I would write the same comment today. Hopefully we can generate some more discussion this time around.

As to the Facebook quesiton of how this affects Elephant, I would like to see Elephant become far more interactive. I would like to see dozens of Gita Talk type high-participation discussions, instead of only an occasional one. I'd like to see lots more experimentation in interactive blogs.

Bob W.

Well, this article is certainly interesting. But I sure hope the rest of 35 points deal with specific applications rather than just the technology itself. I know I need to go read the entire article, which you have linked to above, but I don't have time at the moment.

I will say this, though. Sitting at my laptop here is not substantively different than sitting in the Stanford library in 1970 surrounded by all the books and periodicals of the world for browsing or searching by card catalog. The only real difference is the speed with which I can access the information.

One could even argue that I was better off then, because most books are not even available yet on the Internet, and the first thing I would do in the library is go to the section of books about any given topic and start browsing through them, just as one does today on the Internet. It wouldn't take long before I had a stack full of books to look through and browse until I zeroed in on what I needed.

So how is the Internet more overwhelming than the Stanford library was back then? It's not. It just comes at you faster and it's less likely to be as well-thought out as the books and magazine articles and scholarly papers in the Library. But the basic information isn't any different. And neither are the critical thinking skills necessary to process the information in a useful and productive way.

There are some aspects of life that will be transformed by the new technology. But it will have more to do with instant communication (like a subsistence farmer in Africa being able to track prices and markets on his cell phone, for example) than the information overload which is the subject of most of the points above. Anyone who has visited a library has always had that.

When I have more time, I'm anxious to read the entire article. I'd be surprised and disappointed if Dave doesn't turn to transforming applications rather than form and technology for the remainder of his 35 points.

Bob Weisenberg