Tuesday in class we spoke about this ideal of the smart mob and the implications that it has for our society. Technology has greatly transformed our society and the general flow of knowledge within different circles of life. The Internet and text messaging have allowed us to transfer large quantities of information to great numbers of different individuals within a matter of seconds. A friend of mine is living in Australia and it is amazing how we can Skype with each other with very little noticeable delay.
The advancement of knowledge were once a mostly individual effort. Sure there was some collaboration between scientist and student/apprentice but most of the great discoveries were made by individual who dedicated there lives to research a particular topic. Today devices such as the Internet have allowed collaboration and the transfer of information between many individuals working concurrently on a given project. Information can be shared around the world in just a few seconds where in days gone by it could have taken months or even years to receive correspondence.
The smart mob dynamic appears to improve the overall accuracy of the facts being presented. While medias such as Wikipedia do allow for the possibility of sabotage, most users I believe hope to aid in increasing the accuracy of the work. After all what we perceive as scientific fact are merely the observations of others before us that we have agreed to believe. Over time we have modified them to improve upon the accuracy of most of these concepts there by creating a more perfect fit model due to various observations and opinions. The smart mob, thanks to technology, has merely expedited this process.
I agree its wild how technology has transformed the way we, as a society, communicate. I'm working in a couple of group projects right now and we are using google docs. Its works great bc we don't all have to meet up, we can chat through Clemson gmail and all make changes to a common document and it all updates immediately so we know what changes have been made as soon as they're made.
ReplyDeleteI to believe that the majority of people that edit on wikipedia and other sites do it out of the thought that they are trying to help others and not to maliciously mess up content. After all we are animals and I have never seen any other animals intentionally run their own into the claws of a predator. So why would humans, do it? We are going to try to help just as much as anything else
ReplyDeleteI think it is funny how much we actually depend on modern technology to communicate. If it were not for the internet people would get a chance to talk near as much as they do now. It seems like actually talking on the phone has become a thing of the past. I have noticed recently that there are even a lot of customer service contacts for companies that have changed to email addresses instead of phone numbers.
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