First, there is an article by George Saunders (and yes, that is SU's own creative writing professor George Saunders) called "Flooding the Zone," in which he proposes a wild shift of populations during the creation of Plisraelistine. In this process, all the Americans go to Iraq and adopt Iraqi families. This means about 12 Americans for every one Iraqi, which Saunders suggests would cut way down on insurgents and violence because, hey, it's pretty hard to sneak out for an attack with 12 touristly curious Americans attending your every move. Then the Palestinians move to the Western US and the Israelis go to the Eastern US with the Mississippi River as a DMZ guarded at every crossing by armed UN guards. The folks will be so busy enjoying the joys of space and glitz, goes the thinking, they won't worry about fighting anyway. Then the Canadians move to Palestine and Israel to do the actual construction of the new country, which will have mansions alternating between Jew and Palestinian down every street. Integration if ever there was such. Finally, the folks in Kosovo get Canada for awhile, soaking up the space and the beauty. With construction complete, everyone returns home.

Next article: "God Doesn't Need Ole Anthony". This is the story of a Norwegian man living in Minnesota who served in the Air Force and eventually had a religious experience that sent him to Texas and increasing levels of poverty while taking on the televangelists - the big ones, that take millions of dollars from ordinary people with the lure of prosperity for their faith. Anthony has a network of insiders and infiltrators in the major televangelical organizations, and uses this information, along with material retrieved from garbage, to bring down corrupt ministries.

Finally, an article by Atul Gawande called "The Bell Curve" which discusses the potentials for patients if doctors, clinics and hospitals were really open with their information, including patients in internal quality or assessment committees and so forth. The case study is about clinics that treat Cystic Fibrosis. It's a really interesting article, and what it suggested to me was how much medical advancement might be possible--really possible--if the medical field wasn't invested in ownership of knowledge, if patients weren't numbers (commodities), if insurance companies hadn't forced the issues of networks and those boundaries hadn't been created that gave us "centers of excellence," a term which necessarily requires a proprietary knowledge base.

So what does this all have to do with this course? Well, in the first story, whole ethnic/national communities are separated from their "land" but not from each other. In the Iraqi example, real US people encounter real Iraqi people in their own homes and lifestyles, an idea that could build worlds of understanding and friendship - or at least pure relief when the Americans left. But it would greatly improve the situation over the present violence just by the getting-to-know-you method of networking.

In example two, Anthony uses a network inside of the structure he fights in order to bring them down. He is not doing it for personal financial gain, although he does admit to a certain amount of ego and scheming in his makeup. He's acting on what he believes to be a true spirit of Christianity, and he's doing it through a network that is not a mainstream communication channel.

And finally, the medical example really connected with me, with my extended background in health insurance/benefits and the changes I've seen in the delivery of health care because of HMOs and other third party payer systems. I wonder what it would take to transcend the idea of ownership, knowledge as property and patient count as a measure of success and really pool the wisdom and knowledge within the medical community toward a real solution for real patients, like children with CF.

A network of doctors in the story were able, finally, to determine where the best treatment for CF, based on patient life expectancies, was to be had. The effort it took to find that out was a bit unnerving. The degree to while the medical field has a "bell curve," that it is "graded" prevents real breakthroughs that networks of shared information could change.

In class we talked a little about the breast cancer site that stopped taking comments because of the false information that ended up there. But at some level, that sharing has to happen. and it has to be an informal network that is willing to transcend the exclusionary notions of property and ownership.

Seeing network in this way, understanding blogging as a way for this communication to take place, registered for me in a way some other examples haven't, so although this is quite long, thanks for letting me have my say in public. :)