I was watching a re-run of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night and caught an interview he did with Al Gore that I had missed the first time it ran. As they discussed the rise of the internet’s influence on public affairs, Gore used language to describe the situation that could easily have been part of a presentation at one of our Austin Social Media Club meetings.

Specifically, Gore talked about how the internet has allowed for the development of conversations. He didn’t use the word asynchronous to describe them, but that’s essentially what he meant. Instead of the “one-to-many” form of communication, the traditional method used by the mainstream media, the internet allows for “many-to-many” conversations to take place. Blogs, wikis, microblogs, social networks, all fit into this area.

Those of us who are intimately involved in social media may be thinking that everyone understands this concept. In fact, I contend it is still a “cutting-edge” notion based on the one-to-one conversations I’ve had recently with policy makers at the highest levels.

Al Gore has always been ahead of the curve among his colleagues on technology and future trends. He continues to be someone we need to listen to as what we now refer to as “social media” actually does become known by more and more people as the new conversation taking place around the globe on the internet.

Greg Verdino of Crayon recently posted on the new video by Kansas State University anthropology professor Michael Wesch. Verdino calls the short film, entitled “Information R/evolution,” a “must watch” for anyone wanting to know more about the new age of information and social media. We agree.

This quick video succinctly gives our mind’s eye a quick way to grapple with this complicated and intimidating subject. It’s well worth the five minutes it will take you to watch it.

Verdino has also made Wesch’s earlier video, “The Machine is Us/ing Us” available on his personal website, Greg Verdino’s Marketing Blog.

Texas Monthly is a world class magazine, based in Austin, that measures up for content, quality, and journalistic skill with any publication in the world. When it brought in Eileen Smith, aka Pink Lady, creator of the popular blog InthePinkTexas.com, to serve as editor of its online content starting today, Texas Monthly officially signaled that it is also joining the conversation taking place on the web 2.0.

Currently, if you check out the talented writers of Texas Monthly online at TexasMonthly.com, you will find five blogs covering various topics of interest to the magazine’s regular readership. Burkablog, Delay of Game, Eat My Words, The Stand-up Desk, and State of Mine, are as professionally researched and written as the material that we have come to expect in the monthly print version of the magazine. The main problem with each of them, as blogs, is that there are only a handful of comments from readers. And all of them were directed to the politically oriented Burkablog.

I’ve read the Burkablog since Paul Burka started it, but never felt like I could engage in a conversation with Paul through the blog. When I’ve tried, it hasn’t been easy and I didn’t feel like I could “get through”. On the other hand, it is easy, and fun, to engage in the conversation on Eileen Smith’s blog, which is also largely about politics. The challenge for Eileen will be to translate her keen understanding of the conversational format of a successful blog to the institutional style of Texas Monthly. I’m betting that she will succeed wildly because she gets it when it comes to blogging.

There is no turning back from the new age of conversation that is social media and the web in its 2.0 format. In the 21st Century, if readers can’t talk back, they quickly lose interest and go elsewhere. Younger audiences aren’t necessarily looking for a news story as much as an interesting conversation that they can learn from and contribute to. Eileen Smith, a qualified journalist by education and training, and a bonafide blogger, might be the perfect fit to make TexasMonthly.com as great as the print version of the magazine already is.