OPEN

I’m adding a new category to Open: "Recommended reading". Usually I have held back on listing links – I don’t find them useful on most blogs I read so I’ve not put them in here.

However, I’m doing a lot of reading at the moment and I love recommending interesting content to interested people. If you’re reading this blog, I’m thinking you’ll find this stuff interesting.

In the past I’ve rushed to comment on these things, but frankly I’m not always ready or sure what I think. I’m digesting it – mulling it over. But I still want to share it with people.

For what it’s worth, things I’m thinking and reading as much as possible about at the moment are:

• Impact of the internet on society, politics, business and the media
• Interplay between informal media on formal media
• Search (everything I can get my mits on)
• Social network analysis (SNA)
• Impact/use of social computing in organisations

If you have any suggestions of good articles/books/blogs please do let me know.

Anyhow, first of my recommended reads is this discussion between Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf in the Wall Street Journal on the future of the internet.

Why read it? the WSJ’s "about the participants" should explain:

Vinton G. Cerf is the chief Internet "evangelist" for Google
Inc. where he is responsible for identifying new technologies. From
1994 to 2005, Mr. Cerf was a senior vice president at MCI. Mr. Cerf
co-designed the TCP/IP protocols and basic architecture of the
Internet. In 2005, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for
his work on the Web. He has been chairman of the Internet’s regulatory
body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or
ICANN, since 2000.

Esther Dyson is editor at large at CNET Networks
Inc., where she is responsible for its quarterly newsletter, Release
1.0, and its PC Forum executive conference. Before selling her business
to CNET in 2004, Ms. Dyson had co-owned EDventure Holdings and edited Release 1.0
since 1983. She is a technology investor focused on emerging markets
and serves on the board of several start-ups. She was chairman of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation from 1995 to early 1998 and founding
chairman of ICANN from 1998 to 2000.