Archive for the ‘ICT4D’ tag
Using Social Media to Reverse the Panopticon
Recently I brought up the possibility that Google’s goals on the internet resembled a latter-day panopticon. This is obviously a bit of a dire prediction, so I’d like to offer another, more hopeful possibility.
As social networking and the distribution of media, social or otherwise, become more and more advanced, so do the tools for reaching an audience and for gathering information about that audience. A single individual, with a well-formed strategy and access to the time to implement is gaining more and more potential to fulfill a role in society once accessible only to massive multi-million dollar media corporations.
According to wikipedia,
The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the “sentiment of an invisible omniscience.”
What I’d like to propose is that it may soon be possible for this situation to see a reversal of sorts. It’s seeming more and more likely that it might it soon be possible for a seemingly omniscient aggregator to gather all human knowledge in one measurable, quantifiable database. However, this brings with it another possibility, that connecting all of these users is making it more and more likely that it might someday be possible for a piece of media to at least appear, if not be, omnipresent.
Furthermore the entrance barriers for usage of these tools are collapsing, they are already nearly free in many parts of the world and will likely only continue to decrease in cost while increasing in power. In a way it is beginning to look like there may be some type of analogue to Moore’s Law within social media and the dramatically increasing capabilities of mobile devices.
What this means is that citizen media, if properly harnessed, is gaining more and more capability to have an impact, to reach an audience. In my analogy of social media as a reverse panopticon, rather than an omniscient observer/guard, aggregating all knowledge and observing and quantifying the thoughts, feelings, and actions of humanity’s “prisoners, quite the opposite happens. The access to social media, and its ever increasing potential reach means that a single “broadcaster”/storyteller, rather than “aggregator”/guard has the potential to push the images of the oppressed, the voices of the developing world, to an increasingly large audience.
In some ways, the potential omnipresence of “content” takes the place of the “guard” and the wealthy, privileged, educated, and members of the developed world, with their access to broadband and mobile data tools, might become “prisoners” of a sort, awash in the “hegemony” of the developing world’s social media onslaught.
It has been pointed out perhaps countless times that we are “only limited by our capability to dream.” Margaret Atwood (correction, Mead-thanks Steve & Meghan!) said, “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizen s can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
Mrs. Atwood Mead and I don’t agree on that point. I would counter that although that may or may not be true, you should also add, “and men with guns.” However, the more I experience the possibilities of ICT for Development, the more I begin to believe that though it may not have been true before, it is becoming true.
Information and Communications Technology, digital media tools, and mobile computing is becoming ever more accessible in the developed world, but in much of the developing world these tools are still years away from being widely accessible to local people. It is only with the intercession of concerned, privileged citizens of the developed world, using their access to capital and agency to support the promotion and distribution of the stories of the developing world, that we can hope to assist in making a difference, possibly even staving off the collapse of fragile states.
Consider the impact that CNN and the onset of 24 hour news coverage made on the media industry and the policies of States in Iraq, Rwanda and Kosovo during the 90s. Someday soon we will have the technological capability to empower the citizens of communities in crisis, fragile states, conflict areas, thand the developing world to speak to us themselves, to tell their own stories and ensure they are seen.
I know many will consider me a dreamer, an idealist, or a naive optimist. But consider our success in Iraq, Mexico, Gaza, Iran, and Afghanistan, where we used freely available technologies to help local people tell the world the stories of their existence in dire situations, conflict, and war.
And today I am in India, working with Video Volunteers to create a rural newswire encompassing nearly every state in India. We’re going to do it, and we are in the middle of strategizing a social media plan to distribute the content far and wide, as organically as possible. We may be a few years or even decades ahead of our time, but I have no doubt that, in the proper hands social media could turn the tides of institutional complacency and apathy toward the dangers facing fragile and developing states all over the world.