After banging on about HiptopNation endlessly, it would be remiss of me not to mention Fotolog.

From Fotolog’s excellent, inspiring FAQ:

“IS A FOTOLOG LIKE A BLOG/WEBLOG?
Sorta. Blogs are generally a lot of words with a few images. Fotologs are a lot of images with a few words. Fotolog is Blogger for people that don’t write well. If a picture tells a thousand words, then doing Fotolog makes you very prolific. Some say that the web is “a writing medium” — we say that the Blogging revolution isn’t necessarily about the writing — it’s about personal, continual publishing irrespective of whether it’s publishing words or images.”

The digital divide isn’t just about access to computers and the internet; it’s about, on one level, being literate, and on another being able to think systemically, algorithmically, creatively.

At last night’s Advance for Design London meeting – ‘adaptive design’ was debated in many contexts, including how to make things so people can remake them (cf. ‘wombling’: here, here and here). Ann Light‘s presentation hit upon the gulf between those who are consumers-users and those who are creator-users [I can’t find her slides online yet – lots of good discussion about Lego was had… more later].

While there’s a debate to be had about that being ‘a good thing’, visually-oriented personal publishing is clearly starting to create bridges across these divides. We’re all unlearning what we have learnt: to be good consumers as creation gets easier, more attractive, more personal and more powerful.

Don’t know about you, but I think it would be great to have everyone over here, on this side, with the Morlocks. We have a way to go to get back to the future. What’s that whoosh? It’s the sound of the barriers to personal expression sliding away a little more…