A couple months ago, Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, wrote a column for TIME entitled, Technology's Power to Narrow Our View. It begins:
Commencement season is upon us, when students across the nation make familiar pledges to go forth and change the world. The explosion of social networks on the Internet--Facebook users have affiliated with more than 80,000 causes--has emboldened them to believe their generation will make change. But does new technology make it more or less likely that young people today will commit themselves to do something for others?
She argues:
"Sure, viral YouTube videos of global conflicts and tragedies will occasionally find an audience, and movements may grow up around iconic new-media images as they did around the old. But while the long tail ensures once obscure documentaries remain available, citizen advocacy may have a short tail, causing the number of viable causes to get winnowed to a handful of megacauses. Burma may achieve the requisite market share, while Burundi fails to penetrate at all.
Further, the screen on which people view the world will narrow. Spared the burden of considering multiple parts of the world at once, single-issue advocates may have a hard time seeing the relationship of one foreign policy challenge to another."
Nathan Ketsdever of Compassion in Politics disagrees with Power. He writes:
"A nonprofit concerned with Burundi can find other folks interested in similar issues via social media platforms and social networking communities (for instance those interested in human rights in Burma and China, as well as those concerned with genocide and ethnic conflict). Further, a non-profit concerned about Burundi can talk about related issues on their blog, as well as provide context and depth for what may be more shallow coverage in mass media."
What do you think?
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Comments
Does Technology Narrow Our View: Responses
Nathan - Glad you liked it.
Shdee - I think it widens it too, except when people become to computer-centric and forget that activism and change needs to happen offline as well as online.
Brad- My impression from the article was that the author really was questioning whether technology was helping our society. For example, you write, "Obviously the personal publishing revolution made possible by the end user-oriented internet tools of the Web 2.0 era is better than the predominantly corporate and static publishing of Web 1.0." But in her article, Power writes, "I still read the hard copies of the New York Times and the Boston Globe, and I refuse to consider changing my habits."
This seems to be one of
This seems to be one of those, 'is it good enough' questions. It's a great discussion, but the premise seems a bit artificial. Obviously the personal publishing revolution made possible by the end user-oriented internet tools of the Web 2.0 era is better than the predominantly corporate and static publishing of Web 1.0. And as someone whose life has been irrevocably changed by the internet - living rather than dead, living on the other side of the world with someone who I'd never have otherwise met, doing a job that didn't exist before the internet - it's pretty simple to say Web 1.0 is better than Web 0. I would counter that the problem is political. *Despite* the internet and despite historically significant democratic opposition, our governments act in ways (wars) that seem increasingly guided by corporatism. And then set to work on gutting the internet because it is too powerful. Internet technology widens our view and threatens the status quo. MEPs back contested telecoms plan Copyright law could result in police state: critics Viacom v. YouTube Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement The impact on Web 2.0 is obvious. The impact on education seems pretty significant: The End of Film Studies? The impact on charities...?
I think on the contrary, it
I think on the contrary, it widens our view; it creates new ways to seek information, new ways to contribute and of course news ways to connect with other with similar interests.
shdee
Thanks!
Thanks for the link. Great story and visual metaphor.