What Happened?We're much more self-centered, in a way, now that we communicate so often through social media. We're always been asked what we're thinking, what's going on, whether we have anything to share, whether we like something. It makes our opinions seem far more important than they have ever been. So, naturally, we share them, and we like things, and we tell everyone what we're thinking. News sources have adapted to this new form of communication, and they pump news out as quickly as possible, throwing information at us in headlines and soundbytes and short videos. It ends up creating a huge amount of information in a short amount of time.
Of course, this influx of information and opinions has changed the way history is created. We can follow an event with more than just scattered journals to figure out what people were thinking. All of their thoughts are neatly collected beneath hashtags and search terms. Information collects naturally beneath terms people use to create those international connections, to make themselves feel a part of something. We’ve changed rhetoric from fancy essays and eloquent speeches and demonstrations to collecting ourselves en masse under one thought, giving that thought a snappy name, and placing a pound sign before it. We persuade simply by our numbers and by our connections, whether it’s to affect change in the way a product is to be made, to bring an old TV show back, or make a difference in social structure. The way we interact with these problems and solve them has changed greatly. Word of mouth travels much more quickly with the help of a “retweet” button. |
A few digital spaces dedicated to social changeChange.org
A website dedicated to petitions and causes. It's crowd-sourcing for petitions, essentially. Instead of money, you source signatures. People explain the change they need, and then people can decide if they agree and sign their petition. Occupy Wall Street
This group is dedicated to loosening big corporations' hold on politics, and redistributing the balance of wealth. They're popular for the slogan "We are the 99%." TED
TED is an organization dedicated to "Ideas Worth Spreading." The organization started as a non-digital forum to use these ideas to " change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world." It has since adapted to a digital format, where it lives mostly online. The talks still happen in an attendable way, but most people watch them on the internet. |