Excuse me, would you like to hear a couple lines of poetry?”

It was dark out. The day’s unexpected warmth translated into a thick but refreshing fog that a friend and I were enjoying on our way home from hours of designing at McTrib. It was around 10 p.m., and we had no idea who was talking to us.

“Umm, sure?”

What followed was one of my favorite Northwestern moments yet. As we walked, this total stranger recited an incredible set of slam poetry, something he just “came up with” on his way home. Too awed to offer any real critique, we said, “That was amazing!” and went our separate ways.

Like our street friend exhibited, our generation wants to connect. I’m always thinking about what the next big culture documentary should be about and while popular, relevant documentary topics like politics, the environment and food production have been issues for several generations, for the first time our generation is tackling them through connection in the digital infrastructure of social networks.

At first, connection may not seem like the most hard-hitting or original subject, but how it is changing and what it is fostering for our generation is. The importance of social networks has been covered ad nauseum, but until the events in Cairo, the focus was on its recreational and professional use, more so than its capacity for fostering social change.

Now we know these networks can carry a democratic revolution. By informing people about how these networks have impacted popular social movements, like Prop 8 protests organized through Facebook and the role of Twitter in the Iranian elections last summer, they can be inspired to create change at whatever level they are at for whatever cause they’re passionate about. Similar to asset-based community development, the accessibility of social network connections and the self-reliance they afford for movement creation encourage people to work with what they have and implement a whole new set of expectations that shatter the many glass ceilings we live under.

A lot of things about our culture are alienating right now: the war in Afghanistan, economic inequality, educational opportunity and health care access. Amidst this, though, social networking is engendering collectivism. Egypt was a perfect example of social networks fostering the sentiment behind my favorite quotation from Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1965 Oberlin College commencement ceremony:

“All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.”

Imagine a world where everyone feels connected and responsible to each other. What would that do for crime, drug use or even suicide? In the words of Andrew Jenks, a social documentarian with a docu-series on MTV, “The world is not anyone’s inheritance; it’s what each generation makes it.”

I think the next big documentary should be something that starts the story and lets the viewer finish it. Something that will inspire action and connection in not just one important subject area, but on a generational level. Something that encourages people to be moved by each other’s work, both online and on the street.

Alex Hollander is a Medill senior. She can be reached at [email protected].