Sharing Connections

I discovered permaculture this year, and tonnes of free resources about it,  on the internet.

Facebook has been blocked at work. This is problematic for personal and professional reasons.  Personally, FB is a staple for me, much like a Tim Horton's double-double when in Canada.  So far from home, FB helps me to connect, to friends,  ideas,  inspiration and Canadian cultural norms.    Feeling uninspired by office paperwork?  Discover a post by innovator Jamey Coughlin, or Doula Andrea Monroe, or fellow CUSO International volunteer Margaret Graves...and find the light, and bigger picture again, then breeze through the little repetitive office work for the rest of the afternoon.

Professionally, Facebook is a big, free, networking tool that my office has yet to embrace.  What better way to reach our public, in real-time, and expense-free to advertise our upcoming workshops in Sanitation and Hygene, Nutrition and Backyard Veggy Gardens?

The other key location in my life right now, that has yet to embrace the beauty of social media is the movie theater here.  There is not one person, local or foreigner, who can tell me what the movie of the week is, if they have not made a special trip to the theater to see the poster with their own eyes.  I am soooo tempted to go and offer to make a FB page and a Twitter acount for them, and get them to call me once a week, so that I can update the page, in exchange for 2 or 8 free weekly tickets. 

Being in Honduras this year really made me reach out for ideas and people.  Especially during my first few months,  when I couldn't easily carry out many intellectual conversations in Spanish, I reached out to satisfy this part of my being on the internet.  TEDtalks, YouTube, Facebook...some of this year's key findings are listed under my Awe Expansion page.   Now there's all this talk of SOPA and ACTA, and all the other censorship devils who are trying to curb this free flow of internet information, and curb the new ways of thought and action...it worries me.  I've never felt more hopeful for the future in all my life, and much of that has to do with the amazing flow of ideas and information and connection available through the internet that I discovered this year.   Knowledge used to be power because it was so scarce. Now there are free online courses offered by MIT and available to anyone in the world. The internet has spread this knowledge far and wide, and the powers that be are afraid. I hope that now that we've had a taste of freedom, we fight to maintain it.