I love to be inspired by change, even the potential for change, and this is why the fall is tied with spring for my favourite season. Watching the world around me decay, knowing it will rise again, reminds me how important it is for the old to make way for the new.

This is why I rarely lament the decline of the journalism business, or any content-related industry, for that matter. Everywhere I look I see phoenixes ready to rise from the ashes.

For example, two of my favourite media outlets, both creations of internet culture, and also relatively new, are stumbling towards rather successful business models for online journalism. I say "stumbling" only because neither are waiting for permission or the perfect formula. They're embracing the embedded ethos of the online environment which is to "just do it."

I've been thinking a lot about what makes the work I do and the ideas I have different from my contemporaries. Rather facetiously, I talk about the internet as a new religion embraced by the masses in search of salvation. By resisting internet orthodoxy, I deliberately try to see our society and its relationship with technology in a unique manner.

This begins with refusing to use the same jargon and phrases as others, and playing with words to find more accessible and meaningful ways of explaining trends and phenomena. The internet is full of technical concepts that have exclusive and rigid meanings.

Yet the power and resilience of the internet is derived from its open nature, so it only makes sense that we embrace freedom when we talk and think about related ideas and concepts. I do this by generally distrusting technical authorities, including early adopters, technology executives, and I.T. admins. I respect their knowledge, but always question whether their perspective has the potential to be transfered to people who aren't in a position of technical authority (the vast majority of us).

When it comes to the world of social media, which is both technical and non-technical, elitist and also accessible, I find myself consistently frustrated by the level of "group think." In contrast to other technical areas, social media accommodates anyone and everyone, so jargon isn't an acceptable vocabulary to control the discussion and analysis.

What you commonly find is a spoken and unspoken orthodoxy, rules that dictates how tools should be used and people should act. The problem is that this stifles innovation and doesn't allow for the kind of true experimentation we should be seeing in this sector.

Public relations, marketing and advertising people lament the rash of social media experts who project their own industry orthodoxy onto an emergent discipline. Few understand the dynamic involved when in a long chain of diverse individuals and organizations who have a range of expertise culturally acclimatize their own networks and friends.

The seeds of this kind of internet orthodoxy were sown in Ursula Franklin's definition of technology as being "how we do things around here". The variable comes in how we define where we are, with the internet collapsing space into time and everyone being "here" at some point in time.

Can you see my tongue in cheek?

Yesterday I was sent a link to an incredible and epic thread, which a meta-mob of auto enthusiasts formed to mete out rapid Internet justice on a car parts thief who had been preying upon them.

It all started in the parking lot of Toronto's Yorkdale Mall. While the victim was at work, someone stole a specialized front lip from his car, an Acura TSX, in the middle of the day, using his own car to block what he was doing. The victim went to mall security, got video of the crime, but because the thief took the plates off his car, and there are no witnesses, the police said there was nothing they could do.

Frustrated by this lack of action, the victim turned to the TSXClub.com site, a forum for Acura TSX owners. He started the thread in the early hours of May 21st 2009.

As a bit of background, forums online are one of the largest and most vibrant elements of social media, and automotive forums tend to have a character and class all of their own. What is particularly interesting in this case is the not only way the forum responded, but also automotive forums of all kinds right across the web.

Immediately a suspect emerged, as one of the members recognized the car in the security video as being almost identical to photos of a car posted by another user of the site. At first people were hesitant to point fingers, but when the user tried to defend himself with a poorly written reaction, intense scrutiny started to fall on the suspect.

When I think of the relationship between television and the internet my mind races to metaphors of historical proportions. The issue is one of orthodoxy and dissent, of opportunity and denial.

If you were alive during the Reformation would you only listen to or obey the Pope? If you were in St Petersburg during the first world war would you continue to believe in the infallibility of the Tsar? If you were a student in Paris in 1968 would you stick to your studies?

The world of technology is one in which great opportunities emerge for those who are willing to be critical and capable of understanding what is possible rather than just what is promoted. A clear example of this comes from the effort to unite our love affair with television with the empowerment that comes with online interactivity.

The start of each calendar year is marked in the technology world by the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and the unveilling of all sorts of new technology. This year was no exception, and one of the items that caught my critical eye was the latest generation of HD television sets which feature internet capabilities.