It's A Small World, So Who Is To Say Power Can't Go To The People?

Go back ten years ago. It's a warm summer night, and you are sitting at home hanging out with your friends. All the sudden, every electronic device (lights, television, speakers, radios, ect.) shuts off. You decide to wait it out for q couple of minutes to make sure it's not just some small glitch, nothing. You and your friends start to get worried, so you start talking about what it might be, in hope of coming to a conclusion. Sitting in the dark, everyone's minds begin to wander. You may have the idea that some kind of citywide powersaver operation is in effect, or even that someone broke into your house and shut off the lights. Now, fast forward to ten years later. You are in the same situation, the power goes out and visibility is at ground zero. Instead of fretting and worrying, attempting to come to some kind of sustainable conclusion, you simply pull-out your laptop, log onto Facebook or google (or reall any other social network)and begin your search within answers. Instead of just imagining p some crazy random situation, you see the answers pop-up in front of you like the flick of a switch. This is what is great about modern technology, when used in the right ways, by the right people, in the right way, an alchemy of human engineering is possible. In Clay Shirky's TED talk, this is exactly what point he is trying to get across to people. Rather than becoming reliant on biased television news stations and primitive radio broadcasting to get your information, why not take it into yours, as well as other people's hands and write about what you know? Besides being able to see what other people know and think, you are able to help other people by sharing your expressions and feelings. In his presentation, Clay Shirky put this idealism forward using a unique technique of blending hard facts and ideas, with humor and satire. Opening with an example from Africa, Shirky talked about how one woman organized and operated a blog website on current events relating to the recent election and outbreaks of violence across the country. He added that a's more and more information began flooding in, the woman became overwhelmed, so a group of people volunteered to help her out. Within a short period of time, this idea has spread to become a nationwide trend. He explained how one idea such as that has the power to spread across large groups of people, and effect massive areas of the world. He then broke the serious atmosphere of this topic by slyly attaching a picture of a 'lawl cat', a random picture of a cat with a misspelled caption, into his presentation. Although meaningless at first, he brilliantly redirects his argument back to the main topic, by stating that although a dumb and meaningless idea, it is still something creative, started by people, and has spread to a relatively large group of followers. Shirky claims that this new idealism is the mindset of the future, and that it will begin to take hold of a new, modernistic society. In terms of school, this revolutionary idea has a large area to grow and expand on, and ultimately become a new form for learning to take place in. In classrooms, instead of simply learning amongst fellow classmates, a class could blog and connect with other classes around the world, and communicate face-to-face about new ideas. In the business world, this system of global communication could easily do wonders with both company profits and worker satisfaction. Workers could communicate with other workers in other companies (in a friend sense, of course. Corporate competition should be left to the business meets) and talk to each other, gaining new knowledge and tactics to attack their projects with a new keen eye. In a profit sense, businesses could extend their margin of idea sources outside of the baseline, and out to the more creative, "Earth-bound" public opinions, giving the businesses with the greatest public recognition the biggest edge on their competitors. To conclude, I believe a metaphor can sum-up what one should take away from this new system of global knowledge, and that metaphor is that two minds are greater than one.