First off...
Guess who's back? Yes.. Me.
This semester, this blog is about e-Public Administration (and do I have some catching up to do!) ePA 591 had made me break my promise not to join twitter nor google+... I also had to sign up for foursquare. I can safely say that I am Year 2011 social media compliant. Signing up for these "groups" was easy,I pray I remember my passwords. I have been told that google+ is user friendly but that has not been my experience and I am still learning the uses of foursquare.
I understand that in this age of technology one needs to be up to speed and be technology savvy but my fear is that this "social media craze" may become a slippery slope if not properly utilized. A case in point is the recent riots in London.
Obviously, there are many benefits of social media but as Malone notes in the future of work, read text here some of us like the Spanish cannot imagine a future different from what we know. The author educates us on how our society once expanded and is now becoming smaller thanks to the decreasing cost of communication, the availability of information to the people and decentralization. David Cameron further expands and explains Malone's points in his TED talk watch videousing the United Kingdom has an example. A lesson I have learned from the readings and videos is that I cannot run away from technology- as Cameron noted, government is about the only sphere that is yet to fully utilize social media-.
Have these readings allayed my fears on why I have to be "out there"? as a public administrator? - No. Do I believe that governments should tweet all they do, release as much information to the public as the public desires? emmm not quite. I believe that if set within proper guidelines and frameworks social media would promote collaboration, citizen engagement and participation in government. The challenge and problem is that in a bid to get governments to flow with the tide, it does not become a slippery slope that takes us back to the times when people behaved as they saw fit.
In conclusion, below is a statement made by "Thompson" in the movie "Adjustment Bureau" on freewill (please read as decentralization or freedom)
"We actually tried free will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman empire, we stepped back to see how you'd do on your own. You gave us the dark ages for five centuries until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman thought that maybe we just needed to do a better job with teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you raised hopes, enlightment, scientific revolution. For six hundred years we taught you to control your impulses with reason. Then in nineteen ten, we stepped back. Within fifty years you'd brought us world war one, the depression, fascism, the holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuba missile crisis. At that point the decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn't fix"... Where I come from, we say that too much of everything is dangerous.
"We actually tried free will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman empire, we stepped back to see how you'd do on your own. You gave us the dark ages for five centuries until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman thought that maybe we just needed to do a better job with teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you raised hopes, enlightment, scientific revolution. For six hundred years we taught you to control your impulses with reason. Then in nineteen ten, we stepped back. Within fifty years you'd brought us world war one, the depression, fascism, the holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuba missile crisis. At that point the decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn't fix"... Where I come from, we say that too much of everything is dangerous.
Deuces
1) The Adjustment Bureau
2) Dr Erik Johnston for the link to "The Future of Work"
3) TED for the Link to David Cameron's talk.
