7 Stories to read this weekend

Happy 2012. It is great to be back. I hope you are all rested and relaxed after the break and ready for some great reading. Here are the first of what will be many recommended story emails/posts:

• Adriano Farano writes about a web beyond social in his piece, The Rise of the PerSocial Web.
• How to save the global economy? Paul Kedrosky in Foreign Policy magazine says, write off the world’s debt. 
• The promise and curse of social media, The Economist reports. (Salon writes about information overload as the new normal and Clay Johnson offers advise on how to go on an information diet.)
• This is old – from June 2011 but worth re-sharing: Craig Mod has perhaps one of the more thoughtful essays on the future of content creation, distribution and consumption. I would urge you to bookmark it.
• I can’t draw a straight line, and that is why I love this piece on how to start sketching when traveling and what gear you need to do it.
• Continuing on the theme of creation, I liked this piece by Justine Musk on why we blog/write/create.
• The last piece is just something I found fascinating. Think of it as CSI: Social Network! Uncloaking a Slumlord Conspiracy with social network analysis is a study in how SNA was used to convict slumlords.