sheep.

Just poking around online this morning and I spotted a headline on CNN that caught my attention:

Don't let Twitter, Facebook, Google be the only game in town

Sometimes, I think about or see mainstream and I walk the other way; when LOST was first all the rage I refused to watch (now I'm one of their biggest fans), the more I see Facebook at the bottom of the screen on a TV commercial, the more I want to close my account, as soon as I started to feel like I was supposed to be taking cool pictures I put my camera under my bed. This last point makes me wonder if I have a huge character malfunction... that's another debate, we're not here to psychoanalyze this morning.

I totally related to this article because of his fresh point of view. As a whole, human beings are pretty unintelligent. As individuals we're great! In the masses, we go where we're told - unfortunately. I think that's a losing battle, but that's why God made some of us leaders. And we hope that those who have been given the gift/talent don't go sour on us and use it for all the wrong reasons. This said, Facebook and Twitter I applaud you for being leaders. The rest of the world - I (and Anil Dash) would like to remind you not to be sheep. These are great tools but as soon as we start to rely on them, to depend on them, to freeze in their absence, we've lost our independence - as suggested here a couple of days ago...

"...it was big news when Twitter was offline for 90 minutes Wednesday morning. Technology pundits promptly began hand-wringing -- the weaknesses of having a single point of failure to critical communications had been revealed again! Could we trust Twitter? Did this mean the Web couldn't help us fulfill our most basic obligations to those in need?

Not at all.

There's no reason that organizations or individuals who want to use the Web to relay critical information have to rely on Twitter or Facebook or Google or any other giant of the technology industry in the first place. We've just forgotten a bit about how the Internet was supposed to work."

The author goes on to talk about how the internet is there to provide us with a way to communicate, to share information, in such a way that cannot be destroyed. In other words, a mad man couldn't find the building which houses the WWW, bomb it, and shut us all down. But by using and depending on these couple of specific venues, we are subjecting ourselves to such a catastrophe, the very horror the internet was designed to avoid!

"We'll naturally make great use of Twitter and Facebook and all the other services, but it'd be unforgivable to pick only one of them as a platform for civic engagement. Telling people the only way to talk to the White House is on Facebook is like saying you can only call your senator by using a particular phone company."

Mainstream! Don't think mainstream people! Yes, it is convenient and it has its place, there is a reason many people follow, but that does not go to say it requires or begs our dependence.

That's a choice.

Don't be a sheep. Join the herd, follow if you will as long as we're all heading to greener pasture, but don't forget to look up now and again, wander to the edge and make sure you're still heading in the right direction. Call to action.

good to see, good to read; don't forget to think outside the box.