Dawn of a New Digitial Age - Twitterisms & Our Social Demise

So I meant to blog about this a while ago but I’ve been busy (sue me)…a couple of weeks back a big deal was made out of the race between movie “star” Ashton Kutcher and Cnn to be the first Twitterees (i made up that word) to have one million followers on the new social giant Twitter. In Ashton’s live web stream he documented the closing moments and final heart racing second when he clenched his victory over the news giant and celebrated with his wife and friends.

During his live stream Kutcher made a comment that I found to be very interestinig and it made me think. He stated something along the lines of this being a historical event and achievement, not for him personally but for society because he said it marked the ability of individuals being able to no longer depend on conglomerates for their information and news. He compared it to obtaininig a informational freedom and being able to connect with people in a way never before seen.

I really don’t know where I fully stand on this. As a secret conspiracy theorist I genuinely believe that the government and media sources clearly seek to control every aspect of “news” we receive for the reasons of public opinion control, money, population and party division and numerous other reasons. I however am not fully sold on the idea that connecting with a million people on a social network and everyone having the ability to share “news” in an effort to spread awareness or gain attention is a great leap forward either.

As we move forward in this ever expanding universe of technological progression we have to decide how we really balance and define human “connection” and what we consider news. Twitter in a huge sense does offer both, a way for individuals to offer a mundane update about their tedious day and also a way for people to quickly spread info about issues that matter to them.

In our effort to become relevant as individuals in the dissemination of news and information will this spell out the end of our need and craving for huge news organizations like CNN to tell us what we are suppose to care about or is this medium of online social togetherness in all its forms (facebook, twitter, myspace, etc) just another form of control and distraction?