It's fine to have social media that connects us with old friends, but we need tools that help us discover new people as well.
It's my fond hope that social networks such as Facebook will help users broaden their perspectives by listening to a different set of people than they encounter in their daily life. But I fear services such as Facebook may be turning us into imaginary cosmopolitans.
People generally pay attention to what they already know about and what they care about.
Engineering serendipity is this idea that we can help people come across unexpected but helpful connections at a better than random rate. And in some ways it's based on trying to reassess this notion of serendipitous as lucky - to think of serendipitous as smart.
Now if you're using Twitter or other social networks, and you didn't realize this was a space with a lot of Brazilians in it, you're like most of us. Because what happens on a social network is you interact with the people that you have chosen to interact with.
Reading the text of my blog itself is not really the interesting part. The exciting part is how the Internet allows me to be the eyes and ears for the people sending me postings from Africa.
We are trying to do a transfer of technology that allows people to express themselves without taking risks. It is about free speech, that's all.
People want to be thought of as something other than a source of money. They want to be thought of as creative, thinking people.
If we need simple narratives so people can amplify and spread them, are we forced to engage only with the simplest of problems?
You can make the case that slacktivism is important because it makes people feel affiliated to a movement and be part of it, and talk about it.
People who know me well have learned to insist that I commit to obligations by opening my laptop and putting them onto the appropriate calendar or list - a verbal agreement and a promise to remember won't work.
It's becoming clear that the world is listening, so now we're trying to get new groups of people talking.