The Future is Bright ... Gotta Wear Shades

I am a big believer in today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.  There has been plenty of interesting inventions conceived in the minds of some fantastic writers that have lifted off the pages and become a reality of our world.  Space stations made for some great reading and viewing in such classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick directed this adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s “The Sentinel”) and 45 years later we have just sent another group of individuals including Canadian Chris Hadfield to the International Space Station.  That communicator from Star Trek looks very similar to the flip cell phones that were very popular a few years back, and how about Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility.  A British Columbia company called Hyperstealth Biotechnology demonstrated this year a working prototype of its new material to the Canadian and American military.  The material bends light waves around the wearer without the assistance of batteries, cameras, or mirrors, and it also allows the wearer to escape detection from thermal and infrared scans.  Getting scared?  How about a company called DARPA, who are currently working on a robot that can run faster than a cheetah and have the ability to track humans.  That seems like a pleasant combination with no nasty side effects.

With movies such as Minority Report and Blade Runner to name a few, they paint a picture of the future and how it coincides with our present social media, by demonstrating information is king and privacy has long been outdated.  These two principles will for better or worse drive social media in the future.  Google is showcasing its Google Glass which resembles eyewear and its functionality much like the shades that Arnold Schwarzenegger wore in the Terminator.  The eyewear streams data on objects, record footage of what is being looked at, and is said that it could be enhanced one day with facial recognition software that will extend data searches to people that are in the room with the wearer.  The price tag is steep but Google says that once they begin mass production the cost will become more affordable.  With the glasses having the ability to inform you of what you are looking at, it is easy to see this linking to social media to say get an idea of the cute girl sitting at the bar and accessing her social media for hints on whether she is single or not, or maybe likes and dislikes to get a conversation started if she is.  An employer could get all the details they need via social media profiles to determine whether an applicant would make the right fit for the organization.  This is the near future, but what holds for the evolution of social media down the road?

I see privacy as dead currency down the road say in ten to fifteen years.  As today’s youth dominate the decisions of the world in the years to come, the acceptance of leading a more public life will become precedent which will fully allow social media to leave no stone unturned so to speak.  To protect one’s privacy they would have to be off the grid completely and even then there may be traces digitally of who they are that it will be tough to avoid.  The trend of mobile will truly get a boost with wearable computers as noted with Google Glass, but eventually implants will become the norm and have information not at the click of a button but at the thought or whim of the individual.  If you think this is far-fetched, the University of Pittsburgh’s neuroscientists have helped a quadriplegic woman use a robotic arm to perform tasks for her by inserting electrodes at key points in the brain.  This has allowed her to use thoughts to motivate the arm into tasks.

Social media has the ability down the road to reshape how we view one another.  Rendering nationalities less of a defining feature and Facebook (or the social media tools of choice of the time) profiles more so.  Aligning people on beliefs and values that they share in common will unite people in a far different fashion than they are today.  I think as witnessed the last couple of years in varying degrees; governments will have to truly pay homage to “rule by the people”.  Social media will be used increasingly to maintain and lessen the marginalization of people (as there are people fighting for change there will be those fighting for the status quo) and it will continue to make the world a smaller place as more and more people gain access to social media.

http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2

We may be Slackers, but there is a lot of us

I understand where Malcolm Gladwell is coming from, when he says that weak ties and real social change can never come from loose networks of people that do not know each other.  I believe on the surface that hitting like in Facebook on a social cause will never amount to real social change. 

On a deeper level though, it offers a medium in which affected people can get together and cultivate that network into something real.  Don’t get me wrong I think the majority of individuals will simply hit like thinking that they have done a good deed.  The minority though, the ones that have felt some form of oppression in relation to a cause can feel bonded in a struggle that up to now have probably faced alone (this is most evident in our busy lives in which we have lost touch with that community feeling as the cities and towns we populate grow larger).  These people can then plan events to get their point across much like the four college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, or to the extreme in the case of the Arab Spring in which Facebook and Twitter played a large part in the formation of the protest movement.  These events allowed others to reach out and form bonds in relation to a cause that they all were affected by.

The real change is still done by ties that were drawn close through social media.  It requires real action still to evoke results.  On lighter issues perhaps the Facebook like campaigns can exert some pressure for the powers that be to make change.  For example, a Facebook campaign on a proposed upcoming cut in government spending in a social program may make politicians nervous about the ability to be re-elected and thus alter the cut in the upcoming budget.  There can be a power to the people that has brought the community spirit back to the people.  Kiva is an excellent example of showing how a little goes a long way.  It may take a long time to find three or four investors willing to finance your program for change, but with organizations like Kiva,  it makes investing and financing a lot easier.  It allows me to invest my $25, which will not impact me at all, and with multiple lenders of such small amounts, greatly assist someone to build a better life and pay all investors back.  It provides a looser network indeed, but it gives a far wider network than ever before. 

