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American Cancer Society | David Collin, Director of Organizational Learning
What's *really* new on the Web, as opposed to buzzwords and soundbites?:
They say, "Everything old is new again." What I'm excited about is that
the evolution of electronic communication by the public continues to
evolve. Using networks to build community goes back at least to The Well, a
thriving e-community centered in the Bay Area, and some would say earlier.
I've felt for a long time the killer app of the internet always has been
and always will be P2P communication and community building. Although buzz
words come and go, the impulse is perennial. There seems to be renewed
vigor today and new technology to support social interaction, so the wheel
continues to turn.
Which tools best embody the new opportunities from your point of view and why?:
The easy(ier)-to-use tools that enable anybody to share are great. Some are
open source and some are proprietary but they enable anybody to put stuff
out there. The blog/podcast/vlog sequence is exciting. Flickr and the
outrageous idea that people want to share pictures instead of keeping them
private is phenomenal. The web-based, low cost services for hosting blogs
and media are important. I'll even hand it to Google and their rivalry with
Yahoo! and Microsoft for creating a kind of high speed, Cambrian explosion
of tools many of us can use if we can find the time to figure out how.
Who's doing the best work with the new tools (technically or in terms of social benefit or both)?:
I'd give props to a whole category: the average people who participating in
social networking and communicating. It's great that people are investing
their time and energy to keeping communication open. The tools are out
there and an expanding base of ordinary tools are taking them up and
creating a social movement. The attitude, "This is my web," is pretty
revolutionary.
What's the bad news? What are the greatest barriers preventing web-based technology from producing social change?:
It seems that as soon as some people develop something based on trust and
common good behavior, along comes another group to exploit it for their
ends and mess it up. Gross commercialism seems to besieged open communities
as surely as night follows day. Similarly, economic interests and
institutions based on old models are barnacles on the bottom of the boat to
success. Too often they don't put their energy into getting creative with
new opportunities.
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