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I'm still thinking about the Corruptco Blogfest, and the incredible potential for change it represents...

By bringing so many like-minded people together on a particular topic, Lily has shown us something — a possible way out of the rut she rightly points out that we're in. It's a rut of accepting The Way Things Are, not because we are evil or stupid or uncaring, but because finding solutions to the problems that face America today is simply too overwhelming a task for a single human being.

I see bloggers as being isolated in little, individual corners of America. Alone, we blog on about corporate corruption, politics, rights abuses — anything and everything. And there are many, many bright, informed bloggers out there. But those blogs are a thousand points of scattered light. We read them, enjoy them, learn from them, and move on.

But by focusing all that light on a given issue, maybe it's possible for us not only to expose the issue, as we do now, but to collectively find a way to resolve it.

The Internet is a vast community, an unprecedented communications resource. If we could find a way to organize hundreds of posters to interactively brainstorm a particular issue — say, how to take money out of political campaigns, or how to change our two-party political system into a true multi-party system — we might discover that there really are ways to update America for the better.

I don't know how it could be done. But I've had the idea in the back of my mind for a while — using the web to compound brainpower.

Lily's Corruptco blogfest proved that inviting posts on a single issue could yield impressive results, and did. I'm just wondering if there's a way to take the concept a step further — to stop being that cheez-doodles-eating kid Lily talked about and use that tremendous potential she sees in us.