Group D: Kayla Sebborn, Angela Hryc and Ryan Brownbill.

Hey guys!

Get pumped because come week 10 you guys will have the exciting opportunity to check out our blog post entitled ‘Social Media, Social Movements and Political Revolution’. Sounds super exciting!

From the get-go of our first lecture I’m sure we can all agree that we loved the video that was shown. For those of you who did not attend (shame on you) but it was pretty much the lifespan of a guy shown through social media. It was interesting to see that our whole lives are literally shown through our cyber connections. Also, when Mark mentioned that an equivalent of 70% of all the literacy ever created since the dawn of literacy is processed through Google in a mere 24 hours, I was shocked! It really comes back to the theory of technological determinism – as a society; do changes in technology govern and drive the way we live? Can we exist without social media?

What I found interesting was the history of social networking. In the Mesopotamian civilization their social networks only expanded as far as their extended family. It was also interesting to see that humans are the only species that expand their social networks by having friends, then connecting them with friends of friends, and so on…

Another important fact was how Howard Rheingold used the term ‘smart mobs’ to describe the upcoming trend in texting, in Japan and Finland. Rheingold found it interesting that people were tapping on the keypads on their phones instead of speaking as a new form of communication. Back then (2000) texting seemed like a fascinating advance in technology but look at what we have now – texting has become second nature to us. These days we can access the Internet at our fingertips and create our own content. It will be interesting to see what technology will bring us in the near future.