I felt compelled to piggyback on your discovery of "Creating Passionate Users.." and forwarded it to a couple of people who I thought would appreciate it, Jane. It IS pretty absurd and also amusing and informative at the same time. And there are LOTS of hyperlinked tidbits to read--discoveries upon discoveries.

I really enjoyed looking at Twitter. Supremely facinating. Thanks!

What I would like to know is what to do for those of us who have crossed that Brain Thrashing Threshold. Seriously though, has anyone read the article that was in the N.Y. Times magazine recently about the use of blogs and wikis? It was about the use of blogs and wikis to assist agencies in the prevention of a terrorist attack. They went on to talk about its possible use in the event of a flu pandemic. It seemed fairly interesting, but in the former case it was not deemed incredibly helpful (from what I gathered). I would be interested to hear what anyone else thought.

Read it and was particularly interested in what was said about a contoversial local prof who is also on a "most dangerous professor" web site. See excerpt below:

Intelligence analysts are finding it more important to keep up with ''open source'' information -- nonclassified material published in full public view, like newspapers, jihadist blogs and discussion boards in foreign countries. This adds ever more calories to the daily info diet. The W.M.D. analyst I spoke to regularly reads the blog of Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor known for omnivorous linking to, and acerbic analysis of, news from the Middle East. ''He's not someone spies would normally pay attention to, but now he's out there -- and he's a subject-matter expert, right?'' the analyst said.

That was an interesting article. The citation (since it's no longer freely available on the web) is

Open-Source Spying
By CLIVE THOMPSON
December 3, 2006, Sunday
(NYT); Magazine
Late Edition - Final, Section 6, Page 54, Column 1

My reading was that the "secure" blogs in particular were a good way to open up information sharing among intelligence agencies. I don't remember the conclusions about pandemic flu, but since identifying an epidemic in its early stages is partly amalgamating and consolidating disparate points of information, it seems like there would be some utility for blogs - pehaps local public health blogs - for that purpose/

Other comments or thoughts?

That is interesting because I had a different understanding of the article. I though that the younger and older agents thought that blogs could be useful, but the middle group of agents deemed them as too insecure. On the other hand, a blog for a possible flu pandemic might be very effective. If a physician in Thailand has a group of people who are suddenly struck with a flu like illness, they could post the information to a blog to get word out immediately. Maybe the information could spread faster than the virus? Although you wouldn't want to create a Wellsian "War of The Worlds" type panic. Surely the CDC already has something like this in place. If not, maybe we could start one here with the information we have at our cluster of libraries?

I am back-- mulling over and working with Professor Juan Cole's ideas--that the Internet is the perfect means for terrorists to both disseminate their ideas/plots and recruit others to their cause(s). Nevertheless, he himself is a strong advocate of blogging and walks the walk with a regular online column called "Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion." It is factually up to the minute, much more so than the NYT, I think, and easier to understand than Noam Chomsky's thoughts, which sometimes ramble off and become an impenetrable thicket of ideas. I am familiar with that old expression "where we sit is where we stand," but I don't understand how the intelligence agencies (to get back to the original topic for a minute) can possibly be--or can choose to be- oblivious to such open information provided by the blogs of similar experts.