I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It's exhausting.
Does technology help us communicate better or does it just give us more options to miscommunicate? Several news outlets, including the New York Times have cited Twitter as an important factor in the recent protests over the Iranian election (article here).
I had a conversation about communication with an organizer from the late 60's. She told me how they used to meet at lunch everyday to make sure everyone knew what was happening. And how they would have long meetings in multiple people's cars to make sure that information stayed secret.
Communication took longer, but people met face to face. Forget about mass emails asking a hundred people to show up, only to have three at the event. A little personal contact goes a long way. We never know who's watching our email accounts and that's not just paranoia talking.
Someone once said to me: "Money isn't evil and money isn't good, but its definitely not neutral." Between censorship, monitoring, instant communication, and remote communication, I think the same applies to technology here.
No comments:
Post a Comment