i have a dream

In that dream, I manage to convince at least 20 people who will be attending the American Sociological Association meetings in New York this summer to engage in a simultaneous pseudonymous group twittercast of the events.

You, if you are going to the meetings, can help my dream come true.

No, I haven't figured out the details. But I see the potential for an interesting piece of socioconceptual art.

Plus, the whole theme of the conference is "Is Another World Possible?" I think this theme is better than most of the other ASA meeting themes since I've been in this business. But, still, there is something naive about it that smacks of The Baby Boomers Who Run Sociology reminiscing self-indulgently about the days when they would sit around their dorm rooms in various degrees of drug- or rally-for-the-revolution-induced haziness asking each other this question. The real question is not whether another world is possible, because a very different world from what we have now is inevitable and is, in fact, well on its way. The real questions are instead what ways the world will be more benign and more pernicious than the world we have now, and whether anything can be done to nudge the future more toward the former than the latter. Anyway, the transformations of connectedness manifested in innovations like blogs and like twitter seem one vital part of the Another World that is on its way, and I continue to be amazed at how little appreciation sociologists in their forties and above seem to have of this.