While the economy continues to slip, efforts to transform it, like 3D Squared's work in Metaplace, explore how we can recover.

NPR Reported today: “President Obama said Thursday he is ‘deeply concerned’ about unemployment. The remarks to The Associated Press came after the Labor Department said U.S. businesses shed 467,000 jobs in June and that the unemployment rate increased to 9.5 percent.” (Website, Shadow Government Statistics says it is actually more like 17%.) For a more detailed examination of why the President has reason to be concerned, see this dramatic series of charts on The Big Picture, illustrating long-term predictions of how the devastation on the workforce is likely to continue well into 2010.

Amidst this sturm und drang, innovative efforts to transform the economy are moving forward. Just last week, our favorite non-profit 3D Squared completed its capstone Digital Workforce Intensive in Lafayette, Louisiana. We have written about the work of 3D Squared before (see two April 2009 articles, “How I Became a Virtual World Believer” in VentureBeat and “Digital Workforce Initiative Transforms Gulf Coast Job Prospects” in the Carnegie Council’s Policy Innovations magazine).

Recent coverage of last week’s Digital Workforce Intensive ran in the Louisiana’s The Advocate, and was picked up by a number of blogs including gaming blogs GamePolitics.com and Destructoid. “With 97% of teenagers playing, games are the future of learning, work and human collaboration.”

As Rita J. King put it in her April article:

This approach could be revolutionary for Louisiana because the number one reason students drop out is lack of engagement with the educational system—they simply aren’t interested. They are definitely interested in games, and are motivated to learn when lessons are framed in relation to games. In learning how to collaborate on the creation of games, students are being prepared for related collaborative opportunities, such as participation in the state’s increasingly robust mixed media and film production industry and the creation of simulated virtual training environments.

In learning how to design games, kids are also learning the most important skills to compete across sectors in the 21st century. Creative collaboration and fluency within the digital culture are modern necessities. Most importantly, people can work within these fields from their own communities without feeling the necessity to leave and find work in cramped urban centers.

"Sampling of election night Twittering" Image credit: Krazydad/jbum.

By Joshua S. Fouts

In the last few weeks there have been a spate of articles announcing the “who’s who” of the glitterati (and the soon-to-be Twitterati), listing names and Twitter profiles of what current, former, or soon-to-be-famous people are sharing their opinions, thoughts and -isms 140 characters at a time. This resulted, for many, in a huge increase (in the order of hundreds of thousands of people) following them (meaning monitoring their 140 character transmissions) on Twitter.

This week we have three prominent news stories — two backlash and one analysis — from mainstream public opinion and media outlets. (Less recently, there have been reports on established outlets like Nightline, and Charlie Rose. Andy Sternberg has a good summary on NetZoo.)

The analysis comes from AdAge.com, in today’s article, “Twitter: We Can Do What Google Can’t.” (Almost simultaneously, a quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt surfaced in which he called Twitter, and its ilk “poor man’s email systems.”) AdAge.com’s uthor Michael Learmonth reports that Twitter’s ultimate revenue model may be in harnessing its millions of on-the-minute observation:

a search of “what’s happening — right now.”

The backlash stories include Republican media strategist Mark McKinnon in Tina Brown’s TheDailyBeast.com and pundit and comedian Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

Jon Stewart’s piece on The Daily Show is laugh out loud funny, including a scene where DS correspondent Samantha Bee is too distracted twittering to actually do her report. Appropriately, Stewart takes the piss out of members of Congress who, instead of paying attention to the State of the Union twittered often inane comments. Or, as Stewart put, reading these Congressional tweets was, “like you’re right at the State of the Union Address, sitting next to someone incredibly uninteresting.”

DIP’s Rita J. King says she thinks having Members of Congress Twitter isn’t necessarily a bad thing if they can learn to use it properly. King, who for many years was an investigative journalist who regularly attended and reported on public and Congressional hearings related to the nuclear industry, says she wished there had been a way for her to share thoughts in real time with people who might be interested. Just because the capacity to share them at the time didn’t exist, it didn’t mean she wasn’t there thinking about things.

