Media and Networking

Human beings have evolved in all the fields; be it in the field of agriculture, industry, life-style, thinking pattern etc.,  in the field of media and networking[1] too, there has been a great evolution. First of all we need to keep in mind that the concept of networking is a very old concept or rather a very ancient practice. However, with the growth and development in the world today in all fields there has been a great leap in the field of media and network. Let us discuss some of the important issues of media and networking today: 
1.Culture of Alphabet V/s Culture of Electricity: It is very visible today that there is a great movement from the culture of alphabet to the culture of electricity. It is observed that in last 300 years culture of electricity has attacked the culture of alphabet; in the last 30 years this attack has been accelerated. This culture of electricity is changing the commerce and the way of life of the people tremendously. The Culture of alphabet refers to a time when people depended solely on books for knowledge. The culture of electricity refers to a culture where information is easily available to anyone; aided by electrical appliances and latest gadgets.

2. Private V/s Public: In the culture of electricity there is no room for privacy, everything is public. Thus I cannot really say that ‘this is mine’ or ‘that belongs to me.’ What is important here is the concept of sharing. Sharing of information, ideas, insights and future dreams have become more common practice than before.

3. Within V/s Without: In the culture of alphabet everything seemed to be within; if I had knowledge about something people had to come to me and learn personally. In the past I had the right to claim something. But today in the internet world everything is exposed and I cannot exclusively claim something to be solely mine. Any one can easily take my ideas and further develop on them.

4. Dialogue and Interactivity: Connectedness and collaboration has become more and more common today. One of the great success stories of collaboration is the Wikipedia[2] which has become a common platform for people to share their ideas on innumerable topics. Like the cells that work and collaborate together to keep our body going people of today are on a lookout to network. At this point of time it is interesting to note that what we are doing in networking is the replication the structure of our body. The internet is like our nervous system. The new generation is becoming more and more relational. In a network there is no hierarchical structure only collaboration. We now live in the world of prosumers.[3] Today what people are concentrating on is the ‘power of the many’ or the ‘distributed cognition;’ it could be described as “helping one another for nothing.”

5. Words V/s Images: The world of electricity moves and works by means of images rather than words. Gone are the days when people loved reading novels and huge treatises. People these days are attracted by the way information are presented. One of the concrete reasons of the print media portraying lot of images is this. If not for the attractive images the print media would have been swallowed up by the visual media because it has lot of images.

6. Concepts V/s Experience: The electric-age generation are in search of experience and not concepts. They want something concrete something that can be seen and felt. This is why the latest technology is trying to make the electric gadgets more experiential like touch screen gadgets, 3D gadgets, and video chat. All these are an attempt to make messages and communication more experiential.

7. Digital Natives v/s Digital Immigrants: There is a great difference between the two groups of people. The digital natives are the people/kids of this generation but the immigrants are people who have learnt to adapt to the electric age. Digital natives are literate with regard to media content literacy, media grammar literacy etc., therefore there are different types of literacies today. One of the simple conflicts between the age of alphabet and electricity is the phenomenon of “sms;” the phenomenon of “sms” is really a struggle of the alphabets to live in the electric world.

8. Static v/s Dynamic: The age of electricity is very dynamic and open to change, feedback and modifications; it is very fluid in character. This makes the information and the messages very appealing and open to confrontations with regard to truth. For instance we have “Twitter” which facilitates instant exchange of messages. This was not the case in the alphabet age; then, messages were very static and slow to change and modification.

9. Archiving v/s Programming: We are moving from the era of re-claiming to re-making. Gone are the days of archiving and preserving the information. Now the trend is programming rather than preserving information in the archives.

10. Challenges: One of the great challenges today is the conflict between Doctrine and Experience.  The main challenge is the balance between being a man of alphabet and electricity-native. The challenge is to be relevant in the age of electricity while not giving up the good the age of alphabet offers us. The new media culture demands that youth workers communicate with the youth through creative homilies. Culture of electricity is looking for an experience not a theory. Speed culture and utilitarian philosophy (convenience) is the order of the day. The replacements of values have hit the society very hard. For instance we find live-in relationships very common. Using people as conveniences and Commitment-less relationships are too common among the “electricity generation.”

Conclusion: The need of the hour to focus on resurrection and not crucifixion, on hope rather than despair. The good news that people are looking for is the resurrection through crucifixion. Things to be kept in mind are newness, pertinence and publicness. Can I experience freedom without discipline? E.g. violinist and a sports man. Try to give joy that is lasting to the youth of today not thrill that is momentary.

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[1] I, at the very outset would like to like to acknowledge the fact that the ideas that I am going to put down in this short article is not my own. It is the fruit of the reflections shared by Mr. Conrad Saldanha (Management adviser of Kurla Don Bosco).  If any of my readers are interested in knowing more about the issue you could contact him personally. I don’t claim to have understood the topic fully however, I am sharing what I was enlightened with.

[2] It is amazing to see how Wikipedia has flourished today, it started only in 2001 but the way it has grown is really tremendous. This is the clear example of the fruit of collaboration and network in the world of electricity.

[3] An example of presuming could be children taking part in the production of the computer games.