There are few things I like better than well-written articles that are fresh, innovative, pointed, and decidedly worth spreading. There are few things I like less than recycled, thoughtless words only written to be written. There is a substantial amount of information that we consume each day (adding up to 3.6 zettabytes per year), and the intrinsic curiosity of humans means that the upward trend of mass data consumption will likely continue. We consume photos, news, concepts, articles, and cats doing cute things on YouTube. But how much of the information we consume is local?
With the relatively recent focus on local sourcing of food, community business, and locally-made products, we are fast becoming a society that places high value on ‘acting locally, thinking globally.’ The benefits are hard-to-miss for local food sourcing. But what about local consumption of information? With the ubiquity of the internet, it is easy to get headlines, news, inspiration, ideas, and massive amounts of information just about anywhere in the world. The internet age allows us to do business far-and-wide, educate ourselves for free, and connect with people across the globe. It does, in many ways, connect us more widely than the most brilliant thinkers in human history could have imagined.
I spent about an hour yesterday researching local information consumption. Admittedly, this is a difficult thing to quantify, but nonetheless, I could not find much data. Certainly in Colorado, there is a substantial base that watch local news, listen to Colorado Public Radio (CPR), and read the Denver Post, Westword, 5280 and a plethora of local blogs. Question: How much of what we read locally is not about news, but about ideas?
In our quest to seek out innovators and leaders in Colorado, we want to pose a couple questions to the TEDxMileHigh community: Who are the thought leaders in the local information space? What are you reading that is community-minded? Where do you get your local source of inspiration?
