Valleywag picked up a FriendFeed discussion between a few of us yesterday regarding the bailout bill within which Scoble blames “people like [me]” for the coming “breadlines”.  It rings a little hollow considering where I’ve been on all this and where he’s been (i.e. nowhere), but it brings a much more important issue to the fore.

To the thread in particular, I realize how acerbic my tone can be when discussing such things and try to be cognizant of that every time I write.  Sometimes my frustration – the result of a bit too much anguish about our national slumber – gets the best of me.  But Americans sat mostly silent as international and domestic crimes were perpetrated in their names and their economy was wrecked – choosing to glide along as if they had far more important things to think about.

Robert is right to describe the financial mess as the result of our collective idiocy.  The bill for one or two generations of stupidity has now come due and our remaining credit cards have been declined.  And for the moment, the social media characters participating in the specific tendril of web masturbation that is Robert’s “what to do” post have come up substantially empty.  So, I’ll see what I can come up with.

Louis Gray tells us the lesson from the long-foreseen economic crisis ought to be that there are no experts. I think that’s bullshit.  Perhaps in a stock-picking context it’s partly true, but the broad conclusion is flawed.  Historically in such things, there exists, in fact, those who were right and those who were wrong.  The arguments that were made on each side, and the subsequent decisions we made as a nation.   Yet, we are compulsively eager to skip over that kind of reflection and self-analysis, all too quick to “move on” and shelter ourselves from the requisite soul-searching that might illuminate us as to how, exactly, we arrived there in the first place.

And now – whether it was the War in Iraq, our brutalized Constitution, or the global credit fiasco now caving in on our heads – our tendency to continue listening with nary a critical whimper to the very voices who led us astray is criminally derelict.  We are heavy sleepers indeed.

It is now too late to escape serious economic pain; I won’t go into it all again here.  Rather, in the spirit of Robert’s sincere quest for solutions, I will suggest a serious way we can work together to fix the systemic ills that brought us to this place.

I’m not asking you to give up your gadgets nor to stop blogging about blogging.  Social media is unquestionably transforming our global culture and our politics.  But let’s devote less energy to the tools themselves and more to the fuller realization of their potential.  I suggest a little less time navel-gazing and a little more time using your voices, tools and networks to catalyze broad, deep, honest conversations about public policy.  And it will be contagious: in doing so, you will set an example for the millions who will see and hear you.

Scoble is also right that it is not without hope.  So, all of you: call your legions to arms.  Tell them a national emergency requires that they spend an hour a day seriously evaluating the American way of life, thinking critically about where we stand as a nation, how we got here, and how they might help in the rebuilding.  This is not politics; this is hardcore societal bodywork.  We face a national existential crisis — please consider that it’s at least possible this is not a bump in America’s road, but a big, dark, howling crevasse.  And as we speed toward it, contrary to popular mythology the people in charge aren’t in the White House or in the boardrooms of corporate America; they are buying shit on eBay and watching The Bachelor.

The Great American Experiment – for all its warts, the most successful social startup in history – is in serious peril, and only an awakened citizenry can restore it.

So, social media stars: ask your readers if all of this is what they had in mind for America and the world when they first formed their ideals about their country and their world.  Ask them if they want to talk about a society that is open, fair, honest, and free – or if they want to actually ensure it.  Give them homework; for a timely example, make them sit through Bill Moyers’ interview of Colonel Andrew Bacevich.  Command them to sit, open-minded, and listen to the whole freaking hour.

Ask each reader to take immediate steps to get vigorously involved in a political campaign, public policy issue, or a nonprofit they care passionately about.  It doesn’t matter what or who the cause is, so long as it stirs them to their core.  Tell them to call, write, show up for shit, volunteer, even give a few bucks if they can.  Ask them to do the things that make their hair stand up.  Whatever it may be, press them to take concrete steps toward nourishing something bigger than themselves – and demand that they to it today.

Tell them to “tithe” their time; for every hour they spend aTwitter or aBlogging, ask for 10 minutes toward something for their country, their planet, or their fellow human being.  Press them each to seriously commit a certain percentage of their time to something that, in their eyes, is likely to improve the human condition.  Not to spend this time – but to invest it in the collective good; to view it as a massive global-citizenship 401(k) in which we are all shareholders and beneficiaries.

