The Creative Internet

Head over, immediately, to Google’s The Creative Internet. The site lists 106 examples of brilliant online creativity and experimentation. Many of them you’ve seen before, or I’ve posted here — and I suspect I’ll steal some things and do future posts about them — but seeing them all together is a great reminder of what’s happening.

It made me think about part of a post I’d read, a couple weeks ago, from Russell Davies. It was part of 5-things meme that was going around — and I’ve been having trouble getting his question out of my head:

“A lot of the people I see in the BRIG and around and about on the internet grew up with the web. They invented jobs to do on it and became very good at them. They built good bits of it. They understand it. But a lot of them did it, not because of something intrinsic about the technologies but because it was the new thing to understand, the new thing that other people didn’t know about, it was arcane, unformed, novel. It needed inventing. Now, however, they’re bored. They’ve done that. The web is baked. They’re wondering what to do next. I’m loving watching that. I’m wondering too. Will there be another thing as big? Will the invisible high school fragment? Will they settle into middle-edge and do letterpress?”

I think what makes Google’s list so nice is that it is encouraging. There may be parts of the web that are “baked” — but this site points to the still “cooking” potential that bubbling away. It’s a well curated collection of online innovation — vibrant examples of individuals, and crowds, creating things that are innovative and would’ve been impossible a couple years ago. It’s a good start and gives me hope.

(Link via Richard Schatzberger.)