BELOW: http://kenmooreworld.blogspot.

com/2010/08/globalization-through-
communication.html

GLOBALIZATION THROUGH COMMUNICATION

ABSTRACT
The importance and role of communication are over-riding and all pervading in business as well
as in all human endeavours. Communication is so constant and widespread that one cannot
escape its influence. Without it people would be isolated and unable to give and receive ideas.
Civilization itself would be impossible. However, the breakthroughs in communication in the
past decades and in our 21st century have spurred increases in cross-border trade, investment
and migration so large that many observers believe and we now claim we live in “one world”
the globe world. Globalization is the process by which people in the world are unified into a
single society and function together. This paper tried to show how communication platforms
have spawned a new age of connectivity in culture, society, economy, social life, technology,
and politics in relationship of millions of people in the globe.

INTRODUCTION
When in the 1960s the pioneering media thinker, Marshall McLuhan coined the term “the
global village”, he had in mind the impact of electronic media on the society. Today the notion
or phenomenon called globalization has become a highly controversial one in political and
social discourse; there are many perspectives as there are groups with conviction on the
concept. In general, globalization refers to the trend towards countries coming together
economically, through education, society and politics, and viewing themselves not only
through their national identity but also as part of the world as a whole.
Lubbers and Koorevaar (1999:2) provide one of the most useful definition of globalization.
Globalization in their definition is a process in which geographic distance becomes a factor of
diminishing importance in the establishment and maintenance of cross-border economic,
political and socio-cultural relations. This process reaches such intensity that relations change
fundamentally, and people become aware of the change. The potential internationalization of
relations and dependences create opportunities, but also cause fear, resistance, actions and
reactions.

Arguments for globalization include the following:

• It is reducing poverty worldwide
• It is allowing access to technology in developing countries
• It promotes world peace
• It has benefited women and children’s rights
• It raises life expectancy.

The term globalization or global village can be traced to McLuhan (1965); and it emanates from
his message that the medium is the message. This view can be applied to aspects of the new
media such as the internet and the world wide web. Globalization is a highly controversial term
and its definitions are influenced by different perspectives: social, cultural, political and
economic. In commenting on the role of globalization, Soola (2002 17-18) presents a political
and socio-economic view in:

Globalization marks the historic watershed in the west’s attempt to consolidate the gains of
colonialism and its drive for expanded spheres of influence. Ostensibly designed to actualize
the dream of the global village..it has… become a weapon of subordination, dependency and
marginalization…. It serves to further accentuate the socio-economic and technological divide
between these bipolar economic regions of the world, the south being the worse off.

Aborisade (2005: 3) claims that, “the history of globalization is the history of economic trade
and economic expansion facilitated by technology”. This has resulted in economic relations
and activities influencing technology. The notion of globalization was built on the concept of a
global village that reflects a world that is interconnected and interdependent and its agents are
information, the new technologies and economic neo-liberalism.

A major disadvantage of globalization is that it does not promote development in the sense
that it leaves other parts of the world economically, socially, culturally and technologically
dependent on other privileged parts of the world. In spite of the immense opportunities that
the new media present, they also carry great risks: the globalization of the world
economy/trade and the uneven international news flow pattern will lead to developing nations
lagging even far behind in economic growth and development.

UNIVERSAL METHODS OF COMMUNICATION

Jayaweera (1991: 17) defines communication as “an interaction process through which persons
or groups relate to each other and share information, experience and culture”. Oxford
Advanced Learners Dictionary (2000) defines communication as the activity or process of
expressing ideas and feelings or giving people information. The definition points to the fact
that communication involves sharing or exchange of a number of things. It includes sharing
information, ideas and feelings between people or among nations.

Communication is a two process. When you communicate, you perceive the other persons
responses and react with your own thoughts and feelings. This is only by paying attentions to
the person that you have an idea about what to say or do next. So it is through communication
that collaboration and co-operation occur.

There are many methods in which communication can be transmitted universally. Some of
these methods include the following.

