Possible Introductions

Inspiration was given to me, in large part, from the mouth of a fat squirrel who walked up to me begging for food like a lost puppy dog on the streets of DC. I happened to be walking back from a performance in the historic national theater stewing over what to write for an introduction to this eBook when it happened. I'm about as lost in writing as I was in DC, and trying to patchwork together the desires of classmates, teachers, and myself into one coherent thesis for a book, with only a dabbling English experience, was proving mind boggling. I knew the topics for the book, I knew the general lay out, but really, what was it all about? What was the purpose for writing an eBook and what do we want people to know?

In the midst of this inescapable mind fog, I left for DC to attend a health conference. Beforehand I spent a few hours looking at our prospective schedule and I realized there was a lot of time where we were left to ourselves and we could plan whatever activities we wanted to do. With that in mind I quickly jumped online and researched various free activities and places to see. When we arrived in the airport and made our way over to the metro I realized that most of the group was just blindly following the crowd and one or two who had been there before. Although I have never navigated the DC metro before, I knew from my experience in Asia how the subway systems work and I took a quick picture of the map and plotted out our journey to the hotel.

Because I knew what I wanted to do and had spent a little time figuring out how to get around, I had no fear of getting lost. Even if I was separated from the group, I could find my way back and even if, heaven forbid, I couldn't figure out the map, I knew that I could ask people around me and find my way back. This served immensely because later that night our group was separated when the subway train doors closed and myself and another girl were stranded on the platform.

The next morning I decided to leave early and head over to a performance that I had heard of online. Although everyone else had ambitions of getting breakfast, I knew what I wanted so I packed my own meal, borrowed an umbrella from the doorman and got directions to the theater. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the early hour, but for one magical half hour, I had DC to myself. I walked down the cobble stone streets, past historic monuments and buildings, and realized that I would never have had this opportunity unless I had done a little bit of personal preparation, and used my accrued understanding of the history that surrounded my location as a knowledge base in order to get around.

So when I was returning from the theater, the rain had stopped, the sun was peaking around the building tops, and I stopped in front of a statue of Colonel Stewart to watch some squirrels play. This is when the inspiration happened. One fat little squirrel looked up, eyed me, and then meandered over as if to say: "good morning". It was a neat experience to feel so much awe and yet so much connectedness to this city.

And it's that feeling that I want to convey to you, the readers. The digital world can be a large place, full of unfamiliar and burgeoning technologies and ideas. How do we embrace emerging technologies that have so much potential to help while protecting ourselves from piracy, time leaches, and trolls? Well, we've walked down the streets of this digital world, taken notes, visited museums, and compiled a collection of field notes into this Digital tour guide. I don't want to make the comparison too close to a tour guide though, because our main purpose is not to blurt out facts, but to give a solid base of knowledge about an issue, supported with historical connections, and propose actions for applying these concepts in our digital age.

What makes up the world we live in and how does our changing digital environment effect us? How does our past influence our future? Or does it? In a world of ever developing digital society it can be hard to decipher all the information and concepts that are thrown our way. In this eBook we work to make digital concepts bite sized and digestible, as well as entertaining and relevant. Using historical examples to guide our suggestions for the future, and tapping into the power of social proof, we confirm and validate our ideas. We have worked tirelessly, frantically, and all too often somewhat blindly as we have attempted to find new insights, opinions, and social proofs for our ideas.

This book is divided into six content areas: Openness, Inquiry, Government, Science, Education, Intellectual Property & Creative Commons, Art & Music, and Business. These are areas that we have identified as being the mostly highly discussed and debated in relation to technology and it’s concepts of openness, control, participation and information. In this book we provide the reader with content to help them become more informed concerning many of the emerging digital concepts and concerns.

Each section is created to allow users of all interest levels to be able to access useful information. Sections are introduced with a brief descriptive video detailing the concepts of the chapter and introducing a “tweethis” for the chapter. These chapters are then enriched with relevant images, infographs, and of course bibliographies to support our research. In efforts to keep up with the dynamic nature of technology today, all the embedded videos, along with supporting videos, can be found on an accompanying Youtube channel.