Belated replies from Seb, part 2: examples of personal empowerment

My intro post asked for examples of individuals who were able to use the network to take some things into their own hands. Mark listed general classes of such individuals that were brought up in class, and Shaun pointed to musician Phil Gary. I thought I'd try and provide a few quick links to real-life examples of my own. (Note that my list is blogger-biased, because blogs are so easy to come across.)

Artists: Brad sucks - Scott Andrew and the Walkingbirds - Ottmar Liebert. DJing is something of an art, so I figure I should mention PEI's own Steven Garrity, who puts together Acts of Volitions Radio shows.

Bloggers take charge of reporting on things that matter to them. Sometimes they manage to do a better job than journalists. Charlottetown cityfilter - PEI Election watch.

Independent consultants: David Gurteen has built an incredible knowledge base of the field of knowledge management.

Activists: network of independent media centers - Sackville, N.B.-based Dru Oja Jay - people who use meetup.com to gather in person around causes.

Entrepreneurs: Joi Ito has used the net to accrete a network of smart people around himself - a virtual organization, that generates all kinds of good stuff like del.icio.us.

Educators: The volunteers who are collaboratively building the Simple Science Wiki and the incredible Wikipedia.