Printed material
A great deal of our post consist of printed documents in the form of brochures, magazines, and
newsletters, many of which originate from outside, although this format is also common for
cooperate communication. Depending on the production values and the number of colors,
printed materials can be expensive to produce and replicate, except at high volumes
Fax
This uses public telephone system as a way of delivering paper documents from one place to
another, especially in a situation where a hard copy original is not essential.

E – MAIL
This has become the primary means of delivering short text messages within organizations
that are networked. As e –mail between organizations become more common, the medium
will increasingly take the place of fax, particularly as whole document can be sent as e-mail
attachment. E-mail provides many cost advantages when compared with the use of paper or
the telephone.

Letters / Reports
In spite of the increase in electronic communication, we all seem to receive our fair share of
message on paper. This may be if there is no e-mail link between the parties because a hard
copy is required to meet audit or legal requirement or perhaps the recipient prefers to read
from paper than screen.

Phone
It is universal and with the advent of voice mail and mobile phones is now possible to reach
people practically anytime, anywhere. Conferencing facilities also make it possible for meeting
of three or more people to take place remotely.

Radio / TV
Both are universal forms of mass media which rely on electric power to get their messages to
the audience.

GLOBALIZATION THROUGH COMMUNICATION

Rapid improvements in information technology have allowed us to exchange information and
communicate almost everywhere, anywhere and anytime. The nature of business and how it is
done globally have also improved tremendously through communication.

Through communication we observe the following trends in globalization:

Increase in international trade at a faster rate than the growth in the world economy.

Increase in international flow of capital including foreign direct investment.

Increase in world production output and consumption.

Greater trans – border data flow, using such technologies as the internet, communication
satellites and telephones.

Development of global telecommunications infrastructure.

Greater immigration, including illegal immigration and others.

Another remarkable effect of communication on globalization is in the use of telephone and

television. Telephone has made it possible for young people and adults around the globe to
share cultural and ethnic experiences with each other. The television has also allowed
generations of people to see how other people live, think and feel in other parts of the globe. In
full color, we can now “meet” new people and cultures without even having to take a single
step outside our home. With just the use of remote, right in comfort of our homes, we can
explore different worlds that we know without the visual and sounds transmitted through our
TV. Telephones have also improved communication. Gone are the weeks and even months of
waiting for letters. Anybody can talk to anyone who has another phone regardless of the
distance or location in the planet. With the aid of satellites, 3rd generation phones allow us to
make a phone call, send video, or even receive an e-mail. Because of these developments in
the field of communications technology, no two countries are really apart. So these
breakthrough in communication have revolutioned business, commerce, and even the
personal lives and relationship of millions of people.

The mass marketing of computers and the wide availability of internet services have brought
many parts of the world together, as if we were woven on a single pattern or web of daily life.
Countries today do not just export raw materials or the usual projects. Global exchange is now
taking place as the market of ideas, culture, and beliefs expand through the use of technology.

Because of the electronic media, vast amount of important information can reach any part of
the world in no time. Business establishments, whether big or small are using the internet in
many ways to build or expand their company’s growth. With the ever improving technology
comes new markets, high demand for products and also greater competition. Making
investments in information and communications technology is now a must for any business
enterprise.

Another form of improved technology is the fusion of the internet and the fax machine, giving
birth to internet faxing. Internet faxing is faster and more economical than traditional faxing. It
is a general term which refers to the convenient use of faxing technology over the internet. It is
a method of using e-mail or a particular website like FREEIFAX that offers internet faxing
services. FREEIFAX has combined the speed and efficiency of e-mails and the low cost sending
or broadcasting documents. Through e-mails, the faxes are sent faster and frees the subscriber
from the time consuming task of making several phone calls to check if the transmitted
document actually got through. This kind of service enables business companies to save time
and money. Additionally FREEIFAX internet does not require the purchase of another
additional configuration or phone lines. All that is needed is a computer with an internet
connection and e-mail account.

To avail one of this internet service, all one has to do is to visit the FREEIFAX site and signup.
By signing up, consumers are allowed to gain access to incoming and outgoing fax messages.
These messages are accessible in most of the world where there is internet connection.

