What values are being presented in modern society? How does technology affect those values?
Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, offers insight into the social and economical contexts that surround the dilemma described earlier in Chapter 1, in which a woman loses her phone and struggles to recover it from the girl who found it in a taxi cab. Because of the woman's friend, Evan, the story was able to gain local, national, and global attention.
But is this a positive aspect of technology? Sure, Evan used his digital prowess in order to help his friend get here phone back. Sasha and her party were being unreasonable and cruel, and given the price of the phone, it was no laughing matter. However, can this digital networking be used for nefarious purposes? Shirky mentions that Evan was "able to escape the usual limitations of private life and to avail himself of capabilities previously reserved for professionals" and recover the phone for his friend. Yet, what long-term effects come from undermining the professionals themselves?
The Internet, in its sheer vastness, allows for anyone to upload anything at anytime. Non-professionals, who, before the World Wide Web, were left to shout and hock their wares on street corners, now have a voice, and that can be dangerous.
Tatev Harutyunyan , an Armenian journalist, writes in an article that "the dramatic expansion of online media has damaged Armenian journalism, flooding it with a new generation of unprofessional editors and journalists.” Information lacks sources and/or proper citation, important topics are undermined and replaced by trivial entertainment, and uniformity in the news business dissolves.
Could a similar trend be growing in the United States?
I don't know, I'm kind of bored.
Hey, look!
It's Hulk smashing the Asgard out of Loki!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
* Emery, Adam. "Puny God." The Revengers. 2014. Sony Pictures.
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