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— A Brief History….

Xanga began before it’s time in 1998: in lieu of it’s key contemporaries like; friendster and, livejournal, as a social networking site for sharing books, movies and music reviews — leading it’s competition in social media as we know it today to sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace and, Twitter.  Yet today, Xanga remains after a $60,560 community supported campaign.

At the beginning: users enjoyed editting and formatting content in fully customizable profiles with writing html and javascript plug–ins; private access to audioblogs, and blurbs also known as pulses — Members participated in blogrings, photo, video and weblogs…  contributing content to an active community sponsoring social commentary @ http://www.xanga.com

James Burke://”Burke’s Brains.” And, how ‘Lemony Squeeks, Gin, Tonic and, now Yellow Canaries.’ —[Doyle c.2009/ ‘Research Writing’ Review c. 2013]

In a presentation titled “How Technology is Changing the Way We Think,” James Burke, a well known science historian gave a speech in the Buskirk-Chumley Theater at 7p.m., Monday the 16^th of February 2009.  The event was sponsored by the IU School of Journalism.

In it he discussed what he likes to call “The Future of the Future,” or rather how data is collected and formatted today provides the opportunity to open doors for an unimaginable wealth of information. Furthermore he cites some interesting facts like how “brains have more cells in them than the number of known atoms in the universe,” and compares them with the likes of which each cell stores a specific type of information depending on where it is located within the brain. If each cell represented a particular a brain and a brain represented a node in a network nodes containing a given amount of knowledge and experience, then imagine the unbridled power of our collective consciousness would unleash when we develop the ability to access it in this way. As a matter of fact we already have, it is called the world wide web.

According, James Burke and many others, the vast majority of ‘brains’ as he so affectionately calls them, remain unused. The human brain is composed of a highly sophisticated set of fatty cells; it is comprised of about a hundred billion neurons, roughly 10,000 synapses and thousands of interconnected axons all of which are constantly transmitting, receiving and storing memory. Although, as we may well already know due to current studies and further scientific research, we really only use some ten percent of it consciously. However, much like the human mind, with recent developments concerning information technology and Burkes knowledge mapping the internet will make it possible to store very large volumes of information. In a nutshell, Burke explains that in the same way that axons connect synapses and the synapses to neurons in our brains work, so to do computers, internet and people who use it.

A progressive supporter of science, James Burke is as the Washington post has quoted, “One of the most intriguing minds of the western world,” sitting in on his lecture is proof enough of that. He argues the point that knowledge has been highly valued since before the concept of time was created.