FREEIFAX is one of the internet faxing companies preferred by many individuals around the
world. It boasts of thousands of satisfied users around the world. Again many economists claim
that internet has created advantages for small and medium sized businesses around the world.
This advantage can be utilized while avoiding many business obstacles by using internet faxing
properly.

In our world, there are many places that we can’t get within a day’s travel, but some people can
reach such places via telephone or internet. Because of these modern modes of traveling and
communication, citizens of a nation are more conscious of the world at large and may be
influenced by other cultures in a variety of ways. Time and space matter less, and even
language barriers are being overcome as people all over the world communicate through social
internet forums’, various media sources and a variety of other forms of communication.

IMPACT OF COMMUNICATION ON GLOBALIZATION

We have attempted in this paper to examine the concepts of globalization and
communication. It is obvious that communication has both positive and negative impact on
globalization. Some of the positive impacts have so affected the globe today in the following
ways:

Communication facilitates information among generation of people and promotes economic

developments of nations.

Communication promotes world peace. Nations today experience relative peace among
themselves; this is as a result of peaceful coexistence, deliberations resulting from
communication with one another.

The interactions that exist among countries of the world through communication has made
these countries to be socialized and recognized.

There will be no successful transaction of business amongst countries involved in world trade if
there is break-down in communication. So effective communication promotes world trade.

Communication promotes exchange of ideas and technology. Communication between two or

among nations bring the countries in contact with one another’s culture, thereby creating the
opportunity for exchanging forms of technology and other ideas.

Some of the negative impacts of communication on globalization are as follows:

Communication among the nations today has contributed to wide spread of corrupt practices
among nations.
Improper communications on politics, economics and even language barrier can cause
misunderstanding among nations which can create havoc and enemity among the nations
Improper deliberations and breakdown in communication among nations could result to war
among nations.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

This paper considered the role of communication in the globalization trend. The study looked
at the universal methods of communication which includes printed materials, fax, e-mail,
phone, radio, TV, video conferencing, internet forum, and other varieties of communication.
The paper tried to establish the fact that citizens of our great nations are more conscious of the
world at large through the use of the modern modes of communication.

Time and space matter less and even language barriers are being overcome as people all over
the world communicate using different mode of communication. Furthermore, that the
breakthrough in communication in the past decades and in our 21st century have spurred
increases in the share of economic activities taking place across national boundaries otherwise
called globalization. This globalization also goes beyond just the international trade in goods
and services, it includes the way those goods and services are produced, the delivery and sales
of services, and the movement of capital.

Finally the effects of globalization through communication are well established.

The impact of communication on globalization has both positive and negative effects. The
breakthroughs in communication have revolutionized business, commerce, and even the
personal lives and relationships of millions of people in the globe.

In conclusion therefore, the challenges of globalization necessitate that countries develop their
information and communication infrastructure and create an enabling environment for
information and knowledge sharing. To this effect, the paper recommends that African
countries and other nations of the globe create opportunities to embark on nation-wide
awareness programmes on modern information development issues and take concrete
measures that would facilitate their digital inclusion.
BELOW: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-
conversation.html

SundayReview | OPINION
The Flight From Conversation
SHERRY TURKLE APRIL 21, 2012

CreditPhotographs by Peter DaSilva and Byron Smith, for The New York Times
WE live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have
sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives text during
board meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on
dates. My students tell me about an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact
with someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it can be done.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve studied technologies of mobile connection and talked to hundreds
of people of all ages and circumstances about their plugged-in lives. I’ve learned that the little
devices most of us carry around are so powerful that they change not only what we do, but also
who we are.

We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.” Technology-enabled, we

are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We
want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we
value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of
being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party.

Our colleagues want to go to that board meeting but pay attention only to what interests
them. To some this seems like a good idea, but we can end up hiding from one another, even
as we are constantly connected to one another.

