Link Banana

Many people have linked to this article on Flickr’s Director of Community and I didn’t get why. Then I read it. It’s pretty interesting.

I’m personally torn about whether I’d find Peter Lovenheim a clever or annoying neighbor, but he’s got some interesting — right is another issue — things to say about the state of the American living.

The previous evening, as I’d left home, the last words I heard before I shut the door had been, “Dad, you’re crazy!” from my teenage daughter. Sure, the sight of your 50-year-old father leaving with an overnight bag to sleep at a neighbor’s house would embarrass any teenager, but “crazy”? I didn’t think so.

There’s talk today about how as a society we’ve become fragmented by ethnicity, income, city versus suburb, red state versus blue. But we also divide ourselves with invisible dotted lines. I’m talking about the property lines that isolate us from the people we are physically closest to: our neighbors.

Big Think’s a very interesting new website, which is definitely worth giving at least a little time and thought to. As it defines itself:

Our task is to move the discussion away from talking heads and talking points, and give it back to you. That is Big Think’s mission. In practice, this means that our information is truly interactive. When you log onto our site, you can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with todays leading thinkers, movers and shakers. You can search them by question or by topic, and, best of all, respond in kind. Upload a video in which you take on Senator Ted Kennedy’s views on immigration; post a slideshow of your trip to China that supports David Dollar’s assertion that pollution in China is a major threat; or answer with plain old fashioned text. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or heck, throw your own question or idea into the ring.

Big Think is yours. We are what you think.

(via Magnetbox)