that’s a pretty complex question to ask, let alone answer. the tech crowd will react, probably with hostility (”are you saying everything i believe in is wrong?”), and the non-tech crowd, who have not even experienced the technology in the first place, will have trouble groking the first premise (that technology will create more democracy and make everyone more connected and enriched), let alone getting to where I think you are, asking: “is technology really making things better or worse.”

i mean, how do you convince a bunch of people that twitter is bad when they don;’t even know what twitter is?

anyway, our dinner with Jon - and what you said that night - had a big impact on me. In fact it has been one aspect of a kind of paralysis I’ve suffered recently, asking whether truly any of this “work” (whatever it be) is really going to make things better for people, whatever that means.

Anyway, the point is that the ideas are complex, subtle, and far ahead of the curve of most people’s understanding of the world (even/especially early-adopter crowds). so, no wonder you’re having trouble articulating it; no wonder people are having trouble groking it.

that just means, maybe, that you are wrestling with something no so easy to wrestle with, which, frustration aside, is probably a good thing.

too bad about paralysis though. I’m partially there too and it’s a bitch. you should really have checked out the Darin Barney talk. It kind of gave me a small way through the gordian knot.