A businessman laments that he no longer has colleagues at work. He doesn’t stop by to talk; he
doesn’t call. He says that he doesn’t want to interrupt them. He says they’re “too busy on their
e-mail.” But then he pauses and corrects himself. “I’m not telling the truth. I’m the one who
doesn’t want to be interrupted. I think I should. But I’d rather just do things on my BlackBerry.”
A 16-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says almost wistfully, “Someday,
someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.”
In today’s workplace, young people who have grown up fearing conversation show up on the
job wearing earphones. Walking through a college library or the campus of a high-tech start-
up, one sees the same thing: we are together, but each of us is in our own bubble, furiously
connected to keyboards and tiny touch screens. A senior partner at a Boston law firm describes
a scene in his office. Young associates lay out their suite of technologies: laptops, iPods and
multiple phones. And then they put their earphones on. “Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their
desks into cockpits.” With the young lawyers in their cockpits, the office is quiet, a quiet that
does not ask to be broken.

In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people —
carefully kept at bay. We can’t get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one
another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right. I think of it as a
Goldilocks effect.

Texting and e-mail and posting let us present the self we want to be. This means we can edit.
And if we wish to, we can delete. Or retouch: the voice, the flesh, the face, the body. Not too
much, not too little — just right.

Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of
cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of
this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we
stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.

We are tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real
conversation. But they don’t. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in
politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not
substitute for conversation.

Connecting in sips may work for gathering discrete bits of information or for saying, “I am
thinking about you.” Or even for saying, “I love you.” But connecting in sips doesn’t work as
well when it comes to understanding and knowing one another. In conversation we tend to one
another. (The word itself is kinetic; it’s derived from words that mean to move, together.) We
can attend to tone and nuance. In conversation, we are called upon to see things from
another’s point of view.

FACE-TO-FACE conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on

our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of online
connections, we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler
questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters. It is as
though we have all put ourselves on cable news. Shakespeare might have said, “We are
consum’d with that which we were nourish’d by.”
And we use conversation with others to learn to converse with ourselves. So our flight from
conversation can mean diminished chances to learn skills of self-reflection. These days, social
media continually asks us what’s “on our mind,” but we have little motivation to say something
truly self-reflective. Self-reflection in conversation requires trust. It’s hard to do anything with
3,000 Facebook friends except connect.

As we get used to being shortchanged on conversation and to getting by with less, we seem
almost willing to dispense with people altogether. Serious people muse about the future of
computer programs as psychiatrists. A high school sophomore confides to me that he wishes
he could talk to an artificial intelligence program instead of his dad about dating; he says the
A.I. would have so much more in its database. Indeed, many people tell me they hope that as
Siri, the digital assistant on Apple’s iPhone, becomes more advanced, “she” will be more and
more like a best friend — one who will listen when others won’t.

During the years I have spent researching people and their relationships with technology, I
have often heard the sentiment “No one is listening to me.” I believe this feeling helps explain
why it is so appealing to have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed — each provides so many
automatic listeners. And it helps explain why — against all reason — so many of us are willing
to talk to machines that seem to care about us. Researchers around the world are busy
inventing sociable robots, designed to be companions to the elderly, to children, to all of us.

One of the most haunting experiences during my research came when I brought one of these
robots, designed in the shape of a baby seal, to an elder-care facility, and an older woman
began to talk to it about the loss of her child. The robot seemed to be looking into her eyes. It
seemed to be following the conversation. The woman was comforted.

And so many people found this amazing. Like the sophomore who wants advice about dating
from artificial intelligence and those who look forward to computer psychiatry, this enthusiasm
speaks to how much we have confused conversation with connection and collectively seem to
have embraced a new kind of delusion that accepts the simulation of compassion as sufficient
unto the day. And why would we want to talk about love and loss with a machine that has no
experience of the arc of human life? Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for one
another?

WE expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to
technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship.
Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be
heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be
alone. Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved.

When people are alone, even for a few moments, they fidget and reach for a device. Here
connection works like a symptom, not a cure, and our constant, reflexive impulse to connect
shapes a new way of being.
Think of it as “I share, therefore I am.” We use technology to define ourselves by sharing our
thoughts and feelings as we’re having them. We used to think, “I have a feeling; I want to make
a call.” Now our impulse is, “I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text.”

