Hey folks, here I am again in one more interesting and exciting post. Hope you like it and leave you comment bellow.
After my explanation around the video “where Good Ideas come from?” by Steve Johnson, I think I should develop some of the ideas exposed there. Firstly, I would like to comment on an interesting video entitled “Social Media Revolution 2”.
The definition of Social Media or the so called Social Network, can be summed as the joint of media reunited in the same place, the Internet, taking information or quick communication forms to people’s home. To cite some of these Social Networks we can mention here YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, linked in and many more.
In order to fully understand the central and opening question of this video: “Is Social Media a fad or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?” we shall go back to the past a little bit and see how the world has changed since the Industrial Revolution. Starting with a great technological breakthrough, new machines were brought into the factories; the human labour was gradually being substituted, although it cannot be totally ignored. In the end, the handyman became faster and dynamic, much easily doable. In the same way, life, especially in larger cities, were becoming faster too, with people rushing to get better jobs and better quality of life. Protests and strikes became the words of the era, turning into a real social and personal evolution. There was a really shift in time being announced.
Alongside all of those revolutions of that time (wages, employability and Industrial) came the technical revolution and the machines revolution. The creation of the telephone and the television beneficiated those tuned to radio. Colour television not only changed the visual perception, but also the perspectives of where are we going? Some years later was the time for the emergence of mobile phones, large bricks which we had to take with us wherever we went because some voice could ring us at the other side of the crosstalk of history. After that we were surprised how smaller and smaller mobile phones were becoming and nearly died of fright when we discovered that that small things could do better than only make and receive phone calls. They could connect to the Internet.
Whilst time passed by, that connectivity with the net led to world connectivity. The Internet emerged powerful, making waves of information and activity in real time, a new era of technology and digital information took over the world. It is really impressive to know that “96% of millennials have joined a social network”. But more impressive than that is realise that now not only young people have joined the ‘fad’, but older generations are embarking in it too. Impressive how this new wave of quick and efficient communication reaches number one in the ranking, beating the unbeatable Google, the pretended source of “information”. Even couples can now be joined and married with the seal and blessing of a Social Networking sites, which does not only occur in the US but all over the world I believe.
All of that traditional media that in the past meant everything, as I mentioned earlier on this text: Radio, Television and Even the Internet does not seems to attract today as much viewers and users as the 50 million not even dreamed of in a not long past. It is shocking for me to know that “if Facebook were meant to be a country it would be the world’s third largest.” It makes me think about where are our fingers and computers or laptops taking us? Would they be really taking us to catch up the electronic ‘fad’? I sincerely believe that yes, they are. However, I would like to make it clear that I do not believe it at the negative side, I see positively. A great positive example of it is in the video itself, when we see nowadays recruitment companies using a social network website like Linked in as a way to evaluate better their candidates. I acknowledge that I cannot be hypocritical and do not recognize the downside, when our day to day gossip can lead us to drastic measures to snoop famous people’s lives in twitter (which can be seen as curiosity).
Continuing with my positive view, I truly believe in this idea of universities stopping distributing email accounts for their students, distributing eReaders, iPods and tablets instead: it is genius. It is proving what I said in the previous post about innovation, creativity and connectivity. It is much more interesting to pursue an actual and interactive source of information and knowledge, rather than something old and out fashioned as emails are today. A proof of how this works well is exactly the capacity of being connected with the world on the palm of your hands. It allows you to connect socially and acquire knowledge from different parts of the world and different sources such as the encyclopaedia of Wikipedia. The trust mentioned is also a positive fact because when we trust in the current ‘fad’ we follow, we have more chance to obtain success through it.
To sum up, I can say that other than what is said in the video, social media are a real fad. A fad like any other we can think of and that we know is going to go and return one day. When I say go, I am not saying that they go forever; they will go to make space for new options. It goes to be perfected and become social networks much more attractive and functional. To not forget the second part of the initial question, we can relate that faddism with industrial revolution. I do not know if I could dare to say the biggest shift, but perhaps equal to this fad, because with the industrial revolution, life in the actual factories were made much more automated and connected in a net of better working and life conditions.
That is it for today, if you liked leave a comment for me please. Take care and see you next time!
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