17th
Social Media for Social Justice?
It’s been a month since the SXSW interactive conference in Austin, and the event continues to gnaw at me. All of us can’t help but notice that the content on facebook, tumblr, and twitter is centered on us: we’re busy tweeting about ourselves, making virtual ‘friends’, accumulating followers, so on. But it’s not until you put 7,000 technologists in a gigantic convention center that you experience the brick and mortar impact of a virtual culture built around self promotion. During my week in Austin, with the exception of Lawrence Lessig’s presentation on political corruption, I didn’t discover any talks about how to use our technology to improve our relationship with one another and our planet. It feels like the social media explosion is about how to focus the amazing benefits of technology on ourselves. This makes it very hard not to be cynical. Building monuments to ourselves, and optimizing their search engine rank, is not the way to create a better future.
michaelknapp