So, in order to feel more, and to feel more like ourselves, we connect. But in our rush to
connect, we flee from solitude, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves. Lacking the
capacity for solitude, we turn to other people but don’t experience them as they are. It is as
though we use them, need them as spare parts to support our increasingly fragile selves.

We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true. If we are
unable to be alone, we are far more likely to be lonely. If we don’t teach our children to be
alone, they will know only how to be lonely.

I am a partisan for conversation. To make room for it, I see some first, deliberate steps. At
home, we can create sacred spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars
“device-free zones.” We can demonstrate the value of conversation to our children. And we
can do the same thing at work. There we are so busy communicating that we often don’t have
time to talk to one another about what really matters. Employees asked for casual Fridays;
perhaps managers should introduce conversational Thursdays. Most of all, we need to
remember — in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts — to listen to one another,
even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we
hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another.

I spend the summers at a cottage on Cape Cod, and for decades I walked the same dunes that
Thoreau once walked. Not too long ago, people walked with their heads up, looking at the
water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads
down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own
devices.

So I say, look up, look at one another, and let’s start the conversation.

Sherry Turkle is a psychologist and professor at M.I.T. and the author, most recently, of “Alone
Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 22, 2012, on page SR1 of the New York
edition with the headline: The Flight From Conversation. Today's Paper|Subscribe
BELOW:
https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history
/transcript?language=en

Clay Shirky
How social media can make history
Posted Jun 2009Rated Informative, Persuasive

I want to talk about the transformed media landscape, and what it means for anybody who has
a message that they want to get out to anywhere in the world. And I want to illustrate that by
telling a couple of stories about that transformation.

0:25I'll start here. Last November there was a presidential election. You probably read
something about it in the papers. And there was some concern that in some parts of the
country there might be voter suppression. And so a plan came up to video the vote. And the
idea was that individual citizens with phones capable of taking photos or making video would
document their polling places, on the lookout for any kind of voter suppression
techniques, and would upload this to a central place. And that this would operate as a kind of
citizen observation -- that citizens would not be there just to cast individual votes,but also to
help ensure the sanctity of the vote overall.

1:03So this is a pattern that assumes we're all in this together. What matters here isn't
technical capital, it's social capital. These tools don't get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring. It isn't when the shiny new tools show up that their uses start
permeating society. It's when everybody is able to take them for granted. Because now that
media is increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere that people can take for granted
the idea that we're all in this together.

1:39And so we're starting to see a media landscape in which innovation is happening

everywhere, and moving from one spot to another. That is a huge transformation. Not to put
too fine a point on it, the moment we're living through -- the moment our historical generation
is living through -- is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history. Now that's a
big claim. I'm going to try to back it up.

2:05There are only four periods in the last 500 years where media has changed enough to
qualify for the label "revolution." The first one is the famous one, the printing press: movable
type, oil-based inks, that whole complex of innovations that made printing possible and turned
Europe upside-down, starting in the middle of the 1400s. Then, a couple of hundred years
ago, there was innovation in two-way communication, conversational media: first the
telegraph, then the telephone. Slow, text-based conversations, then real-time voice based
conversations. Then, about 150 years ago, there was a revolution in recorded media other than
print: first photos, then recorded sound, then movies, all encoded onto physical objects. And
finally, about 100 years ago, the harnessing of electromagnetic spectrum to send sound and
images through the air -- radio and television. This is the media landscape as we knew it in the
20th century. This is what those of us of a certain age grew up with, and are used to.

3:03But there is a curious asymmetry here. The media that is good at creating conversations is
no good at creating groups. And the media that's good at creating groups is no good at
creating conversations. If you want to have a conversation in this world, you have it with one
other person. If you want to address a group, you get the same message and you give it to
everybody in the group, whether you're doing that with a broadcasting tower or a printing
press. That was the media landscape as we had it in the twentieth century.

3:31And this is what changed. This thing that looks like a peacock hit a windscreen is Bill
Cheswick's map of the Internet. He traces the edges of the individual networks and then color
codes them. The Internet is the first medium in history that has native support for groups and
conversation at the same time.Whereas the phone gave us the one-to-one pattern, and
television, radio, magazines, books, gave us the one-to-many pattern, the Internet gives us the
many-to-many pattern. For the first time, media is natively good at supporting these kinds of
conversations. That's one of the big changes.