So I can see how terms like Slactivism have arisen in regards to activism on social media, but it also provides individuals a wider community to come together for a cause.  It provides the framework to meet, plan agendas as well as events, and to forge new bonds in the wake of a cause that has affected them.  The use of social media to generate investment for causes like in the Kiva video also demonstrates that a little does go along way with some creative thinking.  The awareness, investment opportunity, and social change have brought the matter at hand to the world in a sense that just was not possible before.

Gladwell, M. (2010). Small change: Why the revolution will not be Tweeted. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

(2013). Social Media and Development. Social Media and Society ~ GNED 1481. Retrieved from https://olmoodle.embanet.com/mod/resource/view.php?id=154831

Weber, J. (2012, January 26). Reuters Magazine:The Hashtag Revolution. Retrieved from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-davos-reutersmagazine-hashtag-idUSTRE80P19D20120126

Updated link for Access.

Sorry for the mishap, here we go again with an updated link to my deliverable.

https://www.box.com/s/765s9ywccerwhv1on2pp

Thanks for your patience.

Privacy in the Social Media era

This is for my instructor for Social Media and Society.





ChrisGilligan_Deliverable

The Quality of News and Information in the Social Media Era

After reviewing the notes and articles for this week’s assignment, I am still left undecided whether the quality of news and information in the social media era has increased or decreased.

What I do know and agree with is Richard Gordon in his article Social Media: The Ground Shifts (http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=101883) is that the biggest mistake made by the traditional media outlets was viewing the web as another one way medium for information and news.  I think this is what is and will further be the deterioration of traditional media outlets monopolization on said information and news.   People are spending more of their time online and traditional media outlets have felt that pinch in virtually every medium that they controlled in the past with loss of dollars namely in advertising revenue due to loss of viewers or readership (as demonstrated in page 2 of lecture notes for this week).  The social media age has brought a power for us to control in part the information we would like to receive and for some, impart information or news or opinions of their own to a wider audience than they would have ever been able to reach in the past, giving us all the opportunity to effectively publish what we deem newsworthy or interesting.  I am a news junkie, but my problem with this new age of citizen journalism has many fronts. 

First, with traditional outlets, there was most definitely a political bias of ownership that did shine through in the reporting and editorial segments of the relaying of information.  This would be evident in reading say the Toronto Sun and Toronto Star reporting on the same political event, each having a different interpretation of the events and their meaning.  I know where each newspaper stands in their political views and would be able to find some common ground to make the reported event make sense to me.  This gets lost in the wider scope of citizen journalism as many voices have different viewpoints (which is good), but the angle or bias is now the unknown and it makes the process difficult for me to fully understand the true meaning of what is being reported.  The concept of the directory Journalisted if it can become wider in its scope may help to alleviate this unknown by providing a more in depth profile behind the people that are providing me the coverage.

The second aspect that I have issues with is with news being directed by the masses more and more, we will lose a more rounded coverage of global events as I find that nowadays people are more localized.  Where we live in our sheltered lives and really ignore many of the issues until something comes along that may immediately affect us.  What is going on all over the world can be interconnected with what is going on here and I feel that can be lost.  Citizen journalism can also be limited as they lack the resources to fully cover events that are transpiring as was documented in the video Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog (Watch Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog | Project Documentary Episodes | Videos | Blip).  On the other side, citizen journalism worked well for John Tobin (working with Steve Garfield) to get himself known to voters, demonstrating the power of social media to get your message out.  In the video “Citizen Journalism and the Democratisation of News Coverage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBIKbMSXWfE) Brett Solomon shows several examples of how social media can shape the news and even predict elections based on Facebook groups for contenders.  So these issues can be found and may be more informative as it is presented by citizens that live amongst the problems that they are reporting on.  The information may be more subjective, but sometimes the scope of the coverage does get lost in objectivity from a journalist that does not have the ability to fully understand what they are conveying.

The third and final facet to my dilemma of deciphering whether social media has improved or decreased the quality of news and information is pointed at all forms of journalism, the issue of media sensationalism to garner viewers or readers.  The facts sometimes get lost in the presentation as ownership (especially with traditional media outlets) looks at the bottom line to dictate how and what news gets relayed.  I particularly take issue with Justin Bieber breaking up with Selena Gomez (or insert some other frivolous entertainment gossip flavour of the day) taking precedence over the mounting tension with Syria and the surrounding area in relation to mounting pressure on both sides by global governments for example.  This is pandering to the masses that sells the news but in my opinion weakens the quality of news and our awareness of what is really going on in the world.  This will become more evident with Social Media I fear as the younger generations that are driving this new digital age are less concerned with real news and more with pop culture tidbits.  This in combination with our ever increasing short attention span makes yesterdays problems not even a blip on today’s radar.  Issues don’t go away but the collective attention has grown tired of the story, so everybody moves on to the next big thing. 

