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.
You made some good points here, and I must say I saw The Adjustment Bureau and was surprised to find it a pretty intriguing movie. I am also continually surprised by some of the information that politicians say and other political figures release to the public. There should be transparency and freedom of information and records requests, but there are some things that do not need to be blasted on Twitter for the sake of rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I also vowed not to come back to Twitter and am still fundamentally against the notion of putting my location on the internet for obvious reasons. We should not be blind in entering new technology because anyone says it is transforming society.
Great post, Damola. I definitely agree with your statement that social media/networking can promote collaboration, citizen engagement and participation in government. A great example of this is President Obama's campaign (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html).
ReplyDeleteAn except from the article sums up the potential communication can have: “Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the Web for raising money,” said Ranjit Mathoda, a lawyer and money manager who blogs at Mathoda.com. “But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organize to do the work."
There are definitely pros and cons when it comes to social networking. A pro is the ability to feel connected to a cause you feel strongly about and a con is the gathering of people that want to do harm. I am interested in seeing the 2012 campaign to see what campaign tools are going to be implemented. It's definitely going to be an exciting time.
That is a great point about social media promoting citizen engagement and collaboration. I was an intern for a company that relies on social media directed to consumers as a part of their marketing strategy and guidance. They referred to it as "collaborative marketing" internally and has proven to be successful.
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