I’ll admit that I’m not perfect and that often times I take for granted all the good things I have in life. As I write this paper in the library I am finding it annoying that the kid next to me is eating a really smelly salad and taking forever to finish it. I complained about the snow a bunch of times, oh and the ice. That stuff sucks! I think everyone can safely say that they have at some point or another (or maybe within the last hour) complained about something trivial and unimportant.
I mean really though, are any of those complaints that I mentioned above that troublesome? At Lehigh, surrounded by intelligent peers and professors, I often forget how lucky I have it. Being at a top university, at any college no less, is a privilege in itself. My classmates and I are in an elevated place where we have opportunities to discuss issues of importance and have them be heard. Unfortunately for most Americans, they do not ever get this chance. Besides the fact that only a small percentage of Americans attend college, there are still large disparities that exist between economic groups. Educational opportunities are lacking for poor students, and the mere scarcity of resources at any given time makes it difficult to get by.
People who don’t have money to blow have plenty to complain about that make my struggles seem absolutely ridiculous. Here I am, upset that I have to walk up to Coppee Hall after a snowstorm, and yet there are people who struggle to get food on their tables every night. They deal with overcrowded public schools, an often times corrupt or ineffective police force, lack of healthcare coverage, and not finding a job.
Previously, only people in power or the rich could garner enough attention and support to make social changes. Today however, it seems that more and more people from all walks of life can get a message out to the public. Thanks to these new social media tools we have been discussing in class, more and more people are getting thrown into and involved in this conversation and are getting the opportunity to get their voices heard about something they care about.
If reading The Cluetrain Manifesto and We the Media didn’t get it through our heads, Here Come’s Everybody by Clay Shirky hammers in the idea that changes in media are causing great shifts in society. New technologies and media tools are altering corporate business structures, the original and gate-keeping news networks, and now, as Shirky point out, the ways in which we gather together for great changes in society. The very ways in which we communicate to each other about simple everyday occurrences to outright revolutionary goals mobilizing action have changed and become more open and inclusive.
Shirky delves deep into the inner workings of group action and the way that individuals in a group define society, not individuals themselves. His ideas of group action apply to organizations, schools, and businesses. He explains how new social tools are breaking down the hierarchical structure that was once necessary for these institutions to function. We learned in Cluetrain how businesses have had to alter their structure, and in We the Media we learned how journalism and the news is changing and losing its gate-keeping abilities. Shirky lets us in on how we change the way we work together because of these new tools, and how those changes can make a huge difference.
So what comes next? We have seen that in Egypt, the president has had to not only publicly respond to the protests and violence, but that he has agreed to not run for again for presidency, and has had to appoint a new vice president and other officials to manage the unrest throughout the country. That seems like a pretty big deal to me. A few years ago we saw Barack Obama use social media to his advantage and win. We see more and more citizen journalism trumping professional work, and these citizen journalists are rich, they are poor, they are your next-door neighbors.
New tools allow large groups to collaborate, by taking advantage of nonfinancial motivations and by allowing for differing levels of contribution. This means that everyone can now participate. I can talk about something. You can say something. Those who previously were silenced due to financial constraints can say something. My complaints can finally be ignored when more important things are out in the open. Social change can now begin with all types of people. The previous books we read focused on business or journalism, but Here Comes Everybody really zeros in on the people. It zeros in on us, and what we are capable of doing with enough motivation and enough of the right tools to spur changes.
The majority of us in class last week disagreed with Malcolm Gladwell’s dismissal of new media tools like Twitter. What many skeptics, like Gladwell, fail to let go of, is a seemingly unhealthy distrust of group action and low expectations of people in general. Maybe it’s my optimism that seems to be flooding my mind here, but I would like to think that at the core, humans are good and moral. I think social change, great social change at that, can happen. Thanks to these new tools like Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, as Shirky points out, we can raise money for charities, make people more aware of problems around the globe, and get people talking! It’s all happening at a faster rate too, and everywhere we turn are groups forming together to raise awareness and make a change. To disregard these fundamental ideas that Shirky raises in Here Comes Everybody is to not be aware of oneself and the capabilities to change things for the better.
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