JANE CHIN, PH.D. ∞

Nick Smith asked where all the “crazy ones” have gone in our Web 2.0 world that has yielded too much information with too few “big ideas”. He observed that most of the popular posts shared around the world appeared superficial, and wondered how this information help people or help enlighten the rest of us.

I have marveled at the paradoxical nature of our times:

We are swimming in information yet starving for innovation.

We now have ways to cosmetically enhance, intellectually enervate, and emotionally stimulate ourselves yet we have become farther and further distracted from who we each really are.

But I believe that our world of increasing noise is a means, and not an end. We are drowning in tools right now because these tools and new, and many of us are figuring out how and where we want to use them in our lives.

Those who are the “crazy ones” – those who can change the world – are still here, working silently amongst the proliferative noise. What the crazy ones have today that their crazy forefathers and crazy foremothers did not have is the technological means to their world vision.

And what a means this technology has been – is – and will be.

Imagine if Einstein Blogged and Martin Luther King Podcasted.
What if Gandhi YouTubed and Picasso spoke at TED?
I wonder what Buckminster Fuller would have on his De.licio.us.

I say the misfits, troublemakers, and round-pegs-in-square-holes are still among us. They are changing the world, except now they can change “the world” by leveraging technology and global connectivity.

And you know what’s funny?

These crazy ones will be changing the world by:

Innovating,

and Showing Us Who We Each Really Are.

Here’s to our next centuries’ crazy ones. I can’t wait to meet you.

Thanks to Nick Smith’s Shiny Web 2.0 Tools post. I also highly recommend the video he referenced, called “Crazy Ones” on YouTube.