This Is Not News is a webzine and online community inspired by the works of John Dewey (one of the leading American philosophers of the early twentieth century), particularly Dewey's 1927 book The Public and Its Problems. Dewey firmly believed that democracy could only thrive if every member of society played an active part in investigating and solving the problems of the present day, that there had to be more to democracy than trudging to a voting booth at pre-approved intervals.

It is a fact of human existence that we are linked to one another; the actions of one person have consequences that affect the lives of many others. What separates humanity from the animals is our ability to use our intelligence to consider those consequences before acting. We imagine how the future will be if we continue on our present course and then change that future by changing our actions in the here and now. Our imperfect knowledge prevents us from ever perfectly forecasting the future, but as we continue to investigate the universe, a gradual process of trial and error helps us make better and better predictions, and therefore lets us control our destinies with greater and greater precision.

An ideal democratic community would function in much the same way as an ideal scientific community. Matters of public policy would be decided by an active and engaged populace. Everyone would bring their own insights and talents to bear on the situation, brainstorming and collaborating with their neighbors. Rather than sit idly by and wait for leaders to solve their problems for them, members of such a community would chart their own destiny together.

The This Is Not News team aims to be, on a very small scale, the kind of brainstorming, investigating community that Dewey envisioned. Every issue we'll feature a variety of articles on a number of topics, each written by one member of the team with feedback from the rest of the group. Then, in the TINN message boards, we'll keep discussing and dissecting the issues raised. More importantly, we want you, the reader, to be a part of our community as well. The message boards are open to everyone who wants to participate in a spirit of rigorous (but respectful) debate and investigation. We know we don't have all the answers, and we don't expect to find them. But we do have an almost infinite supply of questions, and hopefully you can supply us with more.

Perhaps just as importantly, we want you to get to know us as people, and to do that we want to show you not just one or two sides of ourselves, but as much of who we are as we can upload to an FTP server. That's why in addition to sections on philosophy, history and public policy, we have sections on music, humor and comic books. And this is just the start . . . we hope and plan to expand our coverage as time goes on.

And that's why we call the site This Is Not News. Because our goal is for it to cover - for it to be - just about everything else. So click a link and let's get started . . . there's work to be done.

Founding Editors
Pattie Gillett
Kevin Ott
Dave Thomer