http://www.cio.com/article/29804/Howard_Rheingold_onCollective_Action_Social_Networks_and_Smart_Mobs?page=1
I am going to summerize Collective Actions by Rheingold. In his introductory, he starts off by introducting collective action, as "Collective action happens when the aggregate actions of people add up to something instead of cancelling eachother out." When collective action was first defined, it would refur to a group of hunters taking out a buffalo, or a group of farmers bringing in the wheat. But now we can define things on the internet as collective action such as napster linking millions of computers togther. Rheingold wants us to imagine the possibilites with each and every viable source linked to the internet, all connected, all sharing information. It would be crazy! So many things could be accomplished, we would have access to so much information. With that said the government would also have absolute control, knowing where each and every one of us were at all times....
But near the end of the article Rheingold predicts there will be a war within technology. Monopolies in computer software, will eventually be limiting what we view, or what we can buy. Eventually we might need to purchase permits to do certain things with our computers...I think this is to an extreme but basically what he's saying is if companies get evil, they can ruin our lives as we know it basically. I mean what would happen if google took over the major search engines like Bing, yahoo, aol, and then said we could only search such and such, and if we wanted more access then we would have to buy it. This would suck, and that is the war Rheingold is talking about.
But we still have time because the war isn't over. what we do now matters, and we can easily prevent anything like that from happening as long as we are aware and active against the dangers that could come.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In reference to Rheingold wanting us to imagine the possibility of being fully connected...my intial thought was to say, "aren't we all already connected?" But, we're not b/c there still this huge digital divide. I found it interesting that Rheingold still spends times imagining the "what could be." I mean, how much more can social networks be developed? It is kind of crazy to think that there's more to come, especially when we take into account Nakamura's arguments about ethnic groups, and the potential they have for re-directing the Internet back to the "golden age." What would happen if we were actually all connected and all of our actions added up instead of work against each other? Good read. Interesting thoughts.
ReplyDeleteKimberly, I'm with you. I would rather think about all of the positive effects of everyone being connected. This word connected keeps bringing Avatar to my mind. I have only seen the movie once, and didn't think it was the best movie ever or anything, but it did portray the idea of everything being connected to everything else. This did make it easy to wipe out the colony. Luckily people still seem to be inherently good, otherwise google could take over. Interesting thought: If google took over and started charging for surfing privileges, how would it effect our use of the net? Would we see a rise in hardcopy literature once again?
ReplyDeleteI have evaluated your posts and comments (where applicable) for assignments #5 & #6. Before Tuesday 2/23 I will have written summary comments about the assignments and posted them on the course blog.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that the negetive scenero that Rheingold stated would ever really happen. The government has its own problems to worry about. And not everyone could afford the net in the furture, considering how the economy is turning out. Years ago there was a Monopoly in the phone service called bell...your phone bill was a hella a lot less until the government forced it to break up. Now it is so expensive not everyone can or wants a land line... It's cheaper to have a cell phone and we are so in with the cellphone that technology is letting us forget a simplier way of life that we have to make more laws to take care of us. I guess the government wanted so much now we are getting less and paying more. Rheinhold might have a point after-all.
ReplyDelete