Watching a Flashmob Develop...on Twitter

I am big fan of Twitter.  Right before the Egyptian Revolt really took off on mainstream media outlets, I saw tweets from journalists and others I follow indicating that something was really taking-off in the streets of Cairo.  Today I participated in a 'Twitter Seminar" started/moderated Adam Winkler, a specialist of Constitutional Law at UCLA, on the recent Supreme Court decision that video games were protectable under first amendment rights.  There was an interesting cross-section of ideas and contributions- it really was precise and  concise thoughts on the topic at hand that was as informative as many pieces on the ruling already posted on the various blogs and websites.  It was information, engaged in a high-speed circulation process that produced mutations of the overall product many times over.  It would have been one of the best 'cultural effects' I'd seen Twitter produce.
  

Would have been, that is, because yesterday I saw a tweet by LeVar Burton (@levarburton) that, it would turn out, sparked an intense reaction of something I called pure joy.

That's right, a Reading Rainbow Flashmob.  It started off as just an innocent, frivolous twitter request.  But it grew, over the course of hours, into an actual reality.  People everywhere wrote in asking about what cities it would occur in and generally giving a 'hells yeah' shout-out.  How could you not?  This tweet all but sealed the deal.  

I was lucky enough to see this Twitter effect unfold in real-time.  Watching the sheer variety of people who voiced their hearty support grow with every tweet, I realized that when this flashmob occurs it will be a testament to the powerful effect of public television on the cultural education of a whole generation of American youth.  In a time where cuts to the publicly funded arts and media are being bandied about as a means of scoring political points, here will be an event that, through its very spontaneous creation and implementation, will demonstrate that real good is being done through their offering- that the love Reading Rainbow cultivated went beyond political ideologies and, instead, instilled a sense of improving one's self through reading and education.

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