So I have been watching these series of commercials on T.V. during the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. It is by a company called CISCO. You may have seen their logo. It looks like this:
welcome to the human network."Welcome to the Human Network". What does that mean?
The Human Network means that there is no more audience. There are no more users. There are only participants. Participants in a human scale network.
Participants do not passively consume what an author, creator, director, developer, editor, critic or media outlet has to publish. They do not accept the authority. They do not sit silently ready to have their eyeballs converted into cash.
Participants participate. They create their own original information, entertainment and art. They remix their own version of mainstream pop culture- copyrighted or not. They post their thoughts, publish their fears and fact check every announcement. They share with their friends and discover the quirky and interesting, making it an instant blockbuster- at least for 15 minutes.
Participants are no longer eyeballs to be converted. They are ideas to be declared. Individually they are a market of one. Collectively they are a trend, a publishing powerhouse and a voice to be heard. A voice that has something to say.
Participants have changed the way media is published and interactions are monetized. But more broadly and importantly than that, they have changed the flow of global information from top down to bottom up. They are changing the tone and tempo of the conversation.
So is this how the world looks today? If so, how does the church fit into something like this? New series of questions that has now sparked my interest: Can Fundamentalism fit into a world that looks like this?
2 comments:
I'd never considered the religious implications of this when I wrote that rant - interesting :)
That is the point...It's actually really cool. You are living out a cultural change and writing that change. We in the church are trying to figure out how we fit into that type of cultural change. Thank you for writing this because it allows us to know how we can press forward the message of Christ to a culture that is changing before our eyes.
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