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lot of what we are doing now is warm-up exercises,” Winer told me.
There is a lot that must mature before this space has its mature effect.
And as the inclusion of content in this space is the least infringing use
of the Internet (meaning infringing on copyright), Winer said, “we will
be the last thing that gets shut down.”
This speech affects democracy. Winer thinks that happens because
“you don’t have to work for somebody who controls, [for] a gatekeeper.”
That is true. But it affects democracy in another way as well.
As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in
writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is
easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the
product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare
human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it
is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong.
The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.
Today there are probably a couple of million blogs where such writing
happens. When there are ten million, there will be something extraordinary
to report.
John Seely Brown is the chief scientist of the Xerox Corporation.
His work, as his Web site describes it, is “human learning and ...the
creation of knowledge ecologies for creating ...innovation.”
Brown thus looks at these technologies of digital creativity a bit differently
from the perspectives I’ve sketched so far. I’m sure he would be
excited about any technology that might improve democracy. But his
real excitement comes from how these technologies affect learning.
As Brown believes, we learn by tinkering. When “a lot of us grew
up,” he explains, that tinkering was done “on motorcycle engines, lawnmower
engines, automobiles, radios, and so on.” But digital technologies
enable a different kind of tinkering—with abstract ideas though
in concrete form. The kids at Just Think! not only think about how
acommercial portrays a politician; using digital technology, they can
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