One of my major inspirations to start a blog was realizing the great potential that new electronic resources have for both communication and scholarship. While I am only now beginning to blog and actively engage with social media, I am not a complete novice to this medium. My first personal experience with it came in 1994, when the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas opened our eyes to the role that emerging cyber-technologies would play in the redefining of communications and political participation around the world. Back at a time when (now apparently archaic) tools like Archie, Veronica and Pine were astonishing new means to search and communicate, cyberspace completely transformed our way of learning and communicating. It is quite interesting to see this essay written by Harry Cleaver when the EZLN unleashed this new power. It was a time when the internet began to complement other means of communication, like alternative print journalism. Back then journals like (sub)TEX began discovering what we now take for granted, the “synergy” between electronic and print journalism.
My first blog
Learning to engage in cyberspace
It seems as though the likes and shares of Facebook have replaced more of the in depth social interaction that once took place between closer friends and has created an artificial basis for friendship between more distant acquaintances. The gap between knowing what is going on in one’s life verses being involved in one’s life has been blurred. From a political prospective, social media has allowed us to share and access information (and miss information) much easier, but rarely is a meaningful dialogue created as a result.
The benefit of a blog is that your have the opportunity to express in great length thoughts, opinions and reasoning creating a deeper intellectual connection. The downfall is that our society is slowly being programmed to only pay attention to 100 words or less and just read bullet points. Nevertheless, there are still some of us who will take great value in a more in depth interaction.
So true! It seems that the more “friends” you have, more clever you are. And posts with lots of “Like” are not a movilizing tool necesarily. I always explain it to my trainees in cyberactivism but they seem to think “Hey, lots of likes, lots of people in the streets”.
You mobilize people and generate deep thoughst through the exchange, for example, in blogs comments.
(I excuse my English but I speak Spanish!)
¿Tendremos que pensar en alguna nueva dialéctica? Los comentarios definitivamente nos llevan más allá de los “likes”, pero en última instancia creo que también nos hace falta un contacto y una presencia fÃsica. El internet ayuda a esparcir las ideas, pero la acción personal es indispensable también. Las Ãntima relación entre las redes sociales y las calles (en el contexto urbano del siglo XXI) han sido fundamentales. Recordemos también que en el 94 los likes todavÃa no existÃan, la red era entonces un instrumento que llevaba la comunicación y la movilización más allá de los medios oficiales de comunicación.
the good ol’ days. don’t forget that much of our “cyber” work in those days was made possible by the real, intense face-to-face relationships we built. Remember the restaurants, bars, house parties and meetings, coyunturas, workshops, reading groups, etc.?
Indeed, Pancho. Must never forget the human contact you mention; it perhaps should be counted under the category of “synergyâ€. Beyond the intense relationships we had at the time, the very learning about the available tools happened at the personal level. At the same time, despite the importance of cyberspace and social networks for today’s communications and activism, limiting ourselves to pressing “like†and “share†on a computer screen could, in some cases, even be counterproductive as it can easily become a very easy substitute for actual engagement.