Posts Tagged: Here Comes Everybody

Great! We are all connected and love each other and can express and develop that online!

I’m not so sure that this is the best possible thing. I’m also skeptical of how far this can go and what it says about human development.

Are there specific activities that will ALWAYS need person-to-person contact? School? Sports? Or will we just live online in avatar form?

What are the negative consequences to organizing online?

Is this something for the masses or just “witches”, “Bloggers” and “Atheists”?

I do also have some positive notions of the possibilities. How has this technology and world-wide community allowed more developed nations to give access to advanced information abroad? The implications of using this technology in this manner seem quite impactful.

1. When I was reading through the Wealth of Nations, I couldn’t help but think about freedom.  In the chapter on culture, cultural freedom was discussed. What I think about it how has our freedom, cultural or otherwise, been affected to by the Internet and interactive media? Does the internet give us more freedom by allowing us to publish as much as we want and explore millions of site, discovering an ocean of information, or does the internet actually strip us of some freedoms like privacy and the like?

2. I haven’t finished reading the book “Here comes everybody”, but in just the beginning of the book, I couldn’t help but relate to the story of the girl losing her phone.  I feel like this illustrates the desperation and dependance on technology, today. My question is, will this technology dependance continue to increase as our technological developments mature, or will the novelty of all these new technologies become “overdone” and “old news”? Eventually will everyone decide to give up these technologies in order to cleanse and rid their life of the hassle?

3. When thinking about company growth, how does the internet play a part? Do websites with higher interactivity begin to build the company’s size and income?

Chapter 4 of Here Comes Everybody, “Publish, Then Filter,” really struck a cord with me because the topic of amateurization is one that is constantly debated among journalists. Shirky even poses the question: “Surely it is as bad to gorge as it is to starve?” He seems to paint user-generated content in a negative light. Granted, it is important to learn how to filter through the “junk,” but aren’t those hidden treasures among the user-generated content the very things that we celebrate about Web 2.0? Without the concept of audience participation, wouldn’t we lose vital pseudo-journalistic content? (I’m thinking of photos that are instantly Tweeted from the scene of breaking news, where perhaps journalists and other news media have not yet arrived, etc. This content is certainly published before it’s filtered, but isn’t the sense of timeliness and contribution for the sake of conversation the whole point?) On a similar note, how can the average Internet user learn to become efficient filters of the mounds of conversation found in communications media?