Technology Is A Positive Tool

Jenny Arledge reminds us that, "Technology can become the "wings" that will allow the educational world to fly farther and faster than ever before—if we will allow it." Technology over the past few years has blossomed into something bigger and better than we could have ever imagined. Technology is and always has been a debatable subject. Most older people do not think technology is doing anything but teaching kids to ignore everything around them. However, the use of technology has had many positive effects on everyday life: it helps us stay in touch, keeps us up to date on the news around us, and leads to prodigious advancements in science.

Social media is a game changing invention but it has come with a hefty amount of backlash. When I was younger I didn’t have a phone and social media was nothing compared to how it is now present day. It’s astonishing just how far the internet and social media have come. Not just when it comes to how advanced or how widespread they’ve become, what shocks me is just how influential social media has become. It’s almost borderline unsettling how much humans as a whole rely and depend on social media for nearly everything they know or want to discover. Social media has become not only a way to locate others and communicate with others but a way for people to learn and stay informed and aware of what goes on outside the doors of their cozy little nook. Looking back to my childhood days, I recall lounging on the couch with my mother in the morning watching news on the television but now that has become a distant memory if I need news today, I get it from social media on my cell phone. The poor television in the living room has become obsolete from lack of use because of a boost in social media's involvement with news and correct political issues.

He says it has altered how people interact and develop relationships with each other these days. He states, “you can have thousand friends on facebook, and not have a single one in real life” (407). Gladwell’s argument became confusing when he mentioned how “the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concern” (401). This is confusing to the reader because it seems like his counter argument is becoming his actual point. He fails to realize that all the marches and walk outs were inspired through social media. With social media the words travel easier and much faster. Social media gets the word to other geographic regions as well as social classes. With Twitter, celebrities can get more involved and give their views on a issue close to them, which tend to get their fan base on board. With that in mind, it is reasonable to say that Gladwell believes that social media are actually debilitating modern society by replacing our willingness to actually sacrifice for the greater good with a constant flow of snide comments hashtagged with important

The following quote from the essay is an excellent example of the distinction that he makes, “The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.” This quote also brings to light his opinion about the level of commitment and sacrifice activism demands now compared to a less technological age. He makes the point that social media and technology make contributing to a cause, such as the Save Darfur Coalition page on Facebook, much easier today because they can reach greater number of people and that people are more likely to contribute because it costs them little in terms of resources (time, money, travel ect). He also weighs the merits of the structure of activism through social media versus the structure of a more centralized

Gladwell views social media as a separate being from social change. He argues social media brings participation, but not motivation, which does not accurately respond to the way social activism is heard. By his definition, social activism is a face to face, up and around action that actually strives to make a personal, hands on difference to an environment or topic. To support his opinion, he tells a story of a phone search gone wild in which social media sparked the interest of 25,00 people to stalk a girl to find one “expensive” phone and have it returned safely. Gladwell points out that this is in no way activism to change an opinion, or start a revolution to make a change, simply a goose chase for something trivial. Gladwell, however,

In discussions of using social media, one controversial issue has been the impact of social media in modern day revolutions. On the one hand, Malcolm Gladwell argues that social networks cannot establish a connection between people, and it doesn’t have any authority organization to take charge of modern social network environment. On the other hand, social media encourage communication and collaboration. Others even maintain that social network has been become a most important tools of communication in modern society. My own view is that social media can promote social activism development now. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that social media are not able to help change social movements or promote social development, because it reduce deep connection among people and even doesn’t have a hierarchical organization is overly simplistic, because not all social media make connection broken, and social network also do

In his article, “How technology created a global village – and put us at each other’s throats,” Nicholas Carr stresses the great changes and transitions that have been made in technology and social networking over the last several years. He comes at this from a very apparent stand point – that the advances that have been made in recent years regarding media communication have not helped society. However, they were originally intended to.

