The 21st century: where it wouldn’t be surprising to see a toddler playing with an iPad (although I still have to get one) or to find someone reporting a crime to the police over a webcam. From the advent of computing, there has been a continuous strive to bring the power of computing to the common man. These common men who used to hang out in café’s are now found hanging around on social networking or chatting sites. Common men who used to blindly trust newspapers, political leaders, religious preachers, teachers or even doctors for that matter now do so only after a background check on the internet. It wouldn’t be wrong to call this era ‘the information era’.
What is information? Are there positives or negatives to having access to it? Information for me is what you make of it. There’s no such thing as too much information. It depends on the recipient. Positives of having access to information are awareness, increase in knowledge, broader overview/mindset. What about negatives? I think lives were much simpler without this information burst. People could live in a cocoon created by the society and the number of people that affected or influenced ones lives was limited. In short, this information burst has literally caused that social cocoon to burst. But this burst has rendered the common man with the weapon which the elite few were thought to have.
Before this outburst, we were used to media like newspapers, television, radio, etc. But what makes information fun these days are the blogs, the tweets, the forums, the leaks; something which the other media couldn’t deliver : Interactivity. These create a sort of transparency which could only be imagined by our fore-fathers. Internet has become a medium which truly unites mankind.
The common man of this era is enslaved by information. He wants to have an access to information all the time. This is reflected in the devices that have sprung up lately. In the lights of smart phones, iPads, it’s now possible to access information all the time. The more wireless our devices are getting, the more wired we get to them. Whether good or bad, it's certainly here to stay!
What is information? Are there positives or negatives to having access to it? Information for me is what you make of it. There’s no such thing as too much information. It depends on the recipient. Positives of having access to information are awareness, increase in knowledge, broader overview/mindset. What about negatives? I think lives were much simpler without this information burst. People could live in a cocoon created by the society and the number of people that affected or influenced ones lives was limited. In short, this information burst has literally caused that social cocoon to burst. But this burst has rendered the common man with the weapon which the elite few were thought to have.
Before this outburst, we were used to media like newspapers, television, radio, etc. But what makes information fun these days are the blogs, the tweets, the forums, the leaks; something which the other media couldn’t deliver : Interactivity. These create a sort of transparency which could only be imagined by our fore-fathers. Internet has become a medium which truly unites mankind.
The common man of this era is enslaved by information. He wants to have an access to information all the time. This is reflected in the devices that have sprung up lately. In the lights of smart phones, iPads, it’s now possible to access information all the time. The more wireless our devices are getting, the more wired we get to them. Whether good or bad, it's certainly here to stay!
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