And regularly inquire of your leagues as to how they are endeavoring, every single day, to evolve the nation and world they live in.

That’s what to do.

What I really love about blogging – other than getting my opinion out there and pissing people off – is curating.  I love finding cool, random things that inspire or touch me in some way and sharing them with all of you.  My hope is that you see, read, or feel things you would not have otherwise.

It was one of the reasons – a year or so ago – that I started doing the “microposts” you saw in the sidebar for a while.  I wanted a quick way to say “hey, guys, check this out” without feeling like I had to actually sit down and write.  Maybe just make a snarky comment about the news, as I would if we were at a cocktail party or sitting in my living room watching television.  Or show you something funny, or beautiful, or dumb, or painfully hot.  That was the micropost idea.  In practice, blog posts got demoted to microposts, microposts got promoted to real posts, but with most things I just ended up doing nothing, leaving me pretty dissatisfied with that modality. It just didn’t work the way my mind does, and it still didn’t give people a quick and easy way to engage with the content.

Dozens of web tools have emerged that enable varieties of this – public bookmarking, sharing within newsreaders, meta-blog commenting, and all kinds of other stuff.  I’ve tried almost every one of them, and some of them are pretty good.  But most of them are siloed and still require a level of commitment, understanding, and engagement on the part of the “consumer” that leaves a huge portion of people out.  Most of my readers are regular folks – not technologists who are familiar with all the latest shiny social media objects.  So I’m generally reluctant to ask you to try this stuff.

Add to this the fact that I’m fairly active in a lot of other disparate online communities and would love a way for you all to see what I’m up to in those places as well (and, to the extent that you are also active there, see what you’re doing too.)  But it’s just plain dumb – and overwhelming – for us to expect each other to discover, find, and follow one another in all of these places.  The web is only getting bigger, and I want it to bring us together, not supply us with our own personal corners to hide in.  I might see a video on YouTube I think you should check out, add an item to my Amazon wish list and want to know what you think, publish pictures on flickR I want you to see, hear a great song, see a picture of a gorgeous girl I want you to join me in drooling over, or whatever – and there’s been no good, elegant way for me to do that.  And, the more I’ve thought about it over the last couple of months, the more I realize that this is primarily how I want to engage with all of you.  Yes, I want to scream and shout and stomp my feet occasionally, and I’ll continue to do that right here.  But mostly, I want to find, commune, and discuss.  I want to share, with all of you, this amazing online experience I’m having.  Because it’s not just about the online experience; all those bits are merely the trillions of tendrils that connect our minds together.   What I share and discover online reveals what’s going on in my mind, my soul, my world.  It imparts what I am doing (online and off), where I am going (online and off), and lays open to all of you who I am becoming.

And all of that is worth a lot less if it’s not a two-way street.  I want to see who you’re becoming, too – and I want us all to talk about it.

How the heck can we do this?

Well, all of this is why I’m using FriendFeed.  In a nutshell, FriendFeed lets you create a stream of your online experiences.  You add the various services that you use – say, your flickR account, your YouTube account, your blog, your Facebook, whatever – and stream all of them into one personal river that your friends can see, comment on, and reshare.  It’s young and has a lot of growing to do, but it works very well and is one of the most promising online tools I have seen in a very long time.

You’ll notice a new widget on the right that displays my FriendFeed stream [thanks, Evan].  I’ll no longer be doing those microposts; I will be using FriendFeed in their stead.  I added the FriendFeed “bookmarklet” – a little button in my browser that lets me quickly “curate” something for y’all – enabling me to share something without agonizing over how to write about it in a way that’s “worthy” of a blog post.  So, you’ll find that widget to be a fairly busy (and hopefully interesting) place.

You don’t have to sign up to see most people’s streams – although I hope you will, because then I’ll be able to see what you’re up to as well.  I don’t think I’ve ever recommended any social media tool in these pages, but I’m recommending FriendFeed.

So, that’s why I made the change that I did.  Those of you who get me via RSS will not get the FriendFeed stuff “pushed” to you like you did the microposts (unless you subscribe to my FriendFeed separately) but you’ll continue to get my normal blog posts as you always have.

Thanks, as always, for caring what I think – and here’s to crossing those streams!