Positive Media Workshop

My friend Tom Munnecke (*) organized a Positive Media Workshop to take place in NYC next week. Tom believes (and puts his effort) in transforming the world in positive ways by sharing good ideas that work.

Please do look at the linked web page - interesting and worth a look. While I agree that the news media business wallows in bad news to increase profits (and I would argue the obvious point of pushing political agendas highly beneficial to corporate owners) I am personally not so optimistic that the mega-size corporation owned news media can be transformed in a positive way. However I also hold out some hope that "person to person" and group related communication technologies like web blogs, wikis, communities built on interlinked web sites, etc. will continue to allow (**) a minority of people to connect in positive ways. My pessimism however is based in a belief that most people are happy enough with 15 second 'sound bite' news that is highly filtered: like putting blinders on a horse -- but, to each their own: some people are satisfied with the world as it is and others want something better.

(*) who took the great picture of my wife and I in front of the Taj Mahal on my main web site.

(**) although I believe that here in the US we may eventually see censorship on the Internet as we see today in China. There are too many powerful business and political interests that might see alternative more personalized communication as a threat to their interests.