. Then, I can look and see what else they’ve tagged … And isn’t that part of the collective intelligence of the Web? You meet people who find things that you find interesting and useful — and that multiplies your ability to find things that are interesting and useful, and other people feed off of you.”
It’s taken me some time to start to really wrap my brain around this concept, and this article pushed my thinking quite a bit. I’ve finally started really exploring Flickr as a connections tool, and it’s pretty powerful. When you dig a bit, you realize it’s much more than just pictures. There is a lot of narrative happening there that I’m finding interesting. And in the last couple of days I’ve come across a couple of instances where classes are designating tags to pull together links. Cool idea.
The even better part is that Rheingold is co-teaching a course called “Toward a Literacy of Cooperation” at Stamford that is open for anyone to join in. It’s got a blog, a wiki, and a de.licio.us tagline. Very cool to start seeing the ways in which the technologies are starting to mix and match for a common goal.
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