New media musings; quo vadis?
If I'm asking a rhetorical query approximately new media, I think it ought to be "Qua es vos iens" rather than "Quo vadis." I suppose. I wager it does not rely although. Latin's dead and all and sundry knows what "Quo vadis" way. Right? Well just in case, "Quo vadis" approach "where are you going?"
I've been speakme lots about new media and social networking for the remaining couple of weeks. I never got down to end up a few sort of a participant inside the communique revolution taking place within the global, however from the sound of factors, this is exactly what I've end up. I say from the sound of factors, because I get approached pretty often by people who are looking for my opinion on these matters. This amuses me to no quit. I'm only a guy of assorted interests who likes to write. But I'm additionally a person who's been infected with a zealot's passion approximately all things new media. Even even though I in no way set out to do something however offer an online aid for my clients, this weblog has taken on a existence of its personal and in so doing, it lit a hearth internal of me I never knew changed into there.
I am amazed by the number of people I've met through this blog. And these are people with whom I've cultivated real relationships, despite the fact that I've never "met" most of them in the traditional sense. Were it not for blogging, news aggregators, Twitter and Facebook there is no way our paths would have crossed. Or could have crossed. This kind of global community building was impossible a short time ago. Never before in human history has it been possible to connect with people on a global scale like this. It's new, it's interesting as all get out and it's happening at increasing speed. I find it thrilling, but a surprising number of people are petrified by it. Along those lines, this video was being batted around Twitter this week:
Pretty wild stuff. This conversation revolution isn't with out its detractors or its casualties though. I've been a diehard newspaper man my whole life and it's painful to look at them committing hara-kiri. I'm satisfied that it's far a suicide although. Print media may not adapt to the changing ways humans get facts and they may not allow go of an old commercial enterprise version. Journalism's now not going everywhere and Lord knows punditry's not both. But the concept of purchasing a newspaper each morning is dying speedy. I'll miss newspapers as I've regarded them my whole life, however if we are fortunate they will take nearby TV news with them to the gallows.
Last Sunday I turned into stuck in a site visitors jam of biblical proportions at the limited-access highway that connects Orlando to Tampa and then to St. Pete. What's typically a two- to two-and-a-1/2 hour pressure was a five-hour-lengthy ordeal. Clearly, there has been a problem somewhere on I-four. As I become sitting in site visitors, I started out searching out a live site visitors report on my iPhone so that I ought to find out what become taking place and the way lengthy I should expect to be behind schedule. I Googled every search time period I may want to think about however may want to simplest discover the most vague of mentions of what I become involved in.
This is an actual image I uploaded to Twitter as I sat in site visitors closing Sunday.
Whatever it become that turned into causing the delay, I could not discover whatever substantive at the web sites of the newspapers or TV stations from Orlando, Tampa or Lakeland. It was a Sunday afternoon in spite of everything. So on a whim, I commenced Tweeting about being caught on I-four. There had been thousands of automobiles sitting all around me and as I started out looking for Tweets about Sunday afternoon site visitors in central Florida, I hit a goldmine of other individuals who have been caught in the equal jam and Tweeting about it. Within five mins I found out that there was a large pile up about 20 miles ahead of me and that there was any other big one approximately 50 miles beforehand of it. These pile usaaffected loads of hundreds of human beings that day, not the heaps I suspected.
The site visitors woes had erupted quickly and since it become at 5pm on a Sunday, the traditional new assets could not or hadn't replied to it but. However, a couple of hundred contributors within the actual occasion have been armed with smartphones and Twitter bills, and collectively we pieced together what had came about and the way long we might be sitting in traffic. That understanding did not speed anything up or make it higher, but it sure became exceptional to understand what to anticipate. It was an excellent example of the strength of recent media, or citizen newshounds, or the communique revolution or whatever you want to name it.
I hear and read all of the hand wringing and the dire predictions of a falling sky, but I don't believe it for a second. It's human nature for some people to resist technological change. In another great find from Twitter this week, someone Tweeted a link to a blog called Alas, a blog . The post on Alas, a blog was an excerpt of an interview from Slate with a man named Dennis Barron. Dennis Barron just wrote a book about social media called A Better Pencil.
From the piece in Slate:
By now the arguments are familiar: Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We're dealing with a disaster, one that could very well corrode the manner people have communicated because we first evolved from apes. What we need, so say these proud Luddites, is to turn our backs on technology and include no longer the keyboard, however the pencil.
Such sentiments, within the opinion of Dennis Baron, are nostalgic, uninformed hogwash. A professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Baron seeks to offer the ancient context that is frequently missing from debates approximately the way generation is transforming our lives in his new e-book, "A Better Pencil." His thesis is apparent: Every communication advancement all through human records, from the pencil to the typewriter to writing itself, has been met with worry, skepticism and a longing for the medium it is been displaced.
Historically, while the new communication device comes out, the response tends to be divided. Some human beings think it's the best issue because sliced bread; different humans worry it because the end of civilization as we realize it. And most humans take a wait and see mind-set. And if it does some thing that they're inquisitive about, they pick up on it, if it does not, they don't purchase into it.
I begin with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we can lose the capacity to don't forget matters. Our reminiscence turns into vulnerable. And he also criticizes writing because the written text isn't interactive within the manner spoken communication is. He additionally says that written words are basically shadows of the things they represent. They're now not the aspect itself. Of route we bear in mind all this due to the fact Plato wrote it down -- the last irony.
We listen 1000 objections of this kind for the duration of history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds matters up, humans won't have whatever to mention to one another. Then we've got Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone due to the fact nothing important is ever going to be finished over the phone due to the fact there is no manner to keep or report a smartphone communique. There were lawsuits approximately typewriters making writing too mechanical, too remote -- it disconnects the writer from the phrases. That a pen and pencil connects you more without delay with the web page. And then with the computer, you've got the complete variety of "this is going to revolutionize the entirety" versus "this is going to destroy the entirety."
I think I just brought a new title to my analyzing list. But I suppose I'll buy a duplicate of it for my Kindle.