Rita had already mentioned that it was very conspicuous that Members were all on their devices. “As with anything, moderation is the key. There is no need for these people to comment on everything. Pay attention, but also let us know what you are thinking when those thoughts are compelling.” In fact, she argues, “what Members of Congress choose to say in those moments tells us something about them as people. And that’s valuable in a democracy. Not everything that everyone says is going to be interesting all the time. Now that people’s thoughts are being put out there in real time, it would be good to increase the value of what’s being thought. It is beneficial for people to have a discernment process over what’s worth saying and which fleeting thoughts are best left to the recesses of one’s own mind.”

Mark McKinnon makes a facile and redundant point about the importance of friends and how Twitter is no place to make friends. His most saccharine point is delivered in this graf:

Instead of spending hours trying to add to the number of friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter, I’ve decided to spend that time on the handful of people I really care about. I write them real letters. I try to remember their kids’ names and their birthdays. I want to know about their lives. I want to know if they are happy in their marriages; in their careers. If they’re not, or if they are sick, I want to know if there is something I can do to help. Meaningful friendships require constant attention, nourishment, feeding and watering. It requires quality time. Not just a Tweet.

The AdAge.com article reveals an important angle. As did the Daily Show about Congress frittering away its time twittering during the SOTU speech. For me, Twitter is an organic, stream of ideas and thoughts about a particular moment of time. I don’t use it to track or develop relationships, but this is an inevitable side effect of using Twitter, and it can be a very positive thing. I view it as a dip into the cultural zeitgeist, and in the meantime, it does connect me more to the whereabouts, thoughts and lives of my friends.

Screenshot from Abu Dhabi's "The National"

There’s a great op-ed in the Monday, February 16, 2009 edition of the Abu Dhabi’s “The National,” called “A ‘second life’ for public diplomacy in the Middle East.” The article explores President Obama’s public diplomacy strategy in the Middle East and has this to say about the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project:

When viewed in the context of the currently rising optimism about the US handling of Middle East issues, a project of this calibre suggests that US public diplomacy in Muslim countries is developing new approaches to Arab-Islamic culture. The project’s use of Second Life virtual experiences, where internet users can interact with each other through avatars to engage in intercultural dialogue, is indeed a pioneering initiative. It may enable foreign policymakers and practitioners, corporations, NGOs and ordinary people to both understand and appreciate the nature of the Islamic faith and the communicative power of virtual space in promoting religious dialogue.

A year ago we were in Doha, Qatar — in fact, that’s where we effectively started the project — at the US Islamic World Forum and as our friends and colleagues gather in Doha right now, we’re particularly grateful for the support many of them showed for this project.

Update: The op-ed was a response to a February 10 article in The National, “Call for greater online cultural dialogue,” by Roland Hughes.

Following are Rita J. King’s remarks from the January 29, 2009 release of the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds report, presented at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs:

Thank you to The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, the Lounsbery Foundation, Evan O’Neil, ILL Clan Animation Studios and everyone who helped us gain a greater understanding of Islam and virtual worlds while we worked on this project across four continents in the physical world and, at the same time, in a three-dimensional, digital, virtual world called Second Life. I am grateful to Joshua S. Fouts, the co-director of this project, whose visionary work hinges on the notion that exploring other cultures is an adventure and a mission.

Virtual worlds give people space to inhabit and enhance one another’s ideas. Tonight, we will be sharing a short documentary video shot entirely in Second Life, excerpts from a 150-page graphic book and policy recommendations for the Obama Administration.

While we worked on this project we didn’t know who the next American president would be. We are happy to deliver our recommendations to an administration that has already demonstrated a great awareness of the transformative power of the Internet.

The Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project was guided by the 13th century Sufi mystic poet Rumi’s idea: ‘Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down upon that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.’
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President-elect Obama cast in the State flags of the United States. Image credit: Tsevis.

I’ve always liked the quote (and the Cerebus art) on Marc Lynch’s blog, “The battle’s done, and we kind of won so we sound our victory cheer: where do we go from here?” And I’ve been looking for a good opportunity to use it. Today I’ve found one. As I was going through my public diplomacy and the presidency files, I came across an August 1, 2007 speech that then-Senator Obama gave, in which he lists some of his public diplomacy goals once elected. You can read the full transcript here. Some points leap out for special consideration, which we’ve highlighted here. We’ll look forward to seeing how these ideas are implemented.

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