Ms. He

The power of the web is what the writer continued writing about in this book. The teenager uprise against Amercian Beef in South Korea is a perfect example of how cyber environment became a place where people can get together to fight for a cause they all believe in. I bet our parents and grandparents can never have the power like us do, to actually form a group that is so big only through a “Imaginary world”.

I am an active user of the Chinese facebook “Renren”. I like to write about stuff that are bothering me the most, whether the issue is political sensitive, or the “social taboos”. Most recently I write a blog about how “Tibetan activists” protest in America. I happen to know a lot of the Tibetans who claim they were being politically suppressed by the Chinese government are just paid puppets who had never been to Tibet nor China. A lot of my friends shared my blog, and they were amazed about the chaos which were stirred up by the fake Tibetans in the U.S.

Since the cyber environment is so powerful nowadays, if you really want to know about a culture, talk to the real people from the culture, or simply go to the place itself. It is always beneficial to gather different information and make the final adjustment by yourself.

The two chapters talked about how people connect with each other through social medias like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great tool for people around the world to collaborate and work for things they know and mostly concern about. Since it is a platform which basically everyone can join and make effert, the posts are actually more accurate than other encyclopedias online.

Other social medias like youtube is also another channel for people to express their attitude, or call out for awareness. The “KONY 2012” is a wonderful example of how people utilize the cyber environment to convey ideas to others. The fantastic part about social media is it’s a open platform, every single detail of a video will be viewed and analzed by a lot of people. Alone with the “KONY 2012” original production, they are also videos that question the validity of this matter and how the founder of the film uses it to scam innocent people for personal gains. You can manipulate others online, but the groups in cyber environment is so big, you can’t fool them all.

Just like chimps, we human have always been social creatures, and we need each other to survive. Unlike chimps, we have larger, longer lived, more complex, more ordered groups comparing to them. With new technologies, we developed new ways of group-forming which makes tasks from impossible to simple.

The importance of group effect is profound in almost every aspect of our lives. The cost incurred by creating a new group or joining an existing have fallen drastically in recent years. We now have communications tools that are flexible enough to match our social capabilities.  People get together online to do different stuff everywhere. We find phones, write wikis, and join a Mermaid Parade in Coney Island together.

Flicker completely changed the way people communicate with each other. It creates this “share, then gather” paradigm. It promotes togetherness and develope many conversations. It speaks out when traditional media were being silenced.

To me, it is amazing how people utilize social medias nowadays. The microblog “Weibo” in China speaks out for many people. Half of a month ago, one salon employee posted a video about a foreigner in Beijing who was trying to rape a Chinese girl right in the middle of the street. It was late at night, the employee used his camera phone recorded from the beginning where the convict tried rape the girl, until the end where he got beat up by three people and was taken by the police. Many people were shocked by this video and cried for justice. Two weeks later, the Beijing municipal government started to make all foreigners in Beijing to show their valid ID and passports in order to stay in the capital, and it is all because of this video.