Monday, September 29, 2008

Xenophilia



My friend Nathan was trying to put a video on his Busoga Shining Light Association blog. He mentioned this on an IM just as I was about ready for bed. I mentioned to him that I thought the easiest way to do it was to sign up to YouTube and post the video there and they would make the code for it. He was trying something else, and I went to bed. Then this afternoon he messaged me and asked if I'd seen the video. I hadn't. He told me to check the link at his blog, I scrolled way down to see a link in the sidebar under the heading Drama. I also noticed that he added a link to this blog.

I'm delighted by the video which is a short presentation as part of the BSLA Drama Group. The Group provides HIV and living with AIDS messages. I had seen photographs earlier, but to actually hear what's going on adds a whole new element. I'm also delighted that my suggestion was useful to Nathan. The best way to learn about all these Web tools is just playing around with them and I'm very happy Nathan is willing to do that.

Ethan Zuckerman posted a great post today with the text of a talk he gave at Mastermundo. Ethan Zuckerman has written quite a lot about xenophilia, even more important he's tried to encourage people to become xenophiles in many practical ways. Not the least of it by co-founding Global Voices. If you click that link consider signing up for the daily digests which go right into your email box. The digests are a great way to serendipitously hit on interesting stories you won't find elsewhere. Global Voices is a sort of Readers Digest of what bloggers around the world are writing about. Zuckerman in his talk points out that xenophilia is hard to promote because people tend ordinarily toward homophily. Homophily is summed up by "birds of a feather stick together." If you want to learn more about xenophilia and homophily read his great post from this spring: Homophily, serendipity, xenophilia. Read today's post Mastermundo, and the challenge of breaking rules, it will probably make you want to learn more, because Zuckerman is a great storyteller.

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