Three essays worth reading on online social networking—how it is transforming us and what to make of it:
Small Change by Malcolm Gladwell
The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns.
The Facebook Illusion by Shubhangi Swarup
Yet, what exactly Zuckerberg has unleashed on humankind remains a grey area. Facebook is just six-and-a-half years old, and there are already studies being done on its social and psychological effects. It is transforming reality as we know it. And sometimes the two worlds overlap with quaint consequences.
The Web Means the End of Forgetting by Jeffrey Rosen
We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.
YES, I strongly agree with the above listed criteria. But doesn't this go far in bringing rivalry among this internet browser community.
Lets take it from this perspective, out of the 100% of cognitive humans we have, specifically, 70% of them are entangled in the facebook network due to attached advantages to its users, compared to the twitter community having the rest 30% of users.
Posted by: james martins | August 16, 2011 at 01:28 PM