Ever since its birth, social media has been a phenomenon that has changed the way people interact with one another. This change has not only altered interaction among people but it also created a new way for people organize events such as protests and/ or any other social gathering. In contrast to the traditional way protests were organized, today, many events are regulated and promoted via social media which makes it much easier for people to participate. Many writers have commented on how this change has affected activism. One writer in particular, Malcolm Gladwell, is clearly anti social media in terms of its ability to effectively advance social change. In his essay "Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted",

The way that people now communicate with each other has changed drastically in the last 20 years. Technological devices like cell phones or computers that used to be just accessories now became a must in our daily lives. A person cannot leave the house without a phone since now the person might feel disconnected and sometimes even lost. We now have the ability to communicate with people thousands of miles away by just a few clicks. The quarrel is that this power made it easier to connect us with people we love even if we never get to see them in real life. In “The Hive” by Marshall Poe and “Small Change” by Malcolm Gladwell, both authors talk about the advancement of communication through social media. Poe believes that social media revolutionize us as a community, yet Gladwell criticizes it for being fake and not creating strong ties. Communication through social media does not create strong ties between the people we are connected with, it creates a deceitful sense of strength and interaction between people. It also alters an individual’s perception and makes it easy for people to show an image of themselves that isn’t who they really are. That is why people now a days even though they may seem like they are more connected through social media outlets, they really don’t realize how week of a connection social media brings.

Gladwell’s “Small Change” was originally in an issue of the New Yorker and in this essay he discusses the strong and weak ties that social media creates. As stated in the introduction and implemented throughout his essay, Gladwell believes that you can have a large amount of followers or friends but the quality of their participation will be very miniscule. The opposite being that if you don’t have a large number of followers, then the quality of their participation will be greater due to the stronger ties between people. Also, he believes that getting people involved and having a big group to participate , would be easier done through face to face demonstrations. In the essay, Gladwell uses several

If we examine Gladwell article alone, it seems that he exaggerates when referring to technology as being used so often. However, with Wortham’s help, we see now that technology being used daily for everything even for personal intimate things as relationships. Therefore, when Gladwell writes, “where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools” (401), he refers to the immense amount of technology usage, which makes even activists use technology as their tools. In addition, Wortham helps us grasp the amount of technology usage that makes activists use social media as their tools. Moreover, we can understand better Gladwell claim, “Twitter had scant internal significance in Moldova, a country where few Twitter accounts exists” (403). Gladwell’s point is that social media is not the reason for the revolution in Moldova where few there is few Twitter users. Therefore, while Wortham claims that people using social media daily, Gladwell states

For example, Facebook is a site where people can post their opinion for anyone to see. The downside of this is that people are usually very biased and tend not to see any other points of an argument. This is why, as Gladwell also explains, social media is a good way to make existing social order more efficient.  However, when it comes to making new and dramatic social change, social media isn’t the best way to go if you want to make an impact. Some people, on the other hand, disagree with what Gladwell claims. Some believe that social media makes it easier to communicate with others. While this may be the case in some situations, it doesn’t always help to make change. However, there are many different ways people can make change; some of which are starting petitions, peaceful protests, or writing a letter to someone in power. By doing something like writing a letter, or having a group of people write letters, to someone in power, this could catch their attention and make them think about the importance of what you want to see changed. Or, an individual can start a petition to begin a peaceful protest on something they have a passion in.

Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for The New Yorker, and foremost critic of online activism, discusses the differences between online activism and activism in his article “Small Change”. Gladwell reasons that the most important part of activism is the connections that are formed between human beings. But the activism associated with social media does not have this characteristic. As he puts it, “the platforms of social media are built around weak ties…Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing you acquaintances (Gladwell, par. 15).” So, not only is Facebook rife with slacktivism, but it is also not conducive of any form of strong

Technology has opened the door to a new world where our technological advancements have ultimately created the tools that are necessary to enhance our lifestyles and bring immediate change to society. In the past, society was not thoroughly developed. In fact, many individuals struggled in methods of communication. Technology has played an immense role in our development and bringing change to our lives. As our society has continued developing, technology has unfolded rapidly introducing methods that have expanded our scientific field, but most importantly it has created stronger methods of communication where society is able to interact with any individual and share a message. In the articles, Small Change and Democracy in Cyberspace, we explore the author’s perspective towards technology and its impact on social

As a logical consequence, Postmes and Brunsting (2002) reasoned that the Internet is changing society because people's cognitive processes, triggered by access to information and communication, replace the strong social ties that traditionally underpin committed activism. In simpler words, in the past, humanity used the herd instinct as the main driving force behind committed forms of activism. Thanks to the Internet, we climb another step or three on the evolutionary ladder, and simply do away with the herd instinct and replace it with reason. The argument, if put this way, does not sound particularly strong. What can be taken away is that social media is still evolving, that social media changes the way we – or most of us communicate, that social media is used in social and political activism, and that the Internet increases quantitative if not qualitative access to information.