So in closing, maybe what I am trying to say is that for a news junkie like myself, social media will provide avenues that will increase the quality of news and information, but for many in the greater population, it may decrease their quality of information as they seek only what interests them and grow less concerned with other news and information that could provide them with a more in depth view of their world today and tomorrow.

 

 

The Social Media Diet

I was on a social media “diet” this past weekend.  This was part of a requirement for a course I am taking at school.  This experiment I believe was designed to possibly free us from the distractions that can be brought on through the constant barrage of interactions that we all have with our various tools of social media.  The “diet” was a time to lose the distractions so that we may focus on the physical personal relationships and setting some quality time aside for introspection.  The time spent disconnecting from the constant online presence would make us realize that not only is it ok, but that it is valuable time to focus on the most important aspects in our life.  Taking a breather would be refreshing giving us a power to disconnect and reconnect at our choosing.

I believed that going into this weekend that it would not be an issue as I am a casual social media user and usually my time card is filled throughout the weekend that it would not be an issue.  I was successful in not logging on to Facebook or checking my email for the entire weekend.  I had a slight itch on Saturday evening after my wife and kids were fast asleep and in my normal routine this would be the opportunity for me to peruse the daily stories on my feed on Facebook, but instead spent more time playing guitar.  It is in this time when I let my fingers flow and, maybe only other musicians will understand, just reflect and let it pour out through the guitar. 

Saturday during the day, my family hooked up with my wife’s sister’s family and her older brother’s family to enjoy a snow fest day at a local recreational outdoor centre.  We had a lot of fun especially with the large snowfall that had dropped the previous day.  There was face painting for the kids, tobogganing, skiing, snacks and much more, providing an excellent opportunity for us all to experience some quality time together.  We came home to a great meal with everybody and the guys watched the hockey game in the evening as the girls chatted in the other room for the night. 

My brother-in-law and his family spent the night and he helped me hang some DVD cabinets after a big breakfast in the morning before they had to take off.  My family went down to my sister’s place for a birthday lunch for my Mom’s boyfriend where we had a short meal as my little guy was getting rather cranky that the festivities were cutting into his nap time.  My daughter and I headed out to clean my school bus off so that it would be ready for Monday, so that my wife could have a little quiet time to relax before her younger brother and fiancée came for a fantastic turkey dinner with her parents.  Needless to say with the turkey making us all sleepy, it was an early night for everyone and another close to another great weekend. 

I am not much of a social media user so I did not find it difficult to disconnect.  I am fortunate to have learnt somewhat early in adulthood to live in the moment, and to cherish the now rather than long for a past or wish for a future point.  I realized early on that many regrets are due to letting the present slip away from us.  The time I spend with my family and friends is what makes me “richer” and I knew long before going into this exercise that disconnecting to enjoy the finer things in life is the most important component to what I deem a successful life.  All the electronic gadgets that we sometimes are more focused on with the illusion that we are somehow more connected in a physical sense are partly the cause for the distance that is felt between one another.  I enjoyed the social media diet but that is partly because I enjoy being disconnected now and then.  I don’t feel the need nor do I want to be constantly connected or available to all 24/7. 

My Perception of Social Media

Social media is not a fad, and is not only here to stay, but will shape and change the way the world operates in almost every fashion.  It definitely is the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution and is changing the playing field in many different aspects.  The way we communicate with friends and family through tools such as facebook, (in my personal experience) I have found that an invitation to a social event is usually done through this site.  Friends and family not on facebook tend to miss out on such events as they are overlooked when the gathering list is compiled.  We are forging new bonds with like minded individuals all over the world through other tools like blogging, twitter, or online groups and forums, and are seeing a new form of communication that truly is making the world a smaller place like it has never been before.

Social media is providing cheap and accessible tools that blur the boundaries between the haves and have nots that has allowed more and more people to connect in ways never known before.  It is giving a power to the people that were probably best illustrated recently in the Arab Spring protests that began in 2011.  The social media tool of Twitter provided the backdrop for the gathering as well as the news reel for the uprising.  The new age of this type of media has brought about a dilemma for governments around the world in their ability to control media and information.[1]  The use of social media in these uprisings demonstrates how this new age of communication is shifting power from the few to the masses.  In many instances, the use of social media to report events happening in the moment is surpassing the ability of traditional news and media outlets to cover certain events as they unfold.  These same outlets will rely on the various forms of social media to begin the story well before they can mobilize crews to the events and as a result the traditional media outlets have shifted from breaking news to a more in depth coverage.

Social media is giving more people control over how, when, and who they communicate with and it is connecting people with like minded ideologies, interests, and passions on a grand scale.  As with any tool or invention, there are positives (an example would be forming a group online for dog lovers) and negatives (for example, the proliferation of child pornography rings) to the rise of social media.  Although there is a certainly people and groups who utilize this new form of communication in negative ways, I am an optimist and believe that the tools of social media have and will continue to make the world a better place for all.

 

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[1] (Weber, 2012) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-davos-reutersmagazine-hashtag-idUSTRE80P19D20120126