Clear and Present...

I dug up an article on Digg.com entitled "What the Social Web Looked like in the 90's."  Pretty much the general idea was to compare and contrast some specific aspects of the futuristic lifestyle we lead to the closest possible correlation in the 90's.  Here are my 2 favorites:

1. Before YouTube... there was "America's Funniest Home Video's"--That made me laugh because I was just watching a Bob Saget stand-up special and by God

does he have a dirty mouth.  

But think about it, not that I think YouTube is the new America's Funniest, but YouTube is the second most visited site on the web.  AFHV was up there on TV, but it was mostly, if not all  nonsense.  YouTube has social value.  There is nonsense, but there's also some of the highest valued content on the web.  

2. Before Digg... there was your local newspapers "Top Stories of the Year" issue--What now?  Now we have a website in which the most popular stories of the moment are constantly being put up for everyone else to read.  It is slightly cyclical if you think about it... if everyone is checking out Digg and Digg displays the most read articles, then the most read articles will be read by everyone checking out Digg... I hope that makes sense to anyone else but me.  But it's genius.  The only questionable step in the process is how to make people knowledgeable about the website.  

These are just some reminders of the good ol' days.  

To relate this to online journalism (I'm going to start calling it OJ), change is occurring.  We are living a transition and we are part of the transition.  We can assist the transition or make it a rocky road to success.  It is up to us.  The next generation of journalists are here and they're here to make a difference.  We have grown up with this technology and understand how to make it work.  We will make it work.