This past Wednesday's class was very enlightening for me. The two presentations based off the externals shed light onto a topic that I am unfamiliar with, social networking. I think we can all agree Facebook is a pretty mainstream, accepted form of social networking, but the Second Life network and flash mob activity took the idea of communicating to others to a whole new level for me. The idea of Second Life is a little too extreme for my tastes; I'm happy with who I am as a person and don't need to create a 'second life' online. However, flash mobs seemed like a new, modern form of protest, political or not, that is the result of the Internet generation. Although I've heard of some flash mobs that seem to originate out of straight boredem, some acutally have a worthwhile and benefical purpose to them.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the video clip we watched about the redevelopment of a town in New England. Perhpas the most interesting part of the process they followed to redevlop the site was how they formed a committee of citizens, stakeholders and town officials to determine just what exactly they wanted to see built, made those plans public and accepted bids from developers to build according to the plans. This seemed backwards to how development/redvelopment typically takes place, but also made a lot of sense in terms of streamlining the planning and permitting process because the developer already has the support of the community and planning commission. I'd like to see this method take place more often.
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