The title sounds like a thesis project and perhaps some day it will be. However, I believe that this topic should not be held captive in the ivory tower of academia. This project has more to do with shaping popular culture rather than merely adding to the body of scholarly work.
Pop culture? Yes pop culture. I believe popular culture can be more than light entertainment and escapism. In fact there might even be a desire for people to spend just a few minutes a week to better their community and have some of their dreams realized.
I don't think this is a pipe dream. There a good chance you are using Mozilla Firefox right now. This is becoming a pop cultral icon like Wikipedia and other open source media. These are models for this project. By working as a collective we can create a phenomenon that is much more than the sum of its parts.
People who work on Mozilla and Wikipedia are directly shaping the culture of our time. We too can influence culture with our collective vision. It is impossible to see how this vision will become reality at this point but hopefully I will lay some ground work for this to possible.
This is not a radical project but one that I hope will be a common tool for people to inform themselves about education policies and the schools in our neighborhood. Perhaps there is a parent or a studernt who has a fantastic idea to change our schools and this can be the platform for their voice to be heard.
The democratic principle of public journalism key to this experiment. But then again the U.S. Constitution is an expeiment in democracy. Gandhi's autobiography was aptly called "The Story of My Experiment with Truth." The potential of this experiment is only as great as the number and efforts of the participants. And hopefully this will be a part of popular culture.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
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