In my pre-Thanksgiving post, I wrote about my new-found desire to transcend individualism. Not losing my indentity, but working on cultivating the commons more than just myself. Joi Ito brought up a great online example this weekend comparing blogs and wikipedia. Blogs are very individualistic and egocentric. They can’t not be. Blogs are your thoughts, your perspectives, your pictures, links to what you find interesting. Wikipedia on the other hand is made by a mass of nameless users, each contributing to an organized greater good which will benefit us all.

It’s a good point. I’m much more apt to spend hours babbling away my thoughts (like right now) than contribute to a meaningful project already off the ground in which my work is anonymous and truly only for the greater common good. I think that’s normal though … I don’t think I’m any more ego-centric than the average person. But I would like to push myself, to make a conscious effort to really focus my energy on projects like Wikipedia (the Spanish Wikipedia especially needs help), Tomorrow’s Future, and Global Voices. That doesn’t mean I’m done blogging … self expression is important and repressing it probably does more harm than good, but hopefully I will be shifting my priorities.