In the old days, which wasn't too long ago really, many of us read newspapers and watched the news on TV. I, for one, love reading the news. But the advent of social media and smart phones radically changed my reading habits and, in so doing, opened my sights to a wider horizon of news. This was an article I wrote two years ago, at the heels of Steve Jobs' death, and that revolutionary transition to digital news still resonates for me today.
October 22nd 2011
News of Saddam Hussein’s capture came to me through a Saudi friend. I was in Dhahran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, consulting for Saudi Aramco, and my friend and I were walking on the campus of their HQ. That was in December 2003, literally two months before Facebook was launched. Fast forward a mere eight years, to now. I found out about Steve Jobs’ death on my BlackBerry, while quickly scanning my friends’ news feed on Facebook. I was still in bed, barely awake in the predawn dark, and that morning in early October 2011 was a sad beginning to the day for me in Dubai.
I learned, too, about Muammar Gaddafi’s death from a headline on LinkedIn Today yesterday, this time while sitting at my desk and browsing on my laptop. This was stunning news indeed, and the rough videos of his capture on YouTube were shocking. Then, once again on LinkedIn Today, I see this article from Wired today: On Facebook, NATO Chief Announces End to Libya War.
Indeed the NATO Chief does:
Writer Spencer Ackerman is practically gushing about this:
"Who could have predicted,” asks my colleague Mike Isaac in WIRED’s new app guide, discussing Facebook’s mobile app, “that one skinny nerd from Harvard would completely change the definition of social experience in the 21st century?” The power of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation has been on display all year as the Arab Spring has reshaped the Middle East.In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson discusses how the internet has democratized the distribution of and access to digital products like music. What he means is something like this: The primary content creators like CNN and BBC have so many ways to put their news out there. For example, content aggregators like Google News and LinkedIn Today are marvelous conduits, not just for sharing news but also for expanding on it. Wired, along with a world of blogs, are dynamic, far-reaching content interpreters. Finally, of course, news reaches the content recipients, millions of us who are seemingly everywhere online and literally everywhere in the world.
No question, Zuckerberg is a leading figure in all this and Facebook is by far the most populated community online. But again what’s most amazing to me is what he and many others have spawned as far as information and communications are concerned.
No doubt, Facebook is a revolutionary social creation. But this by itself isn’t that amazing to me. Rather, it’s the fact that our world is so intricately connected that news comes to us much more quickly and through so many different avenues.
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Consider one more thing. They say at some point in our lives, these nerve cells stop growing and begin to degenerate. However, as far as information and communications go, there is simply no stopping or degenerating in sight. Traditional media like TV and radio will not go away any time soon, and neither will good old fashioned friend-to-friend word of mouth. In fact, the media and technology that enable all of this will, like the broader universe we live in, expand indefinitely.
It’s an unusual form of evolution, I’d say, because the new guard is not replacing the old guard, but rather is standing shoulder-to-shoulder among them.
It’s a kind of multilinear evolution.
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
Ron Villejo, PhD
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