Here Comes Everybody Continued…

FASTER AND FASTER  highlights the power of social tools when placed in the right hands.   Shirky, defines social awareness on three levels: “ when everybody knows something, when everybody knows that everybody knows, and when everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows”  (163).  He provides the power of this knowledge through the GDR example in which he states: “social tools have changed the balance of power in this game” (164).

Sadly my real life examples comes from this weekends multiple viewings of  Camp Rock 2, the Final Jam.   For those of you not privy to the highly anticipated weekend marathon by Disney, Camp Rock 2, the Final Jam reunited the characters from (yes, you guessed it) Camp Rock.  Ahh, but there is a conflict.  The camp directors nemesis has opened a camp on the same lake and steals counselors and campers from our beloved Camp Rock on opening night.  As you can only imagine, there must be a battle of the bands to determine which camp is the better camp and the winner of the Final Jam will remain open while loser camp will close.  Camp Rock is the underdog in this scenario but they work together as a camp to produce a song for them to perform at the Final Jam.   The Final Jam performance adopts the America decides philosophy of American Idol.  But the Camp Star director has rigged the voting by (finally the text application) sending out a nationwide text to every cell phone to vote for Camp Star just as the Camp Rock takes the stage for their performance.  They never had a chance.  Camp Star wins the battle of the bands and it is presumed Camp Rock will close. 

The directors of Disney’s Camp Rock 2, the Final Jam demonstrates the “conformism of hipster culture” Shirky describes in the Flash Mob section (165).   The viewers presume people voting for Camp Star would not have watched the actual competition; obviously Camp Rock had the better performance, yet they voted for Camp Star because they got a text prompting them to vote.   Thankfully the viewers of the Final Jam were not swayed and the campers from Camp Star planned to defect to Camp Rock the following summer along with a host of nationwide viewers so our underdog camp was saved (I could not leave you wondering and force you to watch it).   Which begs the question, how often do we act blindly when prompted?  How often do we click when the box pops up on our screen (a lot less now than when it first started happening, but there are still boxes that intrigue us nonetheless).  Are the Disney directors making a comment about text messaging?   Are they in line with Shirky’s philosophy that “the real message lay not in the behavior but in the collective action” (167)?   For me this is alarming, yet a relief at the same time.  Maybe this event begins a dialogue between parents and children (those texting of course) about flash mob mentality and the use of technology to reach out to individuals to achieve a certain purpose. 

These chapters made me ponder how empowering technology is as well as how powerful technology can be.  Which makes me smile and shutter at the same time.  For the most part people use  technology (Twitter, blogs, text messages, and email) to serve their own needs and that is okay with me.   When Shirky demonstrates the use of  Twitter by Abdel Monem Mahmoud, I am okay with that.   When we watched the Tour de France and got Tweets from the cyclist it was great, because I did not think about the underlying manipulation that could be potentially be there.  So suddenly I am skeptical about the intentions of my tweeters, bloggers and texters.  I did not realize my social capital was at risk until I read  SOLVING SOCIAL DELIMAS  because I too have treated the internet like a sort of separate space until it began to interfere with my concept of life and “our electronic networks are becoming deeply embedded in real life” (194). 

When I read SOLVING SOCIAL DELIMAS  I immediately thought of eharmony or match.com.  Because most people on “these sites were latent groups” (searching for someone to date and /or marry)” and the cost and hassle of finding one another was too high.”   And “the society they lived in didn’t make it easy for them to find one another” (207).   I am assuming you all are familiar with this site and know enough about it that I do not need to elaborate.

Shirky concludes this chapter with questioning the cost of these new methods of communication.  As an educator and mother of a tween, the cost seems limitless.  You can lose social capital in the blink of an eye thanks to technology and overcoming that loss seems near impossible.   Or it could be beneficial.  At the present … where my children are in life … I would see the cost as being catastrophic much more so than beneficial.

Here is a very small examples that will last for many months…

Last weekend at the pool a young 8^th grade boy so in love with a young 8^th grade girl sat side by side on a picnic bench.   They sat so their arms touched while they texted either each other or friends (who knows).  And then in a brief lapse of judgment she decided to turn and lean her head on his chest.  The weather was cool and he draped an innocuous towel over their shoulders.  Now this child is the daughter of a dear friend and I thought, oh this is not good.  So I walked over and said “you need to sit up, it doesn’t look good from a far.”  They were embarrassed and said thank you.  No harm done, so I thought… In the span of 2 minutes it took for me to walk over to them, the lifeguard took a picture of them and sent it to her 6 foot 3 older brother, who sent it to his mother, before jumping in his truck to come to the pool.  The 6^th grade girls took a picture with their phones and posted it on their wall (they did not learn – or did they – about my last weeks discussion) and a mother called her mother to say you need to get down here right now.  You can imagine how their week has gone…  In all cases… nothing good came from the power of technology in this instance.  There was no way to prevent the spread of this information due to technology.  It was too quick.

Which makes me all the more concerned with the connectivity of communities and how small our communities are becoming with technology.  There appears to be no room for error.  There is no room for you to make an error in judgment (towel over the shoulder) because our tools enable us to document and that error lasts forever. You must be constantly aware of how your actions are interpreted and how they can be documented to put you in an alternate light – and even with vigilance you cannot avoid the misinterpretations technology affords us.