social media is a wonderful thing. sort of.
back in the day all we had was tv - and then just three channels, and then not all day coverage. or there was the radio. you could go and see a movie. you could read. you could go out adn chat to your mates.
that was all pre computers (i had a mate who built himself a computer, he also built himself a synthesizer and he looked a little like brains from thunderbirds), pre internet, pre smartphone pre social media.
back then a lot of experiences were shared. you would go to school and talk about the tv programme you had watched as there would have been a good chance that your mates had seen it, or they had listened to the same music station on the radio.
now with so much content available in so many different ways such conversations don't happen as much (oh ok i am ignoring the reality tv phenomena - if only because i don't like it and i don't understand it).
strangely while social media has allowed us to find our own sources of entertainment and information - granting us a potentially unlimited access to what we want making us all very heterogeneous, social media such as facebook and twitter are treated as if they are homogeneous and that what a few people saying on one of these platforms is somehow a representation of what we all think.
while we are all hunting for that pithy comeback in a 140 characters or scouring youtube for that video that backs up our point of view or we spread post-truth propaganda via facebook these personal moments are now becoming used to prove that we are all alike - even if we are not.
the joy of broadcasting is that we are, often confronted with views we don't agree or don't like and we are asked to think why we don't like them.
social media allows us to narrowcast and choose only to listen to those we agree with.
the thing is with more and more forms of social media popping up we become even more fractured as we try to check out these new platforms to see if they are better than what has come before.
some of us are on facebook, myspace (which has been revamped) there is blogger, wordpress, tumblr, flcikr, glogster, pinterest, myjam, twitter and who knows how many others.
to this roll-call can now be added microsoft's so.cl.
i'm on it.
the funny thing is i am not really that sociable a person.
the internet loves irony.
back in the day all we had was tv - and then just three channels, and then not all day coverage. or there was the radio. you could go and see a movie. you could read. you could go out adn chat to your mates.
that was all pre computers (i had a mate who built himself a computer, he also built himself a synthesizer and he looked a little like brains from thunderbirds), pre internet, pre smartphone pre social media.
back then a lot of experiences were shared. you would go to school and talk about the tv programme you had watched as there would have been a good chance that your mates had seen it, or they had listened to the same music station on the radio.
now with so much content available in so many different ways such conversations don't happen as much (oh ok i am ignoring the reality tv phenomena - if only because i don't like it and i don't understand it).
strangely while social media has allowed us to find our own sources of entertainment and information - granting us a potentially unlimited access to what we want making us all very heterogeneous, social media such as facebook and twitter are treated as if they are homogeneous and that what a few people saying on one of these platforms is somehow a representation of what we all think.
while we are all hunting for that pithy comeback in a 140 characters or scouring youtube for that video that backs up our point of view or we spread post-truth propaganda via facebook these personal moments are now becoming used to prove that we are all alike - even if we are not.
the joy of broadcasting is that we are, often confronted with views we don't agree or don't like and we are asked to think why we don't like them.
social media allows us to narrowcast and choose only to listen to those we agree with.
the thing is with more and more forms of social media popping up we become even more fractured as we try to check out these new platforms to see if they are better than what has come before.
some of us are on facebook, myspace (which has been revamped) there is blogger, wordpress, tumblr, flcikr, glogster, pinterest, myjam, twitter and who knows how many others.
to this roll-call can now be added microsoft's so.cl.
i'm on it.
the funny thing is i am not really that sociable a person.
the internet loves irony.
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