The New York Times BITS blog has an interview with Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17 year old from Moscow that invented the next big thing on the Internet. If you haven’t heard of Chat Roulette by now then I’m surprised you’ve found your way on to a blog to read this post!  From Wikipedia:

Chatroulette is a website that pairs random strangers for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.

The possibilities of this application are fascinating to me. I’m a big fan of any spaces left on the Web that promote randomness and spontaneity.  Think about the bravado it takes to subject yourself to a random conversation with anyone, anywhere in the world.  This is probably why you see young people visiting the site is greater numbers. I mean you always run the risk of getting this:

The possibilities for teaching and scholarship are immense. How about assigning your student a discussion question to ask the random stranger on chat roulette and then bringing the answers back to class. Stuff like this makes me hopeful about the transformational possibilities of the Internet as a medium. BTW I’m giving a paper on this topic at the Western Political Science Meeting this week in San Francisco…stay tuned for details, or maybe I’ll just give the presentation to random people on Chat Roulette!