Notes From Around The Blogosphere

Here’s a few things that caught my eye this week,

YouTube, Flickr Become Forces For Cultural Change – In a week where I’ve been feeling distinctly negative about social networking and online “conversation” this piece by Jennifer Woodard Maderazo is a welcome reminder of the transformative and subversive potential of social networking.

Bill Clinton Goes ‘On the Record’ – Bill Clinton On Fox News Talking About Kiva.org. Amazingly, hell does not appear to have frozen over!

Typing Accents, Remember The Option Key> – An often asked practical question for mac users.

Is Fascism A Danger In America? – Yes Bruce, it is. Thank you for asking the question.

Friendship In The Digital Age: Feedback – Summary of Andrew McCollum’s contribution at the recent ICA event on Friendship in the digital age. McCollum was there at the creation of Facebook and his ideas highlight what for me are the two most important points behind Facebooks sucess and it’s future value. First, the information on Facebook is (mostly) non-anonymous and verifiable. Second, the networks on Facebook are (mostly) based on real world social relations and interactions.

Debriefer: Iloho.com’s Andrea Hancock – This interview, about the attractiveness of Hong Kong as a tourist destination and potential place to live inspires the cynicism I often feel when encountering travel writing. However, there are some worthwhile points and it is worth bookmarking if you are planning on visiting this city.

Taylor’s A Secular Age – This is a book I have been eagerly anticiapting for some time. I’m not only looking forward to reading this book, but also seeing what fellow bloggers have to say about it. If A Secular Age is on your reading list and you plan to blog about it (and/or would like to share ideas), please leave a comment or drop me an email.

100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write – Found via 100 Answers in (around) 100 Words commenting on the excellent adaption of this idea in 100 Blog Topics I hope you write (Youth Ministry). There’s a fair bit of blog-burnout going around these days (see Brodie and Kester) and I can’t help but wonder if we could all facilitate a change by sharing potential blog topics and blog ideas around. Maybe someone could even come up with a widget advertising blog topics in a “looking for” format.

The Wrong Tree? Barth, Bonhoeffer And Knowledge Of Good And Evil (via Must-Read Post) – I’ve never been fully satisfied with Divine-Command approaches to ethics, but this post highlights the very important ways that Bonhoeffer and Barth challenge those of us who want to think outside the command tradition. There is no question that at the core of any Christian ethic must be the question of discipleship and that any properly theological ethic must be about responsibility and not mere justification.

[tags] Social Networking, Kiva, Aid, Facebook, Social Networking, Ethics [/tags]