Today, there’re more people on the facebook than they were on the plant two hundred years ago. Humanity’ greatest desire is to belong and connect. The powerful of the technology is just like a magic that shines our daily life and connect all of us. We see each other, we hear each other, we share what we love and it reminds us about what we all have in common. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and so on and on… This connection is changing the way the world works.
Nothing is miserable though the internet. The more wonderful thing is that we make the internet even more powerful than ever. This is a free encyclopedia tool that made by us. Its 21 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. People share their ideas, their knowledge and people can learn from it or edit to it. This is the power if unity. It can’t be done by one person or small groups. People visit the site and write something on it, others see it and edit their opinion or ideas to it.
After i read “Collective Action And Institutional Challenge” by Clay Shirky, i realized how powerful the people as a whole. It reminds me the film about “KNOY 2012” The film’s purpose is to promote the charity’s ‘Stop Kony’ movement to make indicted Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony internationally known in order to arrest him in 2012. They created group call “Invisible Children” just the “VOTF”. They started with few people and now has millions of members through all the world. The Invisible Children charity has focused on obtaining the support of a select group of individuals in order to “help bring awareness to the horrific abuse and killing of children in the East and Central African countries at the hands of Kony and his leadership” They are invincible because of the collective action. Most of the members are young generation and they are the “army” who fight for the children who are suffering in Ugandan. In October 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he would send 100 American military advisors to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help the regional forces remove Joseph Kony “from the battlefield”. What a powerful community it is. This is what i mean “Unity is strength”
I enjoyed reading your post and i definitely agree with you. The world we live in today is all about the people. The way the world has changed through social media has changed all our lives. The need to be connected is stronger than ever and like you mention, Facebook, twitter, tumblr, blogs, YouTube, etc. all gather us together. We are able to easily able to express our ideas to everyone from anywhere. The internet is what we make it. If it wasn’t for the internet, no one would have known about Kony, it wouldn’t have been as wide spread as it is now.
We would still have the opportunity to know about Kony and such through other media outlets. For example, I’ve known about Uganda (not specifically Kony) and their struggle for years through Oprah’s talk show. Through this show I signed up for a newsletter called STAND, which I still receive emails from. So the Internet is definitely an important tool.
I also think its interesting that unity now can be considered just making a few clicks and subscribing/friending/following. Just with those simple clicks, you spread the word, through newsfeed for example. Your peers will see you enlisted in such and such, your spreading the word without doing much. You can do additional clicks and post it on your wall. But of course, this would still not been possible without the proactive activists. Thank God for them!