Never in the history of man has the human voice been more powerful than today. When I say powerful, I'm not applying any physical characteristics, and this article is in no way related to American Idol. What I mean is, the power of one's ability to have their voice heard is higher than its ever been and seems to be growing daily.
This power is not just harnessed audibly, in fact, the actual that's not even the important part, it's the reach of the the spoken word that's important nowadays. This power is utilized through the advent of social media and the disappearance of traditional media, which is transforming our society into the age of individuality.
Let's look back just ten years ago. At the time I was graduating from high school, didn't own a cell phone, facebook was never heard of, Twitter was only found in the dictionary, and the Internet was still a relatively new concept that was more of an aid than the center of the universe it is today. During my freshman year of college, the most significant event in U.S. History happened, of course the terrorist attacks, dubbed 9/11. I remember that the news reached me in about two hours after it was first reported. I wasn't sleeping, in the shower, playing basketball, etc. I was in class, on campus, on the bus, back on campus, then finally a TV was playing near my 2nd class of the day. There is no way on earth if an event of that significance or even half that significance would get past me within a few minutes. Why? Unlike a decade ago, we are all wired into the system, because we are the system.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to paint a picture that we were in the dinosaur age, being in the middle of Minnesota on a tiny college campus probably didn't help, but cell phones were prevalent, everyone had email, and we downloaded music too. But we weren't all connected. Today people don't have to find information, it finds them, or let me take that one step farther, people are the information. A decade ago, when news broke, we all turned our TV sets on and listened to the paid experts. While some of those experts are still there, they are being beaten to the punch by anyone who's connected in the system. Have you noticed that news isn't news anymore, unless its breaking?
There are three giants in the Social Media movement, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and then there's everyone else. There are some great sites out there besides these, and I could list off a bunch of them, but these three nodes are the left, center, and right lanes of the information autobahn (the super highway is too slow), that fuels this individualist movement. Words like tweets, status, and trending are all terms each juggernaut uses to feed society. One of the best ways to find out what is going on in the world is to check Google trends, it's an amazing tool that connects our world instantly. Real-time, rapid reactions. What are people going to say? We are fascinated with reactions. So much so that people's reactions often become the story, while the event plays 2nd fiddle.
We see this power in the news daily and is exacerbated by the famous, celebrities, athletes, and reality personalities. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't hear about someone who tweeted this or posted that. We live in a he-said, she-said society where one's opinions and thoughts hold more weight than ever before. In the past, the media may have had the option to run a person's comments or not, but today they are one and the same with me and you, just with more cameras and technical equipment, but all hanging on the whim of someone's keyboard.
Social Media is destroying traditional media, if it hasn't already. Actually, traditional media, ie radio, newspapers, evening news, is now becoming more of an outlet that reaches its members with the intent to provide in depth and expert analysis on what you're hearing from everyone else. Long gone are the days where newspapers broke the story. If there's a silver lining in the newspaper industry its that in order to stay in business you better have good content, and that means good writers. Because anyone can punch in 140 characters on a subject, but not everyone can write an article that truly captures the attention of its reader throughout.
Hopefully I turned a leaf or made you think twice, either way, thanks for listening. Now go do something old fashioned like read a book, (even if its from your nook).
Brock
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