Yesterday, @sebpaquet tweeted, “I suspect some of us will remember 2011 as the year in which high-quality knowledge began to attract attention.” I recently started paying more attention to Seb because of his interactions on Quora, and I find it interesting that Seb’s link on Twitter points back to his Quora answers.

Over the past few years, more and more people have connected via social media. They exchange Farmville and CityVille requests. They post about the weather and kids and what they are having for breakfast. Establishing and maintaining these friendships and connections are part of the underlying social fabric of our lives.

Politicians and marketers have used our social networks to appeal to our emotions to get us to buy political platforms and other commodities. They have used our social networks to get us to act in different ways. Yet the question remains, is that all there really is? Can we use social media to bring about real social change, and not simply more people signing one petition or another? Can we use social media to exchange “high-quality knowledge” that can be used to redesign parts of our social institutions to make our world a better place?

Last March, Seb posted a YouTube video on his blog about How To Become A Culture Hacker. Is the ‘high-quality knowledge’ that Seb thinks people are being attracted to in 2011 knowledge that will be used in culture hacking? Is simply spreading the idea that “some of us will remember 2011 as the year in which high-quality knowledge began to attract attention” a form of culture hacking?

Will you remember 2011 as a year in which high-quality knowledge began to attract attention? Are you finding high-quality knowledge online? If so, where?