This book outlines the influx of new communication technologies in our society. The first chapter shows a humorous, real-world example of this. A woman’s dog pooped in the subway, and she failed to clean it up. This led to comments from other subway passengers and resulted in someone posting her actions onto a popular blog. This seemingly fleeting event reached global popularity through Don Park’s blog.
Without this technology, someone in the United States would have no idea about what is going on in a subway car in Korea. With modern communication technology, this is becoming almost instantaneous information. The motivation to share this information virtually with others hints at a sort of group-formation, or collective intelligence arising in our society. An individual is merely a node in the network, but sharing information to this network has the possibility of spreading across the vast web of the Internet at an exponential rate. While this is beneficial for most information, it raises caution when dealing with and exposing personal information.
With such powerful technological capabilities at our fingertips, it’s important to recognize the vast potential of this technology. “When we change the way we communicate, we change society.” This statement has been proven decade after decade and is prevalent in the first chapter of this book. An occurrence that historically would have remained as a story or transmitted through a phone call, has become a global phenomenon casting across the globe. This ease and speed of information sharing impacts not only our societal actions, but impacts our individual motivations as well. There is a motivating factor pushing people to share this information, whether it is the feeling of social acceptance, validation, or simply the want to share with others.
There is certainly a level of trust involved with sharing information online. Many people resent privacy infringements, however, they continue to use social media and add their own personal information. There is a trade-off between being more involved and being more vulnerable. I believe that people build trust in these social media sites by seeing others trust and share their information. If everyone else is doing it, it must be okay.
This reading has given me a refreshed insight on just how powerful these new communication technologies in our society. Our culture has radically shifted over the past century, and we owe it to the ease and efficiency of our communication technologies. A message that normally took weeks or months to reach across the globe can now be delivered in a matter of seconds. This would seem impossible 100 years ago; what do we see as impossible today that will one day become our everyday reality?