I'm sure you've noticed that the way we relate to each other and to traditional institutions has fundamentally changed. Seems like in so many areas, people are finding ways to work outside of organizations/governments/institutions. And some of these new groups are becoming powerful forces.
The Gates Foundation has more clout now than most governments. People use ebay and craigslist to buy and sell stuff - whereas before they needed traditional media. Filmmakers upload to YouTube (whose motto is Broadcast Yourself) and bypass the Hollywood distribution machine. More and more college students are opting for online or for-profit colleges - like University of Phoenix - and ignoring traditional educational institutions.
And speaking of education, there was the Million Dollar Homepage guy who wanted to raise money for his college tuition. And now, one of my old workmates, Ryan Hornbeck, is off to Oxford to get his PhD in anthropology. And he's looking for a scholarship; going beyond traditional scholarship venues:
I'm not kidding -- I'm actually asking for $39,000...But this is an incentive-based scholarship, and I promise that giving a sum of this size will never have been this luxurious, educational, or fun.
If you are a corporation trying to reach out to a new generation of communicators, you might find the following research highly relevant to your interests...I’ll be researching the effects online relationships have on an adolescent / young adult’s social, physical, and emotional health.
So Ryan is simply part of a larger societal shift - cutting out the middleman, forming your own power base, it's do-it-yourself on a global scale. All because of the web. I love the web. Shakes things up doesn't it?
