Social media make history?

This is my 10^th blog. I would like to talk about the development of media in human history.

TED.com is really good website to know new ideas from remarkable people across the world that I have never heard it before.

Clay Shirky held a speech in TED and the topic was “how social media make history?” Shirky said that media is increasingly social. Innovation can happen anywhere that people can take for granted the idea that we’re all in this together. 

We know that media are the storage and transmission channels or tools used to store and deliver information or data (Wikipedia, 2011). According to Shirky C (2009), there are four periods in the last 500 years where media has changed enough to qualify for the label Revolution.

1.      The printing press: Movable type, oil-based inks, that whole complex of innovation that made printing possible staring in the middle of the 1400s.

2.      Conversational media: first the telegraph, then the telephone. Slow, text based conversations.

3.      Record Media: a revolution in recorded media other than print. First photos, then recorded sound, then movies. All encoded onto physical objects.

4.      Electromagnetic spectrum: The harnessing of electromagnetic spectrum to send sound and images through the air, radio and television.

However, in the past, media are good at creating conversations is no good at creating groups. And that’s good at creating groups is not good at creating conversations. If we want to have a conversation in this world, we have it with one other person. If we want to address a group, we get the same message and we give it to everybody in the group (Shirly C, 2009)

The changes of media in last 20 decades:

1.      The internet is the first medium that has native support for groups and conversation at the same time

2.      Media is increasing less just a source of information, and it is increasingly more a site of coordination that groups can see, hear, watch and listen to something and now gather around and talk to each other in the internet

3.      Former consumers are now producers too

4.      People  are increasingly in a landscape where media is global, social ubiquitous and cheap

5.      We are living in the middle of media that we are no longer disconnected from each other and the network is growing very very large. The audience can talk directly to one another. 

6.      Media is less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals. It is more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups

 I absolutely agree with Shirlys’ points and ideas that we are so close with each other. However, the media is changing rapidly. What can we do to make best use of it and how do we adopt to it?