"SurfingThroughNoise: Riding the Online Knowledge Wave" is a book-in-progress created by education journalist, author and publisher George Lorenzo. SurfingThroughNoise (STN) addresses the developments occurring in the world of information and communication technologies (ICT) by providing an overview of our changing online landscape. STN emphasizes Web 2.0, with views of the blogosphere, our participatory web and culture, social networking and bookmarking, citizen journalism, reader-recommended news websites, video logs, information literacy and fluency, ubiquitous computing, and much more. STN takes a swipe at some very broad topics related to how we are discovering and using ICT to grow and prosper intellectually.

STN is also a synthesis of numerous interviews conducted with web pundits, academic leaders, academic librarians and pretty much anybody and everybody George could find who has a strong reputation for providing smart, trustworthy, and authoritative information about how we are living our lives in the Digital Age.

The first chapter - "What Is This World Wide Web?" - is available here as a PDF download under a creative commons license. News and briefs from subsequent chapters will be posted here on the STN website as they become available.

Brief excerpts from some of the experts recently interviewed by George are provided below in the order in which they are presented in the first chapter.

Henry Jenkins, author, professor and founder and director of MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program, explains why and how some parents, educators and politicians are frightened by the implications of their children growing up in a world that is very different from the world they grew up in. For instance, Jenkins remarks on how the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) was "totally out of wack" and "ill conceived."

Peter Morville, an information architecture consultant for companies such as AT&T, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo, and author of a really good book titled "Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become," says we are going through a transition period, and it is anyone's best guess as to how long this transition will last.

Seth Maislin, an information architect and president of the American Society of Indexers, explains that "the flaw lies in Google's strength: social algorithms." Maislin's point is that Google's page-ranking system is influenced by networks of links. It basically rewards those websites that have the largest number of other websites that link to them, regardless of the quality of content.

"Anyone conducting research who only goes to Google is not really thinking critically," adds Steven Bell, associate university librarian for research and instructional services for the Temple University Libraries. "They are just doing the most easiest and convenient thing that comes first in their mind."

Susan Metros, a professor in the Department of Design at Ohio University, explains how "misrepresenting something visually or not understanding the power of visual images in anything you do can almost be life threatening now."

According to Carleton College Cinema and Media Studies Department Professor John Schoot, who teaches an innovative six-credit course titled "Participatory Media," the participatory web is where anyone can gather, produce and publish their knowledge about anything to the world through a wide variety of new media, such as weblogs, photo blogs, podcasts and videoblogs. It is the ability to find, collect, archive, share and remix audio, video and images online in a new Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture.

Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review and author of a blog called "Rough Type," explains how "social production - rather than being separate from the market system - is very much being incorporated into the market system, because companies are realizing that they can draw on this content that is being produced for free."

David Weinberger, co-author of the international bestseller "The Cluetrain Manifesto," author of JOHO the Blog, and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, provides another optimistic point of view regarding the participatory web. He cites Wikipedia, for instance, as proof of concept in how a shift in our knowledge culture continues to develop rapidly and in positive directions since the mid 1990s when Netscape ignited the Internet boom.

Gary Price, director of information resources at Ask.com, founder and chief editor of the popular ResourceShelf weblog, and a distinguished academic librarian, talks about how most people are unaware of the vast amount of viable, authoritative and trustworthy online materials available through public libraries across the country.

Mark Glaser, author and host of the PBS-sponsored MediaShift weblog, talks about how it has become more important than ever to educate ourselves and to take a closer look inside the origins and manifestations of our sources of information inside this new media, this new participatory/DIY culture, this new knowledge culture.

And much more . . .