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Article By: JosephN.Abraham,M.D.
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The Most Powerful Generation
Here at The University of Louisiana, an undergrad recently lamented to me about the passing of the student activism of the 60s & 70s. He noted that his generation feels as if those possibilities no longer exist.
Let me be blunt: Today's students are the most powerful generation of young adults in the history of the world.
The group I head, booksXYZ.com and The American Public School Endowments, worked with Wikipedia some time back. When we first contacted them, they enjoyed a traffic ranking of 19.
The #19 website in the whole world-- which includes massively funded corporate websites such as Amazon, CNN, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL, to name a few.
And at the time? Wikipedia had only 2.5 people working in their office. Even more impressive: since then, the WikiMedia Foundation that oversees Wikipedia has gone through several CEOs, it faces constant funding, staffing and other internal challenges, it works with a group of volunteers who also elect much of the WikiMedia Foundation Board, meaning the volunteers are both managers and managees... and after all those problems?
Wikipedia is now the #9 website in the world. How is that possible?
You can figure it out for yourself, because the same thing is happening all over the Internet. Just go anywhere on-line: eBay, Craig's List, Geocities, Youtube, Blogger, del.icio.us, Flickr, Facebook, Napster, Linux, and on & on. The computer programs available free from the OpenSource community, and the new tools available- RSS, IM, blogs, message boards, ListServes, cell phones, podcasts, social networking, cell phone cameras, eMail, eZines, video streaming, social bookmarking, porable video recorders-- have allowed people, primarily young people, to create value and wealth for companies around the globe, wealth exceeding the GNP of all but the very largest countries.
The Roman Dictators, The Kings of France, the Ottoman Sultans-- their powers pale next to what a student can create with a wireless PDA in a few minutes. If, just in their leisure time, student-contributed content has built the preceding Internet empires, and if among their overlooked laptops and cell phones students carry this much potential power, what could they accomplish if they seriously thought about it? What could students do for the world, for economic reforms, for social justice, for educational movements?
Pundits often claim that City Hall can't be beaten. They're wrong. City Hall gets beaten by average citizens every day. What can't be beaten is the news media. Since they tell everyone the story, they get to tell it their way, and so they can't be beaten...
...except for other media. Other news outlets get to publish their story. So if you are also media, you can compete.
And today's media are largely young people, young adults. In fact, the term "media" doesn't mean what it once did, for exactly that reason. In the past, "media" really meant two separate things: the medium, i.e., the vehicle for delivery; and the information, the cargo the vehicle carried. But the movements we noted previously show that, although corporations still control the vehicle, the content comes from the public. And that public is largely young adults.
And the advent of cheap and free software leaves us wondering why young people need the corporations any more. OpenSource software gives everyone access to free blogging software. If that's too much trouble, there are many 'sites that will do the work and supply the platform for free. Then each of us is also media.
This is true for much more than blogs. The OpenSource community has produced over a quarter of a million free software packages, from tiny add-ons for existing programs, to enormous packages that will replace everything on the most advanced commercial web servers, from Wikis and Blogs up to on-line magazines to virtual environments. It's all out there.
Considering that, it is clear that although the medium may still be produced by corporations, the successful websites are largely those where the public generates the content. And that public, more and more, is a young public.
That's how much power students have. The power to change the world.
And all the students of today need to do, is to begin deciding how best to use those tools, and begin making this little planet better.
Article Source: ArticleZones.com
About the Author
Joseph N. Abraham MD is president of The American Public School Endowments and booksXYZ.com, the Nonprofit Bookstore sending all proceeds to Education. booksXYZ.com lists over 2,000,000 paperbacks, hardbacks, and audio books. Dr. Abraham is also the author of Happiness: A Physician/Biologist Looks at Life, an engaging self help book.
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