Full Circle Associates

I had the pleasure of interacting with Jay back in 96-97 on Electric Minds and have enjoyed following his writing over the years. So I peeked in on his review of PressThink: BloggerCon III: Notes and Observations on the People of Moore's Law. This gem stuck out for me:

"When there's a Slashdot for knitting, the techies--who don't knit--will have succeeded."

Now there is a lot of other cool stuff in his article -- I encourage you to read it -- but this rang a very important bell about the second wave - a group of people I fear we constantly forget. And it goes to the heart of the point Jay is making about the potential of blogging in areas such as journalism.

In Ghana last month we talked about the power of many people having effective voices online -- not just the early adopter alpha-geeks -- in the development of communities and countries in Africa. Can it influence HIV/AIDS policies? Elections? Development policies?

I don't know that I can say yes - I'm not smart enough nor can I predict the future. But I do know that not trying is stupid. And that the engagement, the mass deployment, has to be beyond early adopters.

So I'd like to offer a corollary: "When there's a Slashdot for for the village farmer to talk about improving yields, the techies--who don't farm--will have succeeded."