Journalists the world over are struggling to cope with a social and mobile tsunami of ‘user generated content’, to use an increasingly inadequate phrase. Twitter and YouTube will overwhelm news organisations who can’t master their potential.
A common mistake for those seeking to cope with this profound disruption is to confuse technology with innovation. Algorithms, apps and search tools help make data useful but they can’t replace the value judgements at the core of journalism.
Genuine innovation requires a fundamental shift in how journalists think about their role in a changed world. To begin with, they need to get used to being ‘curators’; sorting news from the noise on the social web using smart new tools and good old fashioned reporting skills.
Source: soupsoup
Beautifully shot video of iconic blogger - Scott Schumann, aka, The Satorialist.
A beautiful example of why social media is what it is and at its very best. At the very foundation, it connects people. As Mr. Schumann says, it’s the moment and every moment that he shares with his world is, in turn, shared with the rest of us. You have a blogger whose story is being shared in a Youtube clip, which is now being shared via Tumblr.
Source: benjaminandhisblog
Technology is awesome… or not?
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. On one hand, it fascinates me to no end. I’m endlessly amazed at the way in which it can bring strangers together for positive ends—whether it’s via Couchsurfing or Twitter or Crowdrise. I love the fact that something awful can happen in the lives of one of my volunteers at the studio and within minutes, via email, everyone can be notified and people come to the aid of someone they know very little outside of said yoga studio. I love the fact that we can have a global conversation about political issues such as WikiLeaks or tuition rates at schools and universities worldwide all via Twitter.
What gets me down are the anthropological and cultural consequences of technology in terms of human sociology and abstract thought. On one hand, technology and the internet have the ability to stimulate the brain and expose us to different cultures and ideas. Yet, on the other hand, the internet is becoming the primary source of information dissemination and I can’t help but feel that it simultaneously conditions us to be sheep and is entirely biased when it comes to the search providers. Technology has allowed us to become lazy in using our brains to do simple tasks such as calculate tips or find our way around an unfamiliar city using our memories from the last time we were “here”. Will we retain any of the information we pick up when researching something that interests us or will be trust the computer to be our memory for us? Will that be the future of the human brain—entirely dependent upon technology to exist and function?
Privacy, social media, and Google
Sometimes we keep our social profiles separate for very valid reasons and social media platforms—or technology companies—shouldn’t circumvent those efforts as a means of upping their own social capital value or out of some need to be more “socially-connected.”
What I post and the reasons behind what I post to Twitter are entirely different than what I post to Facebook. What I post to this blog is not always something that I would write about for the paper. Why? Because I have different audiences on every platform and frankly, I have a need for some level of privacy in what has become a very public world. What a novel idea.
Privacy on many of these sites continues to be a point of discussion. Whether it’s utilizing a secured url for login pages on Facebook or Twitter or having the ability to turn off the friendly little cookies that allow you to comment via your Facebook page about articles, videos, and whatever other schlock you might be looking at, privacy is important. People don’t like their information being rifled through—no matter what’s its being used for or not being used for.
Google is the latest to initiate a new “social feature” without being upfront. I run a search on Google this evening and guess what pops up?
When signed into Google, the platform automatically searches for public profiles on social networks that might match yours and it does this without asking your permission to do so first. Doesn’t this sound a little bit like the passive privacy adjustments Facebook’s been crucified for in the past? My Twitter profile is public at this point, but I make a point of privatizing other profiles that I have for the purpose of filtering audiences. I’ve made a point of disallowing Google to keep track of my search history. I’ve now made a point of barring Google from searching for profiles to “connect” to my Google account. I did these things to maintain that minuscule level of privacy that I’d like to keep without having to completely take everything down.
This isn’t really so much about Google, though. This is about the fact that the concept of privacy has gone away. Not only is it not given most of the time, but increasingly it’s assumed that no one really wants any privacy. We know that we’ve given you our information. We’ve utilized the tools you’ve given us to keep confidential what we deem necessary. How dare you thumb your nose at us in order to get what you want. What happened to personal and professional ethics?