4:06The second big change is that, as all media gets digitized, the Internet also becomes the
mode of carriage for all other media, meaning that phone calls migrate to the
Internet, magazines migrate to the Internet, movies migrate to the Internet. And that means
that every medium is right next door to every other medium. Put another way, media is
increasingly less just a source of information, and it is increasingly more a site of
coordination, because groups that see or hear or watch or listen to something can now gather
around and talk to each other as well.

4:43And the third big change is that members of the former audience, as Dan Gilmore calls
them, can now also be producers and not consumers. Every time a new consumer joins this
media landscape a new producer joins as well, because the same equipment -- phones,
computers -- let you consume and produce. It's as if, when you bought a book, they threw in
the printing press for free; it's like you had a phone that could turn into a radio if you pressed
the right buttons. That is a huge change in the media landscape we're used to. And it's not just
Internet or no Internet. We've had the Internet in its public form for almost 20 years now, and
it's still changing as the media becomes more social. It's still changing patterns even among
groups who know how to deal with the Internet well.

5:32 Second story. Last May, China in the Sichuan province had a terrible earthquake, 7.9
magnitude, massive destruction in a wide area, as the Richter Scale has it. And the earthquake
was reported as it was happening. People were texting from their phones. They were taking
photos of buildings. They were taking videos of buildings shaking. They were uploading it to
QQ, China's largest Internet service. They were Twittering it. And so as the quake was
happening the news was reported. And because of the social connections, Chinese students
coming elsewhere, and going to school, or businesses in the rest of the world opening offices in
China -- there were people listening all over the world, hearing this news. The BBC got their
first wind of the Chinese quake from Twitter. Twitter announced the existence of the quake
several minutes before the US Geological Survey had anything up online for anybody to
read. The last time China had a quake of that magnitude it took them three months to admit
that it had happened.

6:40(Laughter)

6:41Now they might have liked to have done that here, rather than seeing these pictures go up
online. But they weren't given that choice, because their own citizens beat them to the
punch. Even the government learned of the earthquake from their own citizens, rather than
from the Xinhua News Agency. And this stuff rippled like wildfire. For a while there the top 10
most clicked links on Twitter, the global short messaging service -- nine of the top 10 links were
about the quake. People collating information, pointing people to news sources, pointing
people to the US geological survey. The 10th one was kittens on a treadmill, but that's the
Internet for you.

7:20(Laughter)

7:21But nine of the 10 in those first hours. And within half a day donation sites were up, and
donations were pouring in from all around the world. This was an incredible, coordinated
global response. And the Chinese then, in one of their periods of media openness, decided that
they were going to let it go, that they were going to let this citizen reporting fly. And then this
happened. People began to figure out, in the Sichuan Provence, that the reason so many
school buildings had collapsed -- because tragically the earthquake happened during a school
day -- the reason so many school buildings collapsed is that corrupt officials had taken
bribes to allow those building to be built to less than code. And so they started, the citizen
journalists started

8:07reporting that as well. And there was an incredible picture. You may have seen in on the
front page of the New York Times. A local official literally prostrated himself in the street, in
front of these protesters, in order to get them to go away. Essentially to say, "We will do
anything to placate you, just please stop protesting in public."

8:26But these are people who have been radicalized, because, thanks to the one child
policy, they have lost everyone in their next generation. Someone who has seen the death of a
single child now has nothing to lose. And so the protest kept going. And finally the Chinese
cracked down. That was enough of citizen media. And so they began to arrest the
protesters. They began to shut down the media that the protests were happening on.

8:51China is probably the most successful manager of Internet censorship in the world, using
something that is widely described as the Great Firewall of China. And the Great Firewall of
China is a set of observation points that assume that media is produced by professionals, it
mostly comes in from the outside world, it comes in relatively sparse chunks, and it comes in
relatively slowly. And because of those four characteristics they are able to filter it as it comes
into the country. But like the Maginot Line, the great firewall of China was facing in the wrong
direction for this challenge, because not one of those four things was true in this
environment. The media was produced locally. It was produced by amateurs. It was produced
quickly. And it was produced at such an incredible abundance that there was no way to filter it
as it appeared. And so now the Chinese government, who for a dozen years, has quite
successfully filtered the web, is now in the position of having to decide whether to allow or shut
down entire services,because the transformation to amateur media is so enormous that they
can't deal with it any other way.

