"“Wellman is finding that Twitter isn’t flat,” Vidantam says—as if Tom Friedman’s chimerical “flatness” (the analytic value of which has proven to be nil) is the only possible quality of transformative political agency.

In last year’s revolutions, it wasn’t flatness that gave social media its power. It was its hyperlocality, its novel blending of intimate communities and witness at a distance.

Other work in which Wellman is involved argues for the richness of real-world community life that gets instantiated in Twitter. In a paper called “Imagining Twitter as an Imagined Community,” Wellman & his coauthors find that Twitter networks are “the basis for a real community, even though Twitter was not designed to support the development of online communities. There they conclude that “studying Twitter is useful for understanding how people use new communication technologies to form new social connections and maintain existing ones.”

Here’s the thing: Twitter is part of the “real world.”"

"The internet, Web, Cloud, these are essentially disruptive global constructs for many of us. The atoms that serve as infrastructure for these global constructs are physically located in specific countries; the laws & regulations that govern the industries disrupted by these constructs are themselves usually national in structure; the firms doing the disrupting are quasi-stateless in character, trying…to be “global”; emerging & future generations have worldviews that are becoming more & more AmazonBay, discarding the national middle for edges of global & hyperlocal.<br />
<br />
We are all so steeped in national structures for every aspect of this: the law, governance model, access & delivery technologies, ways of doing business — that we’re missing the point.<br />
<br />
Everything is becoming more stateless, more global. We don’t know how to deal with it. So we’re all trying very hard to put genies back in bottles, pave cowpaths, turn back waves, all with the same result.<br />
<br />
Abject failure."

"Once upon a time, Orion published a regular department called The Place Where You Live. Though the department was discontinued in 2003, we’ve been asked about its fate ever since—and reminded by readers of how important it was to them.<br />
<br />
So we’re bringing it back. This is a space for you to exercise your sixth sense and tell us about your place. What connects you to it? What history does it hold for you? What are your hopes and fears for it? What do you do to protect it, or prepare it for the future, or make it better?<br />
<br />
A few of the contributions we receive will appear in the print edition of Orion. The Place Where You Live will be published in every issue of Orion (as well as online), so submissions will be considered for the print magazine on a rolling basis…<br />
<br />
Your contribution can take the form of a short essay or story of no more than 350 words, up to six photographs, a painting, drawing, or handmade map."

"200 yards is a photography experiment conceived of and presented by Lightbox SF.<br />
<br />
First we find a venue, maybe a wine bar, office lobby, or traditional gallery. Then we put out a call to photographers to explore a 200 yard radius from the venue’s location and take pictures of whatever catches their eye. Each photographer then selects their best photos, up to 10, and submits them for possible inclusion in a photo exhibit held at the originally selected center point.<br />
<br />
The idea behind the project is to expose local photographers, the little details that make each block of San Francisco unique, as well as the merchants that give each neighborhood its character."

"Save money and resources by sharing stuff with your friends"

"BlockChalk is the voice of your neighborhood. Use it to talk to anyone, about anything.

"There are a hundred iPhone apps that let you find a nearby Italian restaurant. And that's great -- finding a nearby restaurant is a useful function. But I think a lot of us want something more out of the geo-web; we want the grain and the serendipity of human conversations and gossip to help us explore physical space."

""We're creating a real-life treasure hunt, and the DS and this software is acting as your treasure map, your trophy case, and your audiovisual canvas," ... For example, each item emits a distinct sound, which include musical notes and phonetic noises; the items can then be replicated and arranged on a Mario Paint-like musical grid. Like items and other custom creations, these resultant compositions can be traded with other players. But Leingang may be most excited about the subtle real-world activities his game might inspire. "We're using the DS' capabilities as a portable device above and beyond just the fact that I can put it in my pocket or sit on the couch or sit in the bathroom and play it. We're taking this thing and really flexing its muscles as being something that can travel anywhere across this globe," he said. He went on to explain some of the surprising effects the game has had on his own everyday routine in an effort to uncover fresh hotspots."

"Set between the soil and the sky, Outstanding in the Field's long, linen-draped table beckons adventurous diners to celebrate food at the source. Bringing together local farmers and food artisans, chefs and winemakers, we explore the connection between the earth and the food on your plate. Join us as we feast on the gifts of the land."

"Hitotoki is an online literary project collecting stories of singular experiences tied to locations in cities worldwide."

"Our goal is to encourage life-long learning by connecting inquiring minds with quality instructors. We built TeachStreet to be a headache-free place for insatiable learners to quickly find great local instructors—whether they want to learn photography

"Whrrl combines activity recommendations with real-time location data."

"Location-based social networking - Discover who visits your favorite places. See where your friends are and what they're up to, in real time. Meet people around you. Reveal your location, befriend, & chat with people around you.

"The easiest way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city — like restaurant inspections in Chinatown, crimes in the Loop or everything around 473 Kent Ave."

"Until now there has been no freely available source of neighborhood data for geohackers. As of this morning Urban Mapping is providing free access to their neighborhood database via an API."