In Malcolm Gladwell’s article, From Innovation to Revolution, he undermines Shirky’s article, The Political Power of Social Media. In Shirky’s article, he highlights how due to the increase of those in the networked population, people have much greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action. Shirky shows the example of how texting supposedly gathered massive amounts of people in the Philippines to protest against a government decision. Gladwell does not support Shirky’s main point, on how social media has revolutionized public organization.
Gladwell thinks that just because innovations in communication technology happen does not mean that they matter; or, to put it another way, in order for an innovation to make a real difference, it has to solve a problem that was actually a problem in the first place.
What evidence is there that social revolutions in the pre-Internet era suffered from a lack of cutting-edge communications and organizational tools?
Did social media solve a problem that actually needed solving? Gladwell sure doesn’t think so.
No comments:
Post a Comment