[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)

Sharing thoughts and expressions and even actions with others, possibly many others, is becoming a normal opportunity, not just for professionals and experts but for anyone who wants it. This opportunity can work on scales and over duration that were previously unimaginable. Unlike personal or communal value, public value requires not just new opportunities for old motivations; it requires governance, which is to say ways of discouraging or preventing people from wrecking either the process or the product of the group.

Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.

In a timepiece, a sweep of a second hand is so slim in a way that it doesn't wait for no man, and that's why we choose to conceive things from the heart.

Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.

Public and civic value require commitment and hard work among the core group of participants. It also requires that these groups be self-governing and submit to constraints that help them ignore distracting and entertaining material and stay focused instead of some sophisticated task.

This work is not easy, and it never goes smoothly. Because we are hopelessly committed to both individual and group effectiveness, groups committed to public or civic value are rarely permanent. Instead, groups need to acquire a culture that rewards their members for doing that hard work. It takes this kind of group effort to get what we need, not just what we want; understanding how to create and maintain is one of the great challenges of our era.

Civic participants don't aim to make life better merely for members of the group. They want to improve even the lives of people who never participate...

New media is the modern day gold rush.

We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.

We have more ways to get our news than ever, which is supposed to be a good thing, because more competition is supposed to challenge you to do better. However, in this social media age, what is has done is allowed the information business to be a free- rein free-for-all. Old rules of journalistic integrity have been thrown out the window. Everyone has been given the conch, and no one knows what to do with it. Instead of using the new-media landscape to spur us to higher quality, we have instead become sloppier than ever: Tweet first, research later. Post first, rescind later. Guess first, confirm later.

There are two characters in me: a doodler and a tuner. And the only thing that makes me go crazy is when they both fight for their turn.