When you think about it, this is really a revolutionary technology.

Before the Internet, all of the mass media of the 20th century required a great deal of wealth to buy into. Whether it was the national newspaper, the radio, the moving picture, broadcast television, or cable television, only those who were in control of vast sums of wealth could afford to get their message out, which, not surprisingly, favored the interests of wealth. So for a long time, that was the only message that most people were getting.

But with the Internet, anybody can freely post their opinions. Now we truly can move toward an open and democratic exchange of political ideas without the corporate filter defining the terms of acceptable discourse. Even I can have my little piece of real estate and post anything I choose.

I choose to post a video of some guys reenacting the Death Star trench scene from Star Wars with their hands.

Every year, the Edge Foundation poses a question to some of the world’s top minds. This year, the question was: “What are you optimistic about?” See what leading thinkers had to say and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments section below.

I’ll go first. I am optimistic about the long-term potential that the Internet has in breaking down all kinds of barriers, but particularly those of class. For a very long time now, all mass media has come from wealth and power, and people just accepted that because there had never been any other way. But the Internet makes possible the creation of networks between people, and the construction of meaning from a variety of perspectives. Even in the infancy of the World Wide Web, we’ve seen such user-driven communication tools as message boards, peer-to-peer file sharing, weblogging, podcasting, video posting, and social networking websites. As the current generation of technology-savvy children become the developers and thinkers of the adult world, society itself will be reshaped in the image of this most democratic medium.

I’m not filing this under Predictions. As I said, I’m particularly optimistic about this one.

What are you optimistic about?

What do you get when you cross an iPod and a cell phone, and then throw a web browser into the mix? The Apple iPhone, of course, available in June.

They are also introducing a video player, called Apple TV that can download digital content from the Internet and play it on a television.

Steve Jobs announced the new products at the MacWorld expo.

My prediction – the iPhone will be a huge hit. It’s exactly the easy-to-use, all-in-one device that the market has been hungry for. The Apple TV, not so much. I think between Tivo, DVR, Netflix, Video On Demand, and people just generally being busier than they used to be, the market for more video content is over-saturated. iTunes videos probably sell specifically because they can play on portable computers and iPods, not because people can’t find anything to watch on their televisions. Bottom line: Apple TV, no; iPhone, oh yes.

But however it turns out, Bravo to Apple for once again pushing the envelope and moving us to the next level.

Well, as long as I’m already being blocked by the filter, I may as well share this with you.

It’s an eight-minute adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour starring Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street. What more needs to be said?

(Warning: Adult Language and Content)

This film was shown at Sundance in 2002 to great acclaim, but Sesame Workshop’s lawyers put the kibosh on it, and it was pulled from release.

For another fascinating story about Bert, check out the Bert Is Evil page of one of my all-time favorite websites, Snopes.com, to find out how Bert accidentally ended up at an anti-American protest rally in Bangladesh:

The Osama bin Laden poster – with the muppet – was displayed at rallies by pro-bin Laden protesters and appeared in photographs carried by news agencies such as Reuters and Associated Press.

The technology of today has an incredible potential to make the physical distances between us much less of a barrier. Other distances between us may take some more time.

I’m learning something new about blogging every day! My last post quoted an article from The Onion that mentioned Vanderbilt University. Next thing I know, there’s a trackback from Vanderbilt. It must be some kind of spider searching the blogs for the school’s name and automatically linking to it. The University of Texas trackback was probably the same thing. I wonder if other schools have that. Like, say, Stanford University. Or the University of Notre Dame. Or New York University. Or the Ohio State University. Or the University of California Los Angeles. Or Northwestern University. Or the University of Wisconsin Madison. Or Arizona State University. Or the University of Pennsylvania. Or the Pennsylvania State University, better known as Penn State. Yes, I do wonder…

Well, there are better ways to get linked up. I just registered this blog with Technorati, an online blog directory. Shakespeare Teacher is currently ranked 2,431,865 out of all of the Technorati blogs. I don’t think they make giant foam hands with that many fingers, but hey, I’m just getting started. However, if you do a search for Genghis Khan Theme Park, my blog comes up second only to a re-posting of the article I was originally citing. So, who’s obscure now?

I tried to access the blog from a Department of Education site yesterday, but it wouldn’t load in fully. The filter said that the page had exceeded the number of “questionable words.” Now, I think I do a pretty good job of keeping it clean here. Any thoughts on what words or phrases in my first week of posts might have given the filter pause?

Now, this is strange. After my last post, Maps of War, both my cousin’s blog and the University of Texas picked up that I had linked to them, and they both linked back to my post. I didn’t know they could do that!

So now that I’ve been outed as a blogger, I guess the time has come to go public. And I think there’s enough content here now that I can start inviting a small group of people to come and visit. If you’re one of these people, then this may be the first post you’re reading. Welcome to my blog!

What would be an appropriate introduction to Shakespeare Teacher? How about an article from The Onion that gives the site a name check?

Theater Major Has Too Long Borne Shakespeare Teacher’s Blunt Upbraidings, Bitter Scoffs

November 20, 2006 | Issue 42-47

NASHVILLE, TN-Vanderbilt University theater major Sandy Heckscher said Monday that she has been stretched to the limits of her endurance by the “blunt upbraidings and bitter scoffs” of drama professor and Shakespeare scholar Ian Treatt. “Who breathes but’d rather be a simple whore, than lurk within this country of insult?” said Heckscher, who thinks Treatt is a “bad grader.” “O monstrous beast! How like a swine he lies! Grim death – that foul and loathsome moniker!” Treatt responded to the charges by saying only that he found himself amazed that theater majors “are too simple/To offer war where they should kneel for peace.”

Enjoy the rest of the blog, and if you find a post or two that speaks to you, feel free to speak back and leave a comment behind, so I’ll know you’ve been here.