Two words, kids–Ted Talks. For those of you who do now know what Ted is, you need to catch up. Every year the best minds are invited to give a short talk on a particular subject. It lasts for several days, and the speakers are usually incredibly accomplished and successful. One such talk this year was by Dave Eggers.
He started 826 Valencia, a non-profit writing workshop with a pirate supply store in the front. It is kind of like Derek Zoolander’s center for kids who can’t read good and do other things, except a buccaneer can re-supply. The story he tells is interesting.
First, he recounts the beginnings of 826. Next, he tells of how his friends in Brooklyn started a similar workshop. Only this instead of a pirate supply shop it was a super hero supply store. Los Angeles has one based on Time Travel. In such a short time since the inception of 826 Valencia, similar workshops have popped up over the country. They all have this entertaining and charming retail component in the front combined with a publishing workshop in the back. Next, he quickly gets into how the public (you and me, dummy) can get involved. There is something very clever in the way Mr. Eggers combines volunteerism and education with a quirky sense of humor. Changing the faces of the centers from places of social stigma (kids nor performing well) to places where kids run to after school is fascinating. It engages the kids as much as it does the volunteers. Now, if only Miami had one…
IKEA, that furniture store we all love to love, has opened its doors to comedian Mark Malkoff. The Parmaus, NJ store will host Mr. Malkoff for the next six days, and he will post videos to YouTube. His schtick seems to be these kinds of corporate gags. In previous stunts he went on a binge and went to every Starbucks in Manhattan in one day. I like your style, sir.
Christine Rosen is a senior editor of The New Atlantis and a resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She writes extensively on the effects of technology and media on culture. Her observations are insightful and well written. The most recent essay, “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism”, discusses the impact of the use of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook on the younger generations:
As the young woman writing in the Times admitted, “I consistently trade actual human contact for the more reliable high of smiles on MySpace, winks on Match.com, and pokes on Facebook.” That she finds these online relationships more reliable is telling: it shows a desire to avoid the vulnerability and uncertainty that true friendship entails. Real intimacy requires risk—the risk of disapproval, of heartache, of being thought a fool. Social networking websites may make relationships more reliable, but whether those relationships can be humanly satisfying remains to be seen.
I invite you to read her other essays:
“The Image Culture” : A discussion about how communication and culture is increasingly affected by visual images alone and the decline of the the written word.
“Ego Casting” :Rosen takes us on a James Burke style “Connections” tour from the birth of the remote control to TiVO and the hyper have-it-your-way individual’s society we live in today.
