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Comment by claudia costa on May 31, 2012 at 12:30

Hi, thanks both for the interesting comments. Hanna's view of a society too lazy to live and delegating their lives to robot made me smile...although it is pretty scary to think we might not be too far away from that. During my uni studies I read an article where women were asked if they would swap their boyfriends for robots. Some of them said yes as "robots would always be there for me" and other comments along these lines. It would be interesting to see the extent to which the Internet can help us out in politics, which at the moment is quite a bit of a mess in the western world. I hope I will live long enough to see some good developments happening there :)

Comment by Hanna McLean on May 29, 2012 at 15:50

Interesting post, Claudia :) I am glad you brought this up. I have to say that for me, I think Web 2.0 increases participatory culture, however only on a shallow level. Nowadays, it is so easy to quickly 'like' a post or comment on photo and then go on your merry way, but that is not participating in the way that one would outside of the Web. Let's take the Kony 2012 campaign as an example. On one hand the campaign was pretty cool because it sparked worldwide interest in a short amount of time and thanks to social media and other tools we have available, we were able to communicate with one another on a global scale. If you dig a little deeper however, and actually read what people have been saying the comments often times talk over each other and not with each other. As the saying has been going, "You did not change the world simply by pushing a 'like' button".

On the other hand, Web 2.0 has enabled us to become more aware of issues happening around the world, which in turn may inspire us to change how we think and act in real life. In terms of raising awareness, Web 2.0 is great actually. It's like you said though, it will take awhile before it masters the actual act of participation. I will be curious to see how things evolve over time. Who knows? Maybe we will eventually master participation to the point where we don't have to leave our homes and robots can do the work for us. But then again, that would defeat the purpose of participation as the robots would technically be doing the participating and we would be standing idly by, watching. Anyway, those are my two cents for the day :) Cheers!

Comment by Eliana van de Craats Lima on May 29, 2012 at 15:46

Dear Claudia,

Great Post! I do agree and at the same time disagree with Professor Jenkins, when he said that new Media  will help the youth to be more participative in Western socieites. Actually new Media is helping to create awareness, education and political participation all over the world! Even in places where people assume that because there is no Internet, there  are communities which are still isolated. Those remote areas in Africa, Brazil or in Asia, even though the acces to these new technologies is limitted, due to human mobility, mobile telephony and other gadgets, we can speack about a global information society. It is true that many Westerners think that the greatest developments are only happening here in Europe, in the USA, in Japan, but it is exaclty in Indonesia where one might find the greatest online communities, where the greatest number of people are connected online. It also applies to China, where there are websites such as Facebook called Ren ren, and where users are making a revolution. Internet activisim is even more active in China than in our  Western societies. I have seeing communities in Brazil, where there are people who got their first computer one year ago and they are already highly engaged in social networks. Most of these people they are so keen to learn that they read almost everything you post in their websites. If I can tell you about my own experience, I have started writing in at least 4 languages because my friends in other parts of the world have urged me to do it. They want to be informed, they want to learn and it is a natural thing tha tthey want to read the contents in their own language, however, they aren't the only ones. Since I started using the Internet, I have learnt 6 new languages and I do read lots of different contents, not only the ones from highly educated and smart people, but also the "less smart" contents. Of course, with the great ammount of information out there, we have to make a selection. Nevertheless, I have also learned that we can't be too selective because it would mean to be excluded and unware of relevant facts, such as the Neo-nazist movement somewhere in Århus (DK) or in the South of Brazil. I think we should not be worried about if "people are not reading our blogs" or other people's blogs.  There are lots of good and bad developments within new Media. however, it helps to look at the advantages of it. As Kofi Annan said once "{1999} "the Internet holds the greatest promise humanity has known for long- distance learning and universal access to quality".

There is a new trend of Politicians and Intellectuals to criticize the Internet and New Media, which is quite dangerous, because they are spreading these negative thoughts, to justify censorship. What we should be concern about is to provide young and adult, more education in order to provide people with the necessary critical mind in regard to how to use the Internet and new information technology in a less harmful way.

Of course this is my personal oppinion and I am pretty much a defender of New Media. I enjoy the freedom I have to connect or disconnet whenever I want. and if writers or bloggers stop writing or think too much before writing, wondering if anyone is going to read our contents, we don't do anything. I stil go to the library to read rare books which were written two centuries ago...perhaps I am the only one, but it doesn't matter how many people are going to read this kind of information, it is a great and rewarding feeling to know that people are sharing their culture and that we are becoming a more participatory society!

Eliana