Do New Media Technologies Connect or Divide Society

My theme for this blog has been, “Do new media technologies connect or divide communities.” To answer this question I have a few other questions. What is a community? Webster’s Dictionary defines a community in many different ways. I want to look at the definition of community as society at large. If a community is society then what does a society need to function? Society needs a future so education of their children is important. Society needs government or some means of law enforcement. Society needs some way of communicating on small and large scales. Finally society needs some view of confidentiality. The last question is what does it mean to connect a society? I define this as the majority of society being unified in he means of communicating, their view of education, involvement in government, and their view of privacy.

New media technologies have opened the way for communication to flow. Vinny Cahill and Siobhan Clarke claim that we live in a truly connected society, because “3G cellular data networks have literally brought the Internet to the man in the street at broadband speeds”. This has connected society in means of communication on both scales. It brings global news to almost anyone at anyplace at anytime. It also allows individuals to have one-on-one conversations. The internet has become the means of communication. VoIP is taking over land lines, and cell phones are needed to be considered in the loop.

Steps to government involvement are increasing. Facebook has allowed people to coordinate protests as well as get the word out about campaigns. Many states have implemented electronic voting machines, yeah no more dangling or dimpled chads. Another step that is being considered is vote by SMS. In Estonia, the parliament passed a bill allowing its voters to cast their ballots via SMS by 2011. What an idea, for security they are issuing chips or codes that match them with their registration. I believe that would increase voting by millions if you could just text your vote in, no lines.

Education is extremely important for a society to progress. Formal education brings the majority of society to the same level. New media technologies have pushed the envelope in where students can learn and what they can learn. The Internet and global communication has put education into the hands of the students. They can connect to schools online or they can Google a topic to find out about any subject. It has brought a learn-at-your-own-speed connection to every person who has access to these resources.

Finally the perception of privacy changes with each generation. It seems that society generalizes that we as a society are willing to give up privacy for convenience. But as Gary Marx states in “Privacy and technology” this is a fallacy. Technology has given ways to increase privacy. PGP and RSA encryption are the two strongest encryption algorithms out there. VPN (virtual private networks) also give secure connections for transferring data across the Internet. As technology increases loop holes for intrusion of privacy, it also finds new ways of protecting the information from the intruders.

New media technology is connecting society, globally and locally. And it will continue to do so with each passing generation.

For full articles:
Cahill & Clarke

Estonia SMS voting