it's an Inet life

What is the Internet's contribution to Global Warming? How do solar flares and/or sun spots effect my computer's performance? Well, these smart ass unanswerable questions are my responses when I can't quite explain what going on beneath these plastic keys.

Professionally in my everyday life, I have been working in the newspaper industry for the past 4-5 years, and I simply can't imagine how a newspaper was published (for hundreds of years) without the aid of the Internet. The efficiency the Inet and new technology provides is unheralded. In the article Smart Mobs: The Power of the Mobile Many, we see this efficiency in action. The ability for the Manila citizens to organize and coordinate by text messages to topple the reigning President Estrada is a testament to the nature of modern technology. And not surprisingly we see this technomenon again and again: The 1999 "Battle of Seattle, The 2000 up rise against gas prices in Britain, The 2000 political demonstration in Toronto, The 1992 bicycle rally in San Fran, and do i need to even mention the success of Ron Paul and how he raised more money in one day than any other candidate in history. This Smart Mob generation is merely tipping the glass of what it foreshadows.

Politically, (Sunday you'll love this!) Technology has made the democratic process so efficient that one day I predict voting will be completely unnecessary - click the link below: If it doesn't work well i will blame sun spots or solar flares.

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks?utm_source=EMTF_Onion

Ok - all kidding aside, this new age of cyberdemocracy is upon us and the impacts new media has on the political sphere is yet to be fully maximized. Again, i point the impact Ron Paul and his cyberturf-roots movement has had on the 2008 republican nomination. Another example of how democracy is becoming decentralized is the YouTube debates. and how this gives the people a chance and a voice to ask the candidates questions they otherwise would have been silent or voiceless. The ability to fund raise and utilize Inet social networks allows grassroots movements a louder voice on the national platform. Mark Poster in his article, CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere claims that we will need a new term for democracy that defines how leaders and followers are mediated in cyberspace and constituted in the relation to the evolving mobile identities. Here he reiterates this decentralized theme of cyberdemocracy. In the Pew findings: The Internet and democratic debate - they discovered that the Internet contributes to a wider awareness of political arguments, and that the Internet news is mostly used as a complement to more traditional media. And the most surprising statistic they found is that most Americans prefer their news media sources to have no obvious bias. Yet, many others prefer news sources that either confirm their own views or challenge them.

Socially, the Internet and new technology has shaped our culture in a variety of ways. And as I might hate to admit it, American Idol has shaped how Americans can communicate. Similarly, to the smart mob concept - millions of Americans text their vote and for the best pop idol. and now we are texting our vote for the best superbowl commercial, best slam dunk, and only god knows what else. In the article, Buying into American Idol: How we are being Sold on Reality Television, it analyzed how these online communities pool together their votes and determine the outcome of the show. The article also explains that as cyberspace broadens the spere of our social interaction, it becomes even more important to be able to talk about people we share in common via the media that people from our local community who will not be known by all the participants in an online conversation.

Another social impact the Inet is having on us is the new label of Internet Addict. Although in Chou (et al) research, A Review of the Research on Internet Addiction they determine that a person is not addicted to the Internet but to various applications within the Internet, for me this is a moot point. It is like arguing that an alcoholic is not addicted to drugs but to alcohol only.