The first, from the Poynter Institute, concerns how Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm's staff made Twitter into journalism:
I tuned in an Internet broadcast of ... Granholm's annual state of the state speech because it was expected to be laden with energy and environment issues. On impulse I logged into Twitter and asked my followers if there had been a hashtag established for the speech. There was: MiSOTS (Mich. State of the State).
To my amazement, the hashtag had been established by the governor's staff—who were tweeting major points of Granholm's speech as she made them.
Meanwhile, many, many, many other people used this hashtag to challenge points, support points, do some partisan sniping, question assumptions, add perspective, speculate about what was going on, and provide links to supporting information—including a transcript of the speech and the opposite (Republican) party's response.
(Emphasis in original.)
The second, Mark Morford musing about technology in general:
To paraphrase a renowned philosopher, we just keep making the pie higher. This is the nature of us. It is, in turns, both wonderful and terrifying.
It seems there are only two real options, two end results of our civilization's grand experiment. Either the stack becomes so high -- with our sense of wonder and integrity rising right along with it -- that it finally lifts us off the ground and transports us to some new realm of understanding and evolution, or it ultimately topples over, crashes and mauls everything that came before, because we just didn't care enough to stop and smell the astonishment.
You have but to remember: How many ancient, advanced civilizations have collapsed under the weight of their own unchecked growth, their own technological advances, their own inability to stay nimble and attuned to the crushing marvel of it all? Answer: all of them.
Both are worth reading in full.