Like all University of Michigan alumni who were in the school of Literature, Science, and the Arts, I receive the quarterly LSA Magazine. This spring I’m actually in the magazine. For an issue on the theme of surviving in tough economic times, I contributed the back-page editorial which the editors entitled Can the Noosphere Save Us? The themes will be familiar to readers who know me: personal publishing, knowledge sharing, online collaboration. It was a treat to be asked to write about these topics for a diverse audience of UM alumni.

I would have subtitled the piece: “Ask not what the web can do for you. Instead ask what you can do with the web.” It features three people I have interviewed for my Innovators show, all of whom exemplify that dictum. They are Jean-Claude Bradley, Susan Gerhart, and John Leeke.

In order to make things easier for Susan Gerhart, who’ll be using a screen reader, I’m supplementing the PDF version posted at the magazine’s site with a plain HTML version.