So glad @zefrank shared the link to this video of Clay Shirky speaking on Web 2.0 and time management.

Both this video and Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody will help me refocus the first chapter of my dissertation* b/c he makes the very obvious but necessary to hear point that “it’s better to do something than do nothing.” He sets up the binary between television media and participatory media to argue “media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.” The NOLA bloggers I’m looking at started their blogging and wiking and photo and video-sharing as a result of Katrina and purposefully because they knew the mainstream media would get it wrong. So there you have it.

Go watch, experiment with social software, produce and share!

[*I’m totally a backwards writer. Discovering as you write means the intro has to change a dozen times]