10:09And in fact that is happening this week. On the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen they just,
two days ago, announced that they were simply shutting down access to Twitter, because
there was no way to filter it other than that. They had to turn the spigot entirely off. Now these
changes don't just affect people who want to censor messages. They also affect people who
want to send messages,

10:34 because this is really a transformation of the ecosystem as a whole, not just a particular
strategy. The classic media problem, from the 20th century is, how does an organization have
a message that they want to get out to a group of people distributed at the edges of a
network. And here is the twentieth century answer. Bundle up the message. Send the same
message to everybody. National message. Targeted individuals. Relatively sparse number of
producers. Very expensive to do, so there is not a lot of competition. This is how you reach
people. All of that is over.

11:09We are increasingly in a landscape where media is global, social, ubiquitous and
cheap. Now most organizations that are trying to send messages to the outside world, to the
distributed collection of the audience, are now used to this change. The audience can talk
back. And that's a little freaky. But you can get used to it after a while, as people do.

11:33But that's not the really crazy change that we're living in the middle of. The really crazy
change is here:it's the fact that they are no longer disconnected from each other, the fact that
former consumers are now producers, the fact that the audience can talk directly to one
another; because there is a lot more amateurs than professionals, and because the size of the
network, the complexity of the network is actually the square of the number of
participants, meaning that the network, when it grows large, grows very, very large.

12:05As recently at last decade, most of the media that was available for public
consumption was produced by professionals. Those days are over, never to return. It is the
green lines now, that are the source of the free content, which brings me to my last story. We
saw some of the most imaginative use of social media during the Obama campaign.

12:27And I don't mean most imaginative use in politics -- I mean most imaginative use
ever. And one of the things Obama did, was they famously, the Obama campaign did, was
they famously put upMyBarackObama.com, myBO.com And millions of citizens rushed in to
participate, and to try and figure out how to help. An incredible conversation sprung up
there. And then, this time last year, Obama announced that he was going to change his vote
on FISA, The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He had said, in January, that he would not
sign a bill that granted telecom immunity for possibly warrantless spying on American
persons. By the summer, in the middle of the general campaign, He said, "I've thought about
the issue more. I've changed my mind. I'm going to vote for this bill." And many of his own
supporters on his own site went very publicly berserk.

13:17It was Senator Obama when they created it. They changed the name later. "Please get
FISA right." Within days of this group being created it was the fastest growing group on
myBO.com; within weeks of its being created it was the largest group. Obama had to issue a
press release. He had to issue a reply. And he said essentially, "I have considered the issue. I
understand where you are coming from. But having considered it all, I'm still going to vote the
way I'm going to vote. But I wanted to reach out to you and say, I understand that you disagree
with me, and I'm going to take my lumps on this one."

13:50This didn't please anybody. But then a funny thing happened in the conversation. People
in that group realized that Obama had never shut them down. Nobody in the Obama
campaign had ever tried to hide the group or make it harder to join, to deny its existence, to
delete it, to take to off the site. They had understood that their role with myBO.com was to
convene their supporters but not to control their supporters.

14:20And that is the kind of discipline that it takes to make really mature use of this
media. Media, the media landscape that we knew, as familiar as it was, as easy conceptually as
it was to deal with the idea that professionals broadcast messages to amateurs, is increasingly
slipping away. In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap, in a world of
media where the former audience are now increasingly full participants, in that world, media is
less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals. It is more
and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups.

15:10And the choice we face, I mean anybody who has a message they want to have
heard anywhere in the world, isn't whether or not that is the media environment we want to
operate in. That's the media environment we've got. The question we all face now is, "How can
we make best use of this media? Even though it means changing the way we've always done
it." Thank you very much.

15:32(Applause)