Since Howard Dean's Democratic presidential effort created one in March, the blog, with its spontaneous feel and wide reach, has quickly gained acceptance as a tool of technology-savvy political campaigns, along with online fund-raising and grass-roots organizing sites like MeetUp.com and MoveOn.org.
It's not the tools of technology, it's the feelings of technology.
"All these tools of technology let us waste our time if we're not careful," he said.
Where open source was about sharing information by way of the internet, what is happening now, Mr Benkler notes, is the sharing of the tangible tools of technology themselves, like computing power and bandwidth.
Colleges like M.I.T., he said, have an obligation to help train future generations not simply in how to use the powerful tools of technology, but to use them wisely.
Today, they map genes, build new devices, and explore new ideas using, among other things, the tools of technology development.
The computer and the telephone are two of the major and most familiar tools of technology that have converged to make call centers more efficient and productive.
But sometimes it feels like we are the tools of technology instead of the other way around.
So apparently, nobody can use the tools of technology without being shamed, scolded and cajoled by whoever squawks up to the Twitter microphone.
Lets not forget the new tools of technology and social media already present to make us all come together to connect, police, reflect, share and cooperate.
