Rosen: Your Wikipedia example is critically important. Here's why. I am on the Wikipedia advisory board, and in the spring I had coffee with Jimmy Wales when he was in town. I asked him why did Wikipedia work when the odds are that most things don't work, and he said something very important, although its significance escaped me at the time. People come to Wikipedia not knowing how it works, but they do know how a regular, 'ol encyclopedia works and so the "leap" to knowing what a free online encyclopedia would be like is not that great. This prior knowledge is critical to a system's viability because is constrains users and points them in the logical directions. How much did it cost Wikipedia to put that common understanding into each contributor's head? Zero! They already knew it. Explaining the way it works takes all of six words: "The online encyclopedia anyone can edit." With 6,000 words we did not get clarity on what a crowdsourced investigation asked of participants because there was no common image to start with, nothing comparable to "encyclopedia, right!..."

The Internet will eventually be full of such 3-D environments; Second Life might even be one of them. But in the meantime, it's just slurping up corporate dollars and delivering little in return.

The reason we report on the legislative process is to empower citizens to more easily follow what their government is doing. That makes it easier for citizens to get involved in the legislative process.

The 39 questions posed by ordinary citizens highlighted "the role new media is playing in politics and everything else in society," he added.

Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline.com, said the format would get more people engaged in the political process and give politicians a better chance to connect with the voters.

Japan has rechristened the island of Iwo Jima, site of one of World War II's most horrific battles, with its pre-war name in an attempt to rectify a misnomer proliferated for a half-century by such movies as Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima." ... The change was championed by surviving islanders evacuated during the war, who wanted to reclaim an identity they said had been hijacked.

”Web site, news application or immersive media simulation/platform” “promote knowledge among people” “share know-how” “solve local problems” “using information to imagine collective possibilities” (a site that helps people see a larger/bigger vision for life on this planet–this goal stood out to me) “reach common community goals” “participatory community news” “useful to real people/communities”