The spread of mistruths is not a reason to distrust everything you see reported on social media (nor to decry it as a "menace to society"). It's a reason to do better about parsing the information and its sources.

Just like threatening chain letters and Bigfoot hoaxes, we're supposed to grow out of this kind of dupedom.

I see the growth taking place before my eyes in the Turkish use of social media. It helps to have skillful journalistic people covering the news. (Here's a new Twitter list of English language tweeters on Turkish current events by cultural journalist Robyn Eckhardt for a one-click follow of 20+ accounts. Here's my Turkey protests Twitter list with more than 80.)

The first mention of agent orange I saw was associated with the debunking of that claim, on the twitter feed of NPR's Andy Carvin.

Becoming (social) media literate is a process, and especially messy in a crisis.

But many people have already been through major crises while using social media (for instance, Carvin pioneered the crowdsourcing of citizen journalism during the Arab Spring as I, Jillian York of Global Voices and TIME pointed out in April 2011), so to portray us all as rubes -- and social media as "untrustworthy" -- is inaccurate.

Was excited to join futurist David Hodgson's EdgeLab social gathering at Hub San Francisco.

We heard a handful of 'crazy ideas for a better world' and how to get involved in them.

He describes the event as a way "to network with people interested in systemic change around inspiring projects we see emerging here in the Bay Area. Marc O'Brien of Future Partners and Valentine Giraud are helping prototype this experience."

We heard presentations from five people (Milicent Johnson - Helping Creative Communities Thrive; Andrew Trabulsi - The Global Civics Project; Terry Mandel - BioMedLink; Kathia Laszlo - Reciprocity; Lina Constaninovici - Startup Nectar) looking for help and then were invited to swarm them afterward to brainstorm ways to engage and offer our best set of skills.

My thoughts after the event: this is my first time attending an event like this and I understand these are early days for the EdgeLab venture. However, the concept is hard to parse, especially how it fits into the other pitch-startup-community offerings available in the Bay Area.

The model of paying to be pitched-to seems off. A cognitive disconnect. Either the audience has something the pitchers want, or we don't. What are we paying for?

In particular, I wonder about the viability of charging the audience to hear people pitch their ideas that we're then also expected to help with. If we're paying for the space and refreshments, 45 pax x $20 = $900. $450/hr seems kind of steep for after-hours in a co-working space.

One of the speakers said she wasn't prepared and had no visuals which is unusual when people have paid to hear you speak. If a speaker is unprepared in front of a paying audience, perhaps a speaker should not speak?

Another of the speakers said he was involved with the Brookings Institution, a prominent and established think tank with a vast network of resources, including governments and corporations. The opposite of a grassroots organization. Am I paying to hear a Brookings pitch that I am then asked to brainstorm to help as if I'm part of a grassroots effort?

I asked one speaker before the event who she was and what brought her to the event -- standard networking fare, an invitation to connect on shared interests of which we probably had many -- and she replied, "I'd rather not say. I'm going to cover that in my presentation."

Here's a crazy idea: don't bother